English-speaking therapy in the UAE is available but the quality varies considerably. The pool of options for depth-oriented work, past symptom management and short-term structured approaches, is small. Many people here also specifically want a therapist outside their local professional and social world: someone they won't encounter in a professional or social setting.
I work with anyone who needs support in English and is living in the UAE. Relationship strain, identity questions, a sense that something is off in a life that looks entirely successful. The particular difficulty of excellent material conditions alongside something hollow underneath.
You're allowed to put it down somewhere. That's what the session is for.
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.
Being in the UAE
The UAE has a particular psychological texture. The comfort is real. So is the transience, a city of people who are here for a season, which creates a social world that's warm and provisional at the same time. There's the question of whether this is real life or something adjacent to it: the project that keeps getting extended, the plans that keep getting deferred.
For couples, the UAE exerts specific pressures: the work hours, the separation of social worlds by company and community, one person with an established professional life and one without, the way material comfort can paper over relational drift until it can't anymore. That asymmetry is worth looking at honestly.
If any of that is part of what brings you, we can work with it directly. If what you're dealing with has nothing to do with being here, that's fine.
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 brief 15-minute call to see if this feels like the right fit for you.