Therapy for the life between two countries.

From the inside

You won’t have to explain the basics

I have lived, studied and worked in Russia, Portugal and the United States. I know what it is to rebuild a career, a social circle and a sense of self in a new language, more than once.

That doesn’t make your story the same as mine. It means you can skip the footnotes: why a visa appointment can ruin a month, why a phone call home can leave you feeling further away, why “where are you from?” is a complicated question.

What we can work on

Common ground for people between cultures

• Homesickness and grief for people, places, and the person you were there
• Identity: who you are when your accent, your degree and your humor don’t translate
• Loneliness, and starting over socially as an adult
• Guilt about family far away, and pressure to prove the move was worth it
• Intercultural relationships and parenting between cultures
• Stress around work, status and uncertainty about the future
• Feeling like a slightly different person in each language

Related reading: homesick for a place that no longer exists.

Language

Why the language of therapy matters

Emotion lives differently in a first language. Many multilingual people describe feeling more guarded in one language and more childlike in another. You can run a meeting flawlessly in English and still have no words in it for your grandmother’s kitchen.

As a linguist and former interpreter, I treat language as part of the work. In our sessions you can use English, Russian, or both, and we can notice together what changes when you switch.

Who comes

Individuals, couples and families

Life between cultures touches every relationship. I see individuals working through the move itself, couples where partners come from different countries or adapted at different speeds, and families where parents and children are growing up in different worlds under one roof.

Questions

FAQ for immigrants and expats