English-Speaking Therapist in Abu Dhabi.

The work

The work I do is relational and focused on pattern. I don't run intake checklists. I don't assign homework. I pay attention to what happens in the session. The moments when something shifts or goes flat. The pattern that keeps showing up underneath the problem. Most people already know their own story. They still keep landing in the same place. What's missing is someone watching in real time, someone who can name what you cannot see from inside it. More on how I work, and how I work with couples.

Working with me from Abu Dhabi

I am a US-trained psychodynamic therapist, online and private. No UAE license, no UAE insurance, no presence in the circles you live in: for most of my Abu Dhabi clients, that absence is the qualifying credential. Evening sessions are easy to schedule across time zones. The work is depth work: the patterns underneath the restlessness, the marriage strain, the flatness that arrived around year three of a comfortable posting. If your situation calls for prescribing or local in-person care, the capital has it, and saying so is what the free call is for.

What people bring to online therapy

The people I work with in English come for a wide range of reasons: anxiety, depression, stress and burnout, anger management, grief and loss, relationship difficulties, loneliness, self-esteem issues, procrastination, sleep problems, attachment patterns, self-sabotage, perfectionism, identity questions, and existential concerns. Online counseling makes this work possible from wherever you are, whether you need an English-speaking therapist, a virtual counselor, or simply someone who can work in your language at a depth that matters.

How it works

Sessions are online via secure video call. I work with individuals and couples (60 minutes). Before your first session, we have a free 15-minute call to see if this feels like the right fit for you.

What the capital does to people

Abu Dhabi attracts a different expat than Dubai does. The ADNOC engineer. The sovereign-fund analyst. The university faculty on Saadiyat. The Etihad family out in Al Raha. The embassy staff in town for a fixed tour. The city is calmer, the contracts longer, the social world smaller. That smallness cuts both ways. People describe a life of pleasant loops: the same compound gym, the same brunch crowd, the same conversations with the same forty people, while the actual texture of their inner life goes undiscussed for years because everyone they know is also someone they will see at the school gate on Monday. Government-town discretion sits on top of ordinary Gulf privacy worries, and the result is a population that wants therapy and wants it nowhere near their world.

The Abu Dhabi therapy picture

Abu Dhabi's mental health scene is smaller and steadier than Dubai's, and regulated separately: practitioners here answer to the Department of Health Abu Dhabi, whose mandatory tariff framework shapes pricing across facility tiers. In practice a therapy session in the capital typically costs around AED 700, with a spread from roughly AED 450 to 1,300 depending on the clinic's tier. There are competent psychologists and psychiatry departments here, several attached to the big hospital groups, but the pool of clinicians doing open-ended depth work in English is thin, and a noticeable number of Abu Dhabi residents either drive up Sheikh Zayed Road for their appointments or quietly move the whole thing online. The UAE system as a whole, insurance mechanics included, is laid out on my UAE page.

Questions people ask from Abu Dhabi