In an age where one’s apartment doubles as an office, therapy patients throughout the city have similarly brought treatment into the home via virtual counseling.
“I’ve been living in my tiny apartment and it’s just pure chaos,” she says. “So I sort of have to try to block out everything that’s happening. And I see my clothes on the floor, I see pictures of friends on the wall, and these are things I have to really try to block out and focus on what I’m feeling . . . but definitely for me, it’s [a] distraction. And I have two cats and I love them, but they’re idiots and they meow and they fight.”
In addition to formal counseling, patients throughout the city have prioritized different methods of self-care to combat the stress of an ever-turbulent time. Kat Sullivan of Wicker Park has utilized cooking and exercise as a means of unplugging from constant Zoom meetings.
“I also think that it’s good that we kind of pushed a lot of counselors into the modern age,” Loukas says. “Because I think so often counselors are kind of wired so rigid in some of their beliefs about the way we have to provide services. And I think being adaptive about it is really important and incredibly useful to our clients.” v
