5 Ways an Online Therapist Can Help You Navigate Life Changes
Last Updated on March 12, 2025 by Prath
Reviewed by April Justice, LICSW
- Published on 12 March 2025
Have you ever looked back at a major life change and wished you had the right support to handle it? Online therapists can help with just that – providing accessible and affordable mental health support through periods of change.
If you or someone you know is going through a major life change, and is struggling to navigate it alone, online therapists in Australia can offer support right from the comfort of your home.
In this article, we take a look at 5 ways that an online therapist can help you process and get through life changes.
How Online Therapists Help Navigate Change
Although change is inevitable, most human brains view it as a threat. A widely accepted reason is that change involves uncertainty and an inherent sense of loss of control.
Following are some common changes that people face that may cause distress and anxiety:
- Starting a new job
- Starting high school/university
- Moving away from home
- Going through divorce or breakups
- Facing a physical illness or disability
- Loss of a loved one
- Navigating sexual orientation and gender identity
Let’s look at 5 ways in which Therapists in Australia can help you cross the bridge of these major transitions in life.
1) Creating a Sense of Safety & Comfort
Online therapists in Australia help create a sense of safety and comfort during a period that is otherwise uncertain by building a welcoming and understanding therapeutic environment.
Online therapy also allows you to talk to a therapist from anywhere that you feel comfortable in, such as your home. You may be able to open up better when you’re at a place that is familiar, safe and secure to you.
2) Processing Emotions
When you’re facing a significant transition in life, it’s inevitable to feel a range of emotions. These can include anger, grief, sadness, anxiety and apathy.
It is important to identify, understand, accept, and regulate your emotions in a constructive and healthy manner.
Your online therapist may help you process emotions through:
- An evidence-based approach such as acceptance and commitment therapy
- A personalised therapeutic plan
- Therapeutic strategies
- Therapy homework and clinical impressions
3) Developing Coping Strategies & Self-Care Plans
Once you have identified the emotions arising from the situation, your therapist may aid you in exploring coping strategies and personalised self-care plans. These can better equip you in facing the challenges and uncertainties that come along with change.
What works for one person may not work for another, and this is where your online therapist comes in. They guide you through the process of finding the right strategies that may work for you.
Here are some coping strategies generally recommended in therapy:
- Breathing & relaxation techniques
- Guided meditation & mindfulness
- Art therapy & journalling
- Personalised therapeutic plans
4) Identifying Thought Patterns & Beliefs
While coping strategies such as relaxation and journalling can help you manage emotions for the time being, it’s important to unearth and address their root causes.
Identifying underlying thought patterns and learning to restructure them is a major part of what you and your online Therapist may work on together.
The above-mentioned process is called cognitive restructuring or reframing and is a therapeutic tool used in Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
According to Feeling Good – The New Mood Therapy, by David D. Burns, the following are ten common cognitive distortions:
a) All-or-nothing thinking
Viewing situations in extreme black and white categories.
Example: You miss reaching a job interview on time – “That’s it, I’m a total failure, I’m not getting this job.”
b) Overgeneralisation
Assuming that the same thing will happen every time because it did once.
Example: You assume you’ll never have a positive experience on a date because it didn’t go well once – “I’ll never find a girlfriend. All girls hate me.”
c) Mental filtering
Filtering out the negatives of a situation and dwelling on them, thus perceiving the entire situation as negative.
Example: You make a few mistakes on a school test – “I’m going to fail the test.”
d) Disqualifying the Positive
Discounting or turning positive experiences into the opposite.
Example: Your neighbour compliments you and you brush it off thinking, “They’re just being nice, I don’t really look that good.”
e) Jumping to conclusions
Making negative conclusions that can’t be supported by real facts.
- Mind reading: You assume that another person is reacting negatively to you. Example: You wave at a friend on the road and they don’t wave back – “Oh, he’s probably not interested in being friends with me.”
- Fortune teller error: You are convinced that the situation will play out negatively even though you have no facts to support such a conclusion. Example: You consider applying for a fellowship but decide against – “I’m never going to get it anyway, so I’d rather not apply.”
f) Magnification (catastrophising) and minimisation
Viewing the negatives of a situation through a magnified lens while viewing the positives through a minimised lens.
Example: You’re a great writer but you discredit your skills – “I guess I write well but I could be doing a much better job.”
g) Emotional reasoning
Believing that emotions reflect reality and making decisions based on them.
Example: You’re planning to explore hobbies outside your comfort zone – “I feel anxious about joining that pottery workshop, and so I must avoid it.”
h) ‘Should’ statements
Using shoulds, musts, oughts and their opposites as a means of motivation.
Example: You’re trying to improve your physical health – “I ‘should’ go to the gym 5 days a week.”
i) Labelling and mislabelling
Attaching labels to oneself instead of to the situation.
Example: You stumble a few times during a presentation at work – “I’m a loser because I messed up the presentation.”
j) Personalisation
Assuming responsibility for a negative event that is outside of one’s control.
Example: Your child scores low on a school test – “I’m a bad mother for letting this happen.”
The first goal of cognitive reframing is to simply identify, label and observe your thoughts and not to control or change them immediately.
In fact, you may find yourself thinking much more rationally once you have learnt to identify your thought patterns and view them from a distance.
Following that, your online therapist may aid you in restructuring and reframing your thoughts. This is a long-term process that your therapist will guide you through.
5) Fostering Resilience & Acceptance
The overall aim of online therapy for life changes is to help you accept the transition you’re going through and build resilience to face future changes. Over time, you may learn to view positive change as an opportunity for growth.
Through your therapeutic journey with your online therapist in Australia, you can gain the skills, strategies and support you need to navigate changes in your life.
Why Choose Online Therapy in Australia?
1) Ease of Access & Convenience
Online therapy sessions can be conducted from the comfort, safety, and security of your home.
They help avoid hassles such as travel, battling traffic and spending time in a waiting room.
You may attend an online therapy session from any room or space:
- Where you will not be disturbed for the duration of the session
- With a stable internet connection
- With any device that has internet access, a microphone and a camera – a mobile phone, tablet or a PC
Online therapy may thus be the best choice for those with mobility issues, chronic illness, or mental health issues such as agoraphobia and social anxiety disorder. It can also be ideal for people from remote areas where in-person therapy is not accessible.
2) Flexibility
Online therapy sessions offer better flexibility. They are easier to reschedule since travel doesn’t factor into the equation for both you and your therapist.
Apart from this, you can also meet your online therapist from any place with a good internet connection. Hence, you can attend a therapy session even if your plans change without notice.
3) Affordability
Online therapy is ideal for students and those looking for a more affordable means of mental health support. One main reason is that your online therapist may have fewer overhead costs (such as rent and maintenance of a space to hold physical sessions).
Additionally, you can also save the money that would be spent on travelling to and from your session.
4) Better Privacy
Online therapy offers the benefit of enhanced privacy. Unless you wish otherwise, no one except you and your therapist will know that you’re seeking therapy.
5) Continuity of Care
One of the biggest advantages of online therapy is that you are not limited by the physical constraints of location. You can still continue seeing your online therapist even if you move to a different city or country.
Online therapy thus offers long-term stability in the form of a lasting therapeutic relationship.
Conclusion
Change is scary but it’s a necessary part of life. Remember how starting a new grade once used to feel daunting? By the time you reached your final year of high school, it wasn’t as scary. Let’s take a moment to think about why this was so.
The first time you face some sort of change, say, you step into a new classroom, your brain views it as an unknown, uncertain environment. But the more you face it, the more you develop the right skills and resilience to navigate through the change.
Online therapy helps you with just that, albeit through a more structured, scientific and well-researched approach.
At TYHO, we offer flexible and affordable online therapy in Australia. Online therapy has various unique benefits and is as effective as in-person sessions.
Remember that the resources you need to navigate life changes are just a click away – explore Therapists at THYO and schedule your first online therapy session today!
