Getting Your Message Across in Second Life

Good morning, it's your usual chai-sipping bloggeress here :)

Firstly, I apologise for the size of the font, I wrote my blog up in Word and now it only allows me the choice now of 'Quick get your reading glasses!' and 'C'mon I'm not that blind!' 

This morning I wanted to talk about getting your intended message across to clients in Second Life (SL). Before we begin I want to share a quote with you.

             “I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, 
              but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”
                                    ~ Robert McCloskey~

Communication is tricky enough without the added pressure of not being able to see or hear another person, despite this online counselling works and perhaps in this blog we may discover some of the reasons for this. 

While there is some overlap between SL counselling and other text counselling I think SL has some advantages. The first one is that you can use 'visual aids'. Of course, sending a newly made file to a client over Windows Live Messenger (or any other chat application that you may be using) works nearly as well. 

The reason I'm such a fan of SL for visual aids, is because the amount of time it takes to drag a 'texture' from your inventory to a blank object is far quicker than sending a file over the internet. This works even better if you have a client that has already spent countless hours on SL and has fully immersed themselves in the experience. What do I mean? Well, when a client has started to identify through their avatar, they have also started to identify their avatar in the environmental context, this means that the environment has an impact on them indirectly, and a counsellor can use this to their advantage -- more on that another time.  

Some people argue that without the cues of body language and tone of voice, it’s simply not possible to provide effective therapy with only text; however, I tend to agree with John Suler on this.

“Despite the lack of face-face cues, conversing via text has evolved into

 a sophisticated, expressive art form. The effective clinician understands

 and attempts to master this art.” ~Online Counselling Handbook~

So let's list the tools we have at our disposal for getting our message across to clients. 

Text Chat, while appearing to be a very bland way to communicate, can be very useful in getting your intended message across. Examples of specific ways to ‘express’ oneself online include.

•  Flow of Ideas
• Spelling Errors
• Grammar Sophistication
• Spacing of Paragraphs
• Use of Quoted Text
• Caps Lock
• Emoticons 

Then there are the Visual Aids I mentioned before. Below is an example of one of my cards that I use often with clients.

As you can see, it works very well. If a client requires a special document, I can quickly make one up in paintbrush and upload it to SL. There are whiteboards in SL also, but I find that without a digital pen and pad, this gets tricky. Also, a paintbrush made .jpg allows you to send the file through email to the client for later reference. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) requires a lot of visual aids when going through thoughts, behaviours, feelings etc, and how they all relate to each other. 

Of course, let’s not forget good old counselling skills. They are just as effective in SL/Online as they are in RL. This includes: Paraphrasing, Reflection of Feeling, Reflection of Meaning, Disclosure, Consequences, Active Listening through the use of Encouragers (Examples --*nods*, yes, right, okay), Summarising etc --I’m sure you don’t need me to list them all as there are so many.

I use a lot of clarification phrases  online as to make sure that any messages are not lost in translation, if I didn’t hear the client properly,  I may use metaphors and analogies to try and clarify exactly what they mean. It is possible to get accurate representations of your meaning and the clients meaning across to each other, and it's because of this that online therapy has a bright future. 

Well, my cup is empty and none of us like blogs that drag on. For now, I’m just touching on general ideas, later I will review specifics.

Have a wonderful day!