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.
Therapy in Luxembourg is private-pay already
Most of Europe makes you weigh coverage against speed. Luxembourg mostly does not. The CNS reimburses psychiatric treatment by approved doctors, but independent psychologists and psychotherapists generally sit outside reimbursement, so private therapy here is the default rather than the exception. Many residents already use private insurance for it. That means working privately with me changes nothing about your reimbursement. It removes the wait and the language search and nothing else.
And the wait is real. The English-speaking population is enormous relative to the small pool of therapists who can do depth work in English, and the booking platforms routinely show practitioners listing no current capacity. Online widens the pool to anyone, immediately.
What Luxembourg brings to therapy
Luxembourg is the richest country per head on earth and one of the most rootless. Roughly half the residents are foreign. The institutions, the Court of Justice, the EIB, the ESM, the Parliament secretariat, the translators, run on professionals posted here for a term. The fund-administration and private-banking machine on Kirchberg runs on people who arrived for the salary, stayed for the school fees, and somewhere in there stopped recognizing the life. English is the working language of finance, which makes the isolation quieter and harder to name: you function perfectly, in a country whose actual social life happens in Luxembourgish and closes early, and you commute home across a border to Arlon or Thionville or Trier. The recurring presentation is not crisis. It is a life that is objectively excellent and privately flat, and a person who can no longer tell whether the flatness is the country or themselves.
The arrangement
I am a US-trained psychodynamic therapist working online and privately: no Luxembourg licensing question for off-system online work, no CNS billing, no diagnosis on any record, and nothing that touches an institution's medical service or your employer. You pay directly, in any currency. Luxembourg evenings pair with my US mornings. When what you need is prescribing, assessment, or covered care, Luxembourg's system handles that, and I will say so directly.
Questions people ask from Luxembourg
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.
Selected research on this approach
My work is psychodynamic and depth-oriented. These are some of the studies on the effectiveness of that kind of therapy. They describe research on the method in general, and are not claims about any individual outcome.
- Shedler, J. (2010). The efficacy of psychodynamic psychotherapy. American Psychologist, 65(2), 98-109. doi:10.1037/a0018378
- Steinert, C., Munder, T., Rabung, S., Hoyer, J., & Leichsenring, F. (2017). Psychodynamic therapy: as efficacious as other empirically supported treatments? A meta-analysis testing equivalence of outcomes. American Journal of Psychiatry, 174(10), 943-953. PMID 28541091
- Leichsenring, F., Abbass, A., Heim, N., Keefe, J. R., Kisely, S., Luyten, P., Rabung, S., & Steinert, C. (2023). The status of psychodynamic psychotherapy as an empirically supported treatment for common mental disorders: an umbrella review based on updated criteria. World Psychiatry, 22(2), 286-304. PMC10168167