Online Individual Therapy in Lisbon.

The work

The work I do is relational and pattern-focused. I don't run through intake checklists or assign exercises between sessions. I pay attention to what happens in the room: what you're saying, what you're not saying, the moments when something shifts or goes flat or speeds up. That's the material we work with.

Most people arrive already knowing the story of their situation. They've told it to themselves a hundred times and always land in the same place. What's missing is a different angle, someone watching in real time who can name what's invisible from inside it. That's what I offer. Not interpretation from a distance, but attention in the room, offered as it happens.

I work with individuals and couples. Individual work is usually about finding the pattern underneath the presenting problem, the thing that keeps recurring in different forms across different circumstances. Couples work is about finding what the argument is really about, which is rarely what it appears to be about. Both come down to the same thing: seeing what you haven't been able to see, and from there, actually being able to do something different.

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.

What Lisbon brings to therapy

Lisbon is full of people who made a geographic bet on their own happiness, and 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 presentation 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 particular loneliness of a transient community where everyone is leaving in three months, the freelancer's low background hum of precarity, and the founder running on runway and willpower. It is paradise, reportedly, and a lot of people are quietly struggling inside it.

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 evenings pair with my US mornings, and the schedule flexes around remote and freelance work. When what you need is prescribing, assessment, or covered care, the Portuguese system handles that, and I will say so directly.

Questions people ask from Lisbon

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.