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.
Why people in Riyadh pick online work with me
Three reasons, and in Riyadh the first one dominates. Privacy, absolutely and first: I hold no Saudi license, bill no insurer here, and write nothing into any record an employer, a clinic, or anyone else in the Kingdom can reach. Fit, second: my entire practice is people living outside their home country, so the texture of expat and compound life needs no explaining, and depth work in fluent English is the default rather than a special request. Logistics, third: I can schedule across time zones, which puts sessions exactly where a Riyadh schedule has room. If what you need is medication, an in-person assessment, or a clinician inside the Saudi system, the Kingdom has growing and genuine options through SCFHS-licensed providers, and I will say so plainly rather than hold onto a fit that is not right.
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.
The Riyadh patterns
The city runs on composure. The senior role you came for, often the reason the whole family moved. The compound that is comfortable and watchful at once. The community that keeps you steady also knows your business. The marriage that came for one career and has been quietly keeping score since. The Western professional in energy, finance, consulting, or government advisory. The week looks impressive. The evenings have gone hollow. The Saudi or third-culture client in a country rewriting its own rules in real time. For many women that has meant a role that got bigger and heavier in the same decade. None of this is pathology. It is the cost of holding a demanding life together in a place where being unguarded has consequences, and where the instinct, reinforced everywhere, is to keep it handled and keep it private.
Therapy in Riyadh: discreet by necessity, scarce in English
Mental-health care in Riyadh is changing quickly. Under Vision 2030 and the National Mental Health Programme, the Kingdom has widened services, licensed more clinicians through the Saudi Commission for Health Specialties (SCFHS), and pushed against the old silence around the subject. Telehealth is legal and established. What has not changed as fast is the experience of actually seeking help: research on care-seeking in Saudi Arabia keeps finding the same barriers in the same order, stigma first, then confidentiality, then the simple scarcity of the right clinician. For an English-speaking professional or an expat on a Riyadh package, the practical version is narrow: a short list of in-person clinics, most working in Arabic, most inside a system where you are never quite sure who else can see the file. Private depth work in English, with a therapist who keeps no local record, is a small category here, and it is usually exactly what people are looking for.
Questions people ask from Riyadh
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
The full reading list is on the approach page.