Guest blog from Matthew Pugh and Tobyn Bell
A common misconception is that chairwork can’t be delivered online, or that it is much less effective in this format. This concern is understandable. Chairwork is associated with movement and physical action: moving chairs around the room, switching between seats, standing back to observe different parts of the self, and sitting down to embody them. For this reason, chairwork can seem difficult to translate into online therapy.
However, research suggests a more nuanced picture (Pugh et al., 2021). Online chairwork isn’t exactly the same as face-to-face chairwork and does require adaptations. At the same time, expert guidance suggests it can still be helpful and effective (with a few creative twists) and may have some advantages.
A helpful starting point is to focus on what chairwork is trying to do. The chairwork aims to help people experience and interact with ‘parts’ of themselves in the here and now. To do this, chairwork involves placing parts in different spaces to separate them, bringing these parts to life, and then starting a conversation with them. The same underlying processes apply to online and face-to-face chairwork, but they can be facilitated in different ways. For example, a client might move between two chairs in their own room. If that is not possible, they might move their existing chair to the left, then to the right, or just stand up and sit back down as they switch between parts.
Online chairwork can also have some advantages. For some clients, working from home can increase their sense of safety, ownership, and control during chairwork. The familiar environment can reduce feelings of exposure or observation, particularly for clients who feel self-conscious in clinical settings. The home context can also make the work feel more immediate: clients can practise new ways of relating to parts of themselves in their “real world” environment, such as comforting their child self in a familiar chair, which can make it easier to transfer the work.
There might be some therapeutic advantages to using a screen, too. While some therapists find this distance a barrier, being less visually or physically present means therapists are less likely to intrude on their client’s own processes during chairwork, and can remain present through voice, guidance, and empathy.
Of course, online chairwork brings challenges. Therapists may have less access to the client’s body language. Internet problems can interrupt the flow of the work. Clients may have limited space or privacy at home. For these reasons, online chairwork usually needs more preparation. It can help to agree on the practical setup in advance, check privacy settings, discuss what will happen if the connection fails, and explain the task clearly before beginning. During the exercise, therapists may need to give more explicit verbal guidance than they would in person: where to look, which chair or object to speak to, when to pause, and how to come back to the here-and-now.
Online chairwork can be effective, but it requires adaptation. It may not suit every client or every clinical issue. However, if therapists understand the core principles and processes of chairwork, facilitating it is much easier than it might seem at first glance.
Join Tobyn and Matthew to learn the skills!
Our Chairwork skills in action workshop gives you a fast-paced, hands-on introduction to the core techniques of chairwork including two-chair dialogues, dramatisations and intrapersonal interviews. Each method will be demonstrated live to help you learn how to apply it step by step. It will pay particular attention to working with self-criticism, showing how chairwork transforms harsh inner voices into more compassionate, flexible ways of responding.
Reference
Pugh, M., Bell, T., & Dixon, A. (2021). Delivering tele-chairwork: A qualitative survey of expert therapists. Psychotherapy Research, 31(7), 843–858. https://doi.org/10.1080/10503307.2020.1854486