Zoom Fatigue and Self-mirroring: New phenomena in individual and group psychotherapy online

Abstract

The rapid spread of online psychotherapies is bringing about changes in the known ways of doing therapy, both individual and group, concerning the demand and supply of psychotherapy, the management of the setting, and of processes and dynamics. Alongside the undoubted advantages, there is a need to understand these aspects better, monitor the risks and learn about the new phenomena generated by the online setting. Two of these new phenomena will be presented: Zoom Fatigue (ZF) and Self-mirroring. ZF has been studied in the field of work, but little in the field of psychotherapy. Here, a model of the psychotherapist’s Zoom Fatigue (ZF-P) with fatiguing and fatigue counteracting factors will be presented, in addition to the recent phenomenon of therapy’s platformization. The fatiguing factors include Self-View, viewing of oneself in a video, which can cause various positive and negative reactions. The concept of Self-mirroring, that is the active use of one’s own and patients’ images for self-knowledge purposes, is then proposed, also in the light of the first empirical evidence in the group-analytic setting. The management of these phenomena requires additional training specific to online psychotherapy for individuals and for groups, and there is also a need to consider regular continued education.