For Better or Worse? How has Zoom Changed our Lives?

All change is stressful – whether you adapt quickly or not – and recent times have seen huge change across work life, home life, even friends and family interactions.

“I’ve been stuck in Zoom Meetings all day – I’m exhausted” – we’ve all heard it from friends and colleagues and many of us have learned it for ourselves. Let’s just unpick that for a minute!

We are social people; chatting to checkout staff and passing the time of day with strangers are surprisingly important parts of normal life. They don’t translate into on-line shopping, and interacting with AI-Bot’s suggestions as to what else you might be interested in buying will never be the same as inspecting the strawberries in your hands and comparing them to the raspberries on the next shelf.

Moving to on-line business meetings can be a really steep learning curve.

That’s stressful in itself! Everything happens to a strict time schedule, only one person can talk at any time, Often, especially if you are working from home, there are background noises and distractions. There is a whole new etiquette to learn – and apparently a lot less flexibility. We are forced to listen, participants need to think before they speak, we can’t get away with bluster anymore!

Come to think about it that can’t be all bad!

Zoom is tiring because we are all having to think harder, Zoom business meetings probably need to be shorter than face to face ones, or phased slightly differently, as I do with on-line hypnotherapy. I’ve been using on-line consultation using Skype but now Zoom because it’s more flexible; I can now invite and usually get both parents of the child I’m helping to my end of session “round up” even when they are at different remote locations.

There are some quite specific benefits for my clients

Often anxious clients find that they are more relaxed in their familiar surroundings, they don’t have to allow for traffic on their way to an appointment, they are talking to a camera and can manage their eye contact more simply, paradoxically I can actually “get much closer in” to observe facial expressions and body language than I could without invading a client’s personal space. On-line is also a safer, more confidential space with less chance of discovery for clients in abusive relationships. Some get in their cars and drive to a quiet spot and use their phone or tablet.

Please give me a call if you think I can help.

I’m offering On-line Consultation as a First Choice and Face to Face as this gets safer for all concerned. Face to Face consultations are less tiring and offer greater flexibility, but I have a solid block of evidence from the last few years to show that On-Line consultations are highly effective and the more I do the better my own on-line practice becomes. Initial consultations are free as is a quick set-up check to sort your technology - that's the first step in de-stressing online!

About the author

Annie Winfield-Shearer

Cognitive Hypnotherapist, Registered Nurse and Coach