English-Speaking Therapist in Lisbon.

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.

The arrangement

I am a US-trained psychodynamic therapist working online and privately. No Portuguese license. No public-system involvement. No diagnosis on any record. You pay directly, in any currency. Lisbon evening sessions are easy to schedule across time zones. The schedule flexes around remote and freelance work. When what you need is prescribing, assessment, or covered care, the Portuguese system handles that. I will say so directly.

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 I see from Lisbon

Lisbon is full of people who made a geographic bet on their own happiness. The room is where they find out whether it paid. The digital nomads and remote workers. The startup crowd orbiting Web Summit. The American wave. The retirees reinventing themselves. The recurring story is the geographic cure that did not cure. You moved to the city everyone envies. The weather is genuinely better. And the anxiety made the trip with you. Around it sits the loneliness of a place where everyone leaves in three months. The freelancer's low background hum of money worry. The founder running on runway and willpower. It is paradise, reportedly. And a lot of people are quietly struggling inside it.

The numbers behind the shortage

Portugal's mental health gap is unusually well documented. The country reports one of the highest rates of mental disorders in Europe, around 23 percent. The OECD figure the Portuguese health regulator cites is that about 60 percent of people with symptoms get no care. On the supply side, health centers had about three psychologists per hundred thousand patients in 2020, two in the Lisbon region. Parliament's target is twenty.

The SNS route itself goes through your médico de família. Psychiatric care is covered, and SNS consultations no longer carry a taxa moderadora, but psychotherapy is scarce, session-limited, and waited for: months in Lisbon, longer elsewhere. The whole national picture is on my Portugal page. The SNS route, the insurance refunds and the real waits are set out in one place. See my 2026 guide to insurance, cost and waiting lists in Portugal.

Privately there is no referral requirement at all. Sessions commonly run 40 to 80 euros with Lisbon at the top of the range. The credential to check is registration with the Ordem dos Psicólogos Portugueses. Portuguese insurance pays part of the fee: a co-pay inside the insurer's network, a capped partial refund outside it, registered providers only. I work outside that structure: direct, in fluent English, with no Portuguese record and no queue between you and the first session.

A wave that outran the supply

The tax incentives that pulled a wave of remote workers, founders, and retirees into Lisbon, since narrowed, also overwhelmed the supply of English-language therapy. The Portuguese public system has its own waits, and the new anglophone population is large and growing. The wider picture is on my Portugal page.

Work with me is private and online, with no Portuguese record and no wait, which is how a lot of Lisbon's internationals actually get therapy.

Sunshine and mood in Lisbon

Maybe the weather was part of why you came. A 2008 study used online mood diaries from more than 1,200 people and matched the entries to weather records. The weather did affect how they felt, but on average only a little, and people differed in how much. A bright morning can make a day feel easier. The anxiety you brought with you can still be there by evening. That part is what therapy is for.

Questions people ask from Lisbon