Could Email Counselling Be the Quiet Hero of Therapy?

With Chloe Foster – Email Counselling Academy

Do you think counselling has to mean sitting face-to-face (or screen-to-screen) with a client?

Well, in this episode, I’m joined by Chloe Foster, founder of the Email Counselling Academy, who shares why working by email might be the flexible, powerful alternative you didn’t know you needed.

Whether you're looking for a way to work around family life, want to support clients who open up better in writing, or you're just curious about doing therapy differently — this conversation will get you thinking.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

1. Why email counselling can be a lifeline for anxious or private clients
2. How it gives counsellors more flexibility (and fewer no-shows)
3. What actually happens in an email counselling exchange
4. Whether this style of working could suit your practice — and personality

🎧 Hit play to explore whether this quietly powerful format could be the perfect fit for you — and your clients.

About Chloe

Chloe Foster (they/them) is the founder and principal tutor at Email Counselling Academy (ECA). They also have a private practice called Sussex Rainbow Counselling, founded in 2016, where they offer email counselling as well as video and phone counselling to clients.

With a first-class degree in Education, Chloe loves teaching and training. Over their counselling career they’ve trained hundreds of counsellors to become more confident working with LGBTQ+ clients through their work with the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society (NCPS), Onlinevents, The Counselling Tutor, and several universities/colleges and counselling charities.

Today, having worked as an email counsellor since 2018, Chloe enjoys sharing the skills they’ve honed with fellow counsellors through their specialist training courses in email counselling at ECA which are mapped to BACP competences for OPT and have been awarded quality check status with the NCPS.

Find her E-book — Email Counselling — An introduction for Counsellors:

You can get 30% discount using the code JANE26 (valid until 30 April 2026)

Also, my sincere apologies to Chloe for any mistakes I made with their pronouns in the recording

Jane: Some people think therapy has to happen in room, or at least face to face on a screen. 'cause that's when you can see their body language. But yet so many people find that they have their clearest thoughts when they write. When there's space, when they don't have to speak out loud, and when they can choose their words carefully and take their time.

So what happens when counseling happens through the written word by email? Who does this really help? And what does it offer to therapists who feel most themselves when they're writing rather than speaking in the moment? That's what we're going to look into today.

Hi, and welcome to the Grow Your Private Practice Show, the podcast for counselors and therapists who want to get found by the right clients without doing marketing that feels awkward, forced, or like it's not really you. I am Jane Travis, and in today's episode we're talking about email counseling using the written word as the main way of working with clients.

Hello, hello, hello and welcome back and if it's your first time here, I'm so glad that you found us and you've joined at a really great time because today I've got guest Chloe Foster with me, and we are going to explore her journey. Email counseling. So we're gonna have a look at what drew her to working in this way and how now she's helping other people to use the power of the written word.

Through the email marketing academy, we talk about the kind of clients who are often drawn to email counseling. We look at the benefits that it can offer therapists and who this way of working is likely to suit and who it might not be the right fit for. We also explore how working through the written word naturally connects with blogging as an effective way of marketing. Because when your work is rooted in writing your blog is gonna give people a genuine sense of you, how you think, how you communicate, and how it might be to work with you because your voice and your personality comes through long before someone ever gets in touch.

So it's thoughtful, it's honest, and it's a great conversation about choosing a way of working that actually fits you.

Chloe, thank you for being here. It's really great to have you here and talking about something that I find really fascinating. So we all know about email counseling, but I've never actually known anybody that does it, so I'd love to know a bit more about it. So before we start, maybe you can share a little bit about yourself and a little bit about your journey.

And how you sort of came to work sort of predominantly through email.

As I think back though, there's a few different answers to this question. that I basically, I found out about email counseling through a friend, through a counseling colleague when I was relatively newly qualified. And I was like, what is that? That does not sound proper. You need to be, this was pre pandemic.

I remember during the course we were encouraged, forced, I dunno how you wanna say it, to write a journal.and I actually quite liked that and other people in my class, a lot of them. Didn't get around to doing it. Didn't do it. Hated it, hated being, having to write.but I actually got a lot from it and I was thought, I liked the fact that I was personally being encouraged to have to write every single week.

And I'd always write after I'd been to my counseling myself, my own personal therapy. And it was amazing, like what came up. And it was also amazing the signs of things that I was writing that I was finding it hard to say out loud. My, with my counselor at the time it was in, in person and taking me really long time to bring up these topics.

So I think actually as I look back and I think about it deeper, initially I was really keen to do an online counseling course 'cause I thought it made sense, it, it was a future and I really wanted to train about how to work with video sessions. And I thought, I'm not sure about the text-based stuff, but that was part of the course, so let's see how it goes.

And then I really surprised myself and I really liked it. It's just, it just makes sense to me that I can write down my thoughts. It's like having a journal. I can write a sort of a response to a journal. I can write down my thoughts and feelings and get a reply to that. So when I tried it as a client, I, it was.

Just so good. I, I, I find myself, it didn't, I didn't actually have to have as many sessions as I thought I would 'cause I got right to the topics that I wanted to talk about much quicker. Some of those ones that have a lot of shame and stigma and can feel really hard and awkward to talk out loud, it's, it, it just made sense to me.

And I could read them back, which was good too.

I feel the shame and I, I'm not good at crying in front of people. Yeah. Whereas writing down your own stuff like a journal, but somebody else can have a look at it and give you, I guess, kind of feedback. Yeah. Or something back feels like there's that little separation.

If they want to talk about something really shameful, really, who it's, it's got a lot of trauma, it's got a lot of pain. It's really. really triggering and, and maybe very upsetting and that they feel that they might be wanting to cry. The idea that the, the camera is off the you, the they, and also they have the, they have the time delay.

They have the distance so they can send their email and then they wait for the counselor's response. So they're not sitting there really kind of. Inhibited by the fact that someone's looking right at them and watching every move, which can feel really scary, particularly for people who are very new to being a client in counseling.

I remember when I first tried it thinking, oh my God, I've never had anyone give me this so much attention. I quite like it sort of. 'cause they're, you know, they seem that they really care, but it's like, oh God, what if I, what does this mean if I fold my arms or I cross my legs, or, or I'm late and all these things.

And I was just felt too, a bit too analyzed. I was, I was really young. I was in my early twenties and it was just really scary. And I was like, I just want help. And like, I just wanna be able to say these things, but it's so hard to say it out loud.

I've said before, I had a psycho-analytic, oh, hang on. I can't, can't say my words. what's the, what's this person said? Analytic. What's the other one? Psych, yeah. Academic. Psychotic, psychodynamic. That's it. Crikey. My brain really is getting bad. I had a psychodynamic counselor, and so for that, it was, they don't say anything.

And for me, I, I just, it was hell. It was like hell, I mean, for a lot of people, I'm sure that would've been brilliant, but for me it was awful. Mm-hmm. So that. Like you say, that level of mm-hmm. Focus. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. And I think as well, if you write something down, and I, I have this as well, if I need to write a tricky, say a tricky email to somebody, like a friend or something like that mm-hmm. I can write it down and then leave it and then come back to it and I can, you can change it. So you are, just, by writing it down, you can sort of change the way you look at it.

And then I'm like, oh shit, I'm almost halfway right. Okay. I need to get on with this. And that's me talking as a counselor, like, you know, already, already trained being a client. I still can find myself doing that. And I just feel like, yeah, like you say, writing, you can just get straight in and you can think about how do I want to, how do I want to convey this?

How do I want to get it across?

Sorry, can you ask the question again

What, what, actually, I'm, I'm assuming they're not telling you what to do Of course, but what, how does it sort of work? So if, if I, if I sent an email about, mm-hmm. Oh, I'm really struggling with some people pleasing. Mm-hmm. And I'm struggling to say no to this person. They're insisting that I do this thing and I don't want to.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I'm feeling backed into a corner.

Being already qualified, already having those skills. So I only take qualified counselors because it's important that we're building on those skills because this is a really specialist way of working. It's really different so that they, don't forget those skills and their core modality. And remember that it's not.

We're emailing a friend or a family member. It's not just a quick email back, with a little bit of emotion. This is a therapeutic exchange. So for people who are not used to that, 'cause we're used to use, you know, tapping into our therapeutic skills when we're working clinically as a counselor with our clients, which we don't do with our friends.

Even if our friends might think, oh, you're counseling me. We're not doing that. We're just good listeners. But we know, we already know how to switch that kind of way of working and to be really professional and boundaried with our clients. So when we switch to working by writing and by email, then we're focusing on the fact it's a therapeutic email.

So the way I would respond to a client would be very different to how I would respond to a friend.and so. Basically, it's really important that I am tuning into what is going on behind the words, just like I would be if I was sitting with a client, what are they really trying to say to me here?

What are the threads that might be tying in between these topics? Maybe they're talking about work, and maybe they're also talking about their daughter. Is there something common, a commonality between those two topics that they've spoken about? What is the underlying feelings and thoughts? I tend to, as a counselor, when I work with clients by email rather than in a, a different way, I tend to use more question, and to, to find ways to, to bring out more about what's going on for them.

And of course, as, Lots of people have pointed out, which I hadn't really thought about, is that it's, it's a 50 50 exchange. You have, we have a set word limit and the client writes the same as I reply with.and that is not the same. If you're in a 50 minute session, the client is probably going to talk way more and the counselor.

Might potentially, especially if they have a real talker of a client, might find it really hard to, to interject and to really support that client. But with an email, they can, because the, the, the, whether it's a, it's a real extrovert or introvert or somebody in between, they've been able to really express in that kind of timeframe, in that word limit what they need to say, and then get a full response from the counselor.

Which I think is incredibly powerful.

'cause of course if you are face to face, body language is all around you. If you are mm-hmm. Working online, you've still got a certain element of body language Yeah. And tone of voice and

You, you can't hear them, you can't see them. However. I really believe with a lot of, the lot of the work that I've done that actually other senses become stronger. Does that make sense?a bit like, dogs are really, really strong sense of smell. Like there's just like, like when other senses are kind of inhibited or not, there, like other senses can be stronger.

and that they. Are actually expressing more than they might think they are, that I'm seeing more that they, they might think that they're hiding, but they're actually expressing so much, because they've got that word limit of the what they, what they need to say, and they're less likely to kinda get distracted into other things.

I think that the body language can be something that. Usually it's more likely that counselors worry about than clients. Usually when I speak to people in the general public, if I mention what I do, usually the response is, oh wow, I never even thought about that. That sounds, that sounds interesting. How does that work?

Oh, you could write like, it's usually really kind of positive kind of response. When I speak to counselors, often it's kind of the opposite, like really worried and really like, but you need to have the b you need to have the Yeah, boundaries. We'll talk about that in a minute. You need to have the body language.

you definitely need to have boundaries too, but you need to have the, the, the body language. You need to be able to hear their tone of voice. Because that's the way they've been trained and that's why it's a specialist skill. And why, like I really worry sometimes about talking a lot about email counseling on things like this and online.

'cause I worry that people might think, oh God, like oh yeah, I can just do that and just fly off and do it without really properly thinking about their contract and their training and their insurance and everything that's involved. And finding themselves in really tricky ground really. 'cause it's, it's, it's, It's important to get it right.

And so at that time I got used to, online relationships mm-hmm. Online friendships, and I became really aware of how much you can learn from people and how they're feeling from just the way that they're talking, just the words that they're using mm-hmm. And the punctuation they're using and

Just from, from the written word and it was really eyeopening as to how much that can be. You know how valuable that can be.

I can think of that it's been probably almost two years before we met in person.and one of those people, I'd never seen a picture of them, didn't know what, they, didn't what they sounded like, but we built this really close connection where we talked about some really deep stuff and stuff that had been going on for us in our counseling.

And it's like. Wow. Would I have said that? Like in person and like the amount of support and, and yeah, just connection and the shortcutting to get to that. It's just, it's just amazing really. And actually, if you think about it, most of us in our day-to-day life communicate by, by writing, maybe not necessarily emailing very often, but people are often texting on WhatsApp.

and it's really convenient to, to message rather than to to speak. And there might be lots of people that you've very, very rarely ever spoken to and certainly not like you might know their voice, but certainly meeting in person is something that's not convenient, not something that necessarily feels important.

Mm-hmm.

They might literally think that's helpful. And then where's the line? It's kind of like starting a session. And being like, oh, well, we'll just see how it goes. And then two hours later it's like, oh, how am I gonna stop this? There needs to be an end point.some email counselors do it by how much time you spend writing.

and others do it by. A word limit. I'm not a fan on how much time it takes to write because people write at different speeds and they could say that it, you know, they could have written 4,000 words and said that only took them 50 minutes. And maybe it did. I don't know. But it's gonna be an overwhelming amount, for the counselor.

or they might write, we might write very slowly. So I think it works, it's fairer and works better for both parties involved to have a word count. And so that's the way that I set it up in my contracting. I agree. A word limit that I stick to the same for the client and for the counselor. And,

Mm-hmm. A, a recent, a recent, Task that I had my students do on the course that I'm running at the moment was to write, was to write an email to their future self about why they're interested in email counseling and, and, and kind of what excites them, what worries them, and to stick to 500 words to get an idea.

And they were really. interested by how, what a 500 word likes feels like to write, but also what it looks like and how much you can actually say in it.

Mm-hmm.

I

Mm-hmm. But from the point of view of receiving that and working your way through it and I guess working out,

Everything will take longer in the beginning. But for me, because I'm really experienced and been doing this for many, many years, I aim to, to do it within the 50 minute session.

And like you were saying earlier about. How it can be helpful to look back an email and to think about is there anything you want to edit or for me as a counselor's point of view, I mean, it's spread over two days that I write my initial email, but then I come back to it, and there might be things I might take out and think, oh, that's maybe a little bit too challenging, or, how can I soften that a little bit?

Yeah. Or actually that bit doesn't really make sense. Or, oh, I've missed something that they've said. Make sure I'm, I need to, I need to tweak this a little bit. So it's very. Very considered. So I like to hope that they get quite a high quality response from me rather than just for me. Like, what, what, what's kind of gone through my head right in the moment.

Yeah. which, you know, ha they have advantages, different ways of working. I'm not trying to down a traditional way of working. That can be incredibly helpful too.

And I dunno really, I dunno what the average is, but it, is it different with email counseling?

And actually my experience working with clients with email counseling, in the early days, I was noticing people's, ending up staying a lot shorter than, than than usual in my, in my practice. But actually that shifted and I actually do get lots of people who are long term. and I, it's very common for people in my practice to stay years, at least two or three years.

I've definitely worked with lots of clients who've stayed that long and only by email where I've never seen them or heard their voice. So that could be an interesting thing yourself, like, what kind of picture am I, have I made, you know, I've got this relationship with this client. I've, you know, been writing to essentially for two or three years.

You know, what, what, how do I picture them? And that can be an interesting thing that comes up in supervision. And how might that affect how we write?

Anonymous, isn't it?

Feel able to actually say what they really need to say and also to switch topics, which I think as a client can feel really awkward to be like, oh, my counselor's like responding to all this stuff about work. And really I wanna talk about hub partner, but now how am I gonna like shift gears here? This is awkward that when, when they're writing, they just can, they can, they can say what they need to say and they can, they can ignore my questions if they want.

That might, that might say something and I might, I might say like, oh, I noticed you didn't answer that question, or I might leave it and come back to that. and just kind of go with more, with what the client's really needing. And I can even check in at the end. Is this topic still feeling helpful or is there something else on your mind which might not necessarily feel possible or be the time to do, when we're speaking in session?

'cause it might feel a bit clunky and just might not be the opportunity.

What there some clients where you think this might not be a good choice? Mm-hmm. What, what happens there?

Because not only is it written, but it's also got that asynchronic and asynchronicity to it. So if people are working shifts, so for example. Probably, or they've got a young baby or there's stuff going on in their life where, you know, they can't commit to 3:00 PM on a Wednesday. That's not realistic. They might be able to for the first couple of months and then something changes so they can write when they, when they want to.

So it attracts people who, who want that flexibility. And also people who are really anxious who've maybe have never had counseling before, who, people who want to have more reflection, it's time want to be able to have that email back from their counselor to read through.

People who don't really like kind of being put on the spot, which I think is a lot of people kind of just be like, oh, how are you feeling now? And which some, in some topics that can be really helpful and can help people work through things. But to be able to have that time and space to really think through and to be given a question to really.

Gather the thoughts and think about how do they really want to respond?

Obviously they're not bullied. Yeah. A little bit, sort of, I dunno, bad about it in some way. So. Mm-hmm. Not having that. Because not everybody's got access to their feelings. They don't know what's going on for them.

That was just something we were trained to do. There's nothing wrong with checking in and asking how our clients are. But for some of our clients, they might be like, well, they're just not really not sure, or they're, or they do know, but they're just not ready to share it. So it can feel quite, quite awkward.

also, I'm thinking about. The menopause and perimenopause and how, for, from the client's point of view, but also from the counselor's point of view, how it can be really hard when you get that brain fog and you're like, I don't know what the word is. particularly from the counselor's point of view.

And that certainly happened to me, where I'm just like, well, I don't know. I don't know where I was going with that. and so when we've got email, we can. Actually be focused and we can take a minute. Or if we get hot flush, we, you know, we can take some space and we don't have to be like, ah, right, okay, we're right there with the, with the client right in front of them.

And just be like, this isn't, this isn't really, this isn't happening here.

Like literally. I, I kind of like, I think of there's something like this word, or they might say a word, I'm think. My mind has gone blank. I don't, I can't, I don't know if I know that word or I feel a bit stupid, am I not? Maybe not that intellectual. You've used a fancy word here and, and yes, it's okay to ask our clients what, what does that mean word mean?

I don't know that word, but if it's happening a lot, then it's kind of it. It might feel awkward, particularly if they're talking about maybe not something with the intellectual might be something about gaming or, you know, I don't know anything about gaming. I get lots of clients wanting to talk about stuff like that, and there's lots of words that are not in my lingo.

Absolutely. Yeah. That they can then go back and, and mm-hmm. Because it, it's all very, well, I mean, when people come to me for coaching, I'll let you know, I'll do a recording.

It really is like a journal, I guess. Yeah, it's a, there, it's a lot like a journal.

I guess literally there are words or I might come back and say, well, you did literally said this, but kind of guiding them back to an email that they wrote or something that I said so that I'm not kind of using up lots of my words repeating something. About, about what's going on or how to support them.

And I'm like, oh, I wonder if the thing I said two weeks ago was helpful on paragraph three, you know? And then I can kind of say a bit more, something different. So I'm not kind of feeling, I'm needing to. Repeat myself again.

Whereas now we can, you can do face-to-face counseling. You can do online counseling. Mm-hmm. You can do email counseling. Mm-hmm. You can do walk and talk counseling. Yeah. You know, there's equine counseling. Yeah. So many different things that people can use in order to help them to do something that is gonna suit the way that they are.

And also for counselors, like you say. You can find time to do this in whatever time suits you.

They also have life going on and other clients and other, other things going on too.

Depressed or anything like that. So for me, this would be such a good way of doing it, you know, it's got so many benefits. So you, you now help people and train people into how to actually do this. How long have you been doing that? That's

They really need a bit of both.

Like this is a proper course. It's not just a sort of a random thing. Yeah.

And that's because I, I get, I've been doing this for such a long time. I get plenty. I'm, I'm lucky to say that I, I get plenty client inquiries.I can get really busy with working with clients, but I can't work with everyone and I want to make sure that there is quality trained people ready to work by email, and I actually just want to spread and increase that reach so there's more people to choose from.

and that's kind of why I set up Email Counseling Academy is I want to, I want to offer it to be able to offer it to more clients and have more counselors thinking and talking about it. But it also makes the counselor's lives better too, because we were saying earlier it can be a much more effective way and be more flexible.

and people can work with both. They don't have to do one or the other, and they can work with both with the same client, which I do too.

You are? Are you predominantly on LinkedIn?

which I am planning to write more blogs, which will be music to your ears, Jane.

From a, from a counselor's point of view rather than a client. Yeah.

So it's aimed at counselors, not clients.and the, the courses that I run are only for qualified counselors, because it's really important that you have those baseline. Skills first and a bit of experience in your placements and working with clients. But apart from that, it's about working out kind of if, if working by text and by writing asynchronously, if this is, if this is gonna suit you.

and yeah, it just goes through a few questions to work that out.

It's really helpful for clients who are a bit like me that struggle and feel a bit put on the stop on the spot. And for me, when I get stressed I just, I just kind of close down. So having a client that's wanting me to tell them all about how I feel. It doesn't really work. So this is, this would be perfect for me.

There are lots of instances where I know this would've been really, really helpful for me and as an ex counselor, I can see the benefits of this. I can definitely see the benefits of this. I think it's such a fantastic thing. I hope more people, in fact, you know, let us know if you're listening to this, I hope more people are interested in this and can see how.

This can fit in with their lifestyle as well. So thank you so much for coming and sharing this.

so there is opportunities that's, that's like the main way to find an email counselor at the moment. I don't know of any other places kind of advertising, but it's difficult to know where to look if you're kind of thinking, oh, I wanna try this as a client.

I need to put it a higher up on my list, Jane. Absolutely. I, I need to be doing more blogging. That is definitely, it's so effective. I love it

See, I told you she was great. Now, I really enjoyed this conversation with Chloe, especially the reminder that there is no one right way to be a therapist, and that your work gets to be shaped around. How you do your best thinking and connecting. So whether email counseling feels like a possibility for you or something that you've now ruled out.

I hope that this episode has helped you to think more clearly about what fits and what doesn't. Now you'll find links to Chloe and her work in the show notes. So Chloe, thank you so much for coming and sharing with us. And if you've enjoyed this episode, make sure that you're following or subscribing to the podcast so that you don't miss future conversations about building a private practice that works for you. And if someone you know would find this episode helpful, then please be a friend. Feel free to share it with them.

So for now, thanks so much for listening and I look forward to speaking again soon. Take care. Bye-bye.