Flexibility in rules about format with online therapy.

However, we also noticed that some of the writers emphasized, directly or indirectly, another factor: the question of flexibility, which is probably one of the main factors that impacts the outcome of online therapy. Once we stop being obsessed with the question how similar online therapy is to in-person therapy (still a common error which we warned against in our previous book) and acknowledge that it is NOT the same as in-person therapy, that the setting is not controlled and structured by the therapist, that failures of communication are inevitable, that it's difficult to establish conditions of safety and a holding environment – we have to flex the usual rigid boundaries and rules of conservative psychotherapy. Perhaps this is the main threat for more traditional therapists, since immediately the question that might pop up is: “how flexible should we become?”

Weinberg, Haim; Rolnick, Arnon; Leighton, Adam. Advances in Online Therapy: Emergence of a New Paradigm (p. 39). Taylor and Francis. Kindle Edition. 

Online therapy is not the same as face to face therapy. The questions of how it is the same and how it is different become relevant. The editors of Advances In Online Therapy note in their introduction that practitioners of online therapy have to be flexible. The old ideas about “holding environments” and “boundaries” no longer seem transferable to this new format entirely. So what rules should therapists of online therapy follow and what can be flexed or disregarded?

What rules can be flexed in implementing online therapy as compared to face to face therapy?