You might live in a town with no counsellor for a hundred kilometres. You might live in Sandton and simply not have ninety spare minutes for traffic and parking. Or you might find it easier to talk about hard things from your own kitchen table. Whatever brought you to look for online counselling in South Africa, the work is the same work — the only thing missing is the drive.
I was slow to believe this, I'll admit. After decades of sitting in rooms with people, I doubted a screen could hold the same conversation. I was wrong. Online sessions carry everything that matters: the listening, the silences, the moment someone says the thing they have never said aloud. I now see people this way from Cape Town to Polokwane, and South Africans scattered from London to Dublin to Berlin who want a counsellor who understands home without needing it explained.
How video sessions work
It is simpler than people fear. We book a time, I send you a link, and at the appointed hour you click it — no account to create, no software to wrestle with. You need a phone, tablet or computer with a camera, a reasonable connection, and somewhere you can speak freely. Sessions are 60 minutes, weekly or fortnightly, exactly as they would be in my practice room.
The first session is mostly me getting to know you and you getting the measure of me. If technology misbehaves, we sort it out together without fuss — I have seen everything by now.
Load-shedding, and other South African realities
Any online counsellor working with South Africans has to plan for the power going out mid-sentence. So we do: if load-shedding or a dropped connection interrupts a session, we simply switch to a WhatsApp voice call and carry on — the conversation continues, phone to ear, and you don't lose your hour. I keep an eye on the schedules on my side too, so we can often plan around them in the first place.
Privacy when the session is at home
The most common worry about online counselling in South Africa is not the technology — it is the family on the other side of the door. Practical things help: a bedroom or study with the door shut, a parked car in the driveway (more of my clients use this than you would guess), earphones so only your side is audible, a fan or radio outside the door if the walls are thin. On my side, I take your call alone, in a private room, always. What you tell me stays with me, same as it would in Fairmount.
What I work with online
Almost everything I do in person, I do online: anxiety, trauma, grief and bereavement, relationship difficulties, the struggles of caring for ageing parents, and the quieter work of a life that needs rethinking. Even body-based work translates well to video, which surprises people. The fee is the same as an in-person session — R750, with a sliding scale available — and everything about payment and claiming is on my fees and medical aid page.