Some common forms of communication between counselor and client include: telephone, face-to-face, letter, e-mail, text message, Facebook/social media message, automated reply, and so on. Text may be effective to communicate a simple message such as an appointment reminder, but it's not effective, nor is it ethical, to try and practice counseling via text. Email is also not an effective tool for anything other than crisis counseling. Telephone can work well for de-escalation or crisis management, but wouldn't be as effective as face-to-face for anything outside of here-and-now crisis control. Really face-to-face contact is ideal in practicing counseling if at all possible.