(6 minutes read)
Sometimes we know something needs to change long before we know what that change is.
There are times when life feels like standing beside water and knowing that something is moving underneath the surface — even when we cannot yet see clearly what it is.
You may find yourself repeating patterns you understand intellectually but cannot seem to leave behind.
You may be facing loss, anxiety, loneliness, relationship difficulties or a major life transition.
Or perhaps life looks reasonably fine from the outside, while something inside you quietly knows:
This isn’t quite how I want to live.
Counselling offers a place to stop for a while.
To come closer to what is there.
Not necessarily to find immediate answers, but to become curious about what may be moving beneath the surface — and to listen to yourself differently.
Beneath the surface: What if the things we struggle with are not simply the problem?
When we look at a body of water, we see its surface first.
Something similar happens when we look at ourselves.
We notice the anxiety. The anger. The inner critic. The need to control. The part that withdraws. The part that keeps choosing the same kind of relationship.
These are the things that become visible.
And understandably, we often want them to stop.
But like the visible tip of an iceberg, what we experience at the surface may be only one small part of a much larger story.
So rather than asking only: How do I get rid of this? we can begin to ask: What is underneath it?
What might this be protecting? What happened that made this response necessary?
And: What might become possible if it no longer had to work quite so hard? Much of my work is informed by this understanding. Rather than fighting what is difficult, we approach it with curiosity.
Deeper water
Our protections are not all that we carry.
Going beneath the surface does not mean searching endlessly for what is wrong with us.
Quite the opposite.
Because underneath the strategies we developed to protect ourselves, there is often an extraordinary amount of life.
Tenderness.
Curiosity.
Creativity.
Courage.
Longing.
Playfulness.
The capacity to connect.
The capacity to love.
And sometimes, beneath all the noise, there is also a quieter sense of what matters — and of the direction in which something in us wants to move.
The work is therefore not about becoming somebody else.
It is often much more about coming back into relationship with who is already there.
Learning to be with water
The quiet transformation
We often approach difficult emotions as though healing meant making them disappear.
To no longer feel afraid. To no longer become angry. To stop grieving. To finally be calm.
But a living emotional world is not always still.
Water moves. There are currents, waves, periods of extraordinary calm and moments when the weather changes everything.
The aim of counselling is not to turn our inner world into a perfectly still lake.
It is to develop a different relationship with what moves through us.
To discover that we can experience fear without becoming only fear. That sadness can be allowed to move. That anger can carry information.
That we can remain in relationship with ourselves even when the waters become difficult.
And gradually, there may be more space. Space between ourselves and our fear. Between ourselves and the stories we have learned to believe. Between ourselves and the strategies that once helped us survive but may now be constraining our lives.
The body remembers
Not everything we carry can be reached through thinking.
Our histories also live in our nervous systems, our bodies, our impulses, our ways of approaching or withdrawing from relationship.
Sometimes the body knows that something is happening before the thinking mind has words for it.
For this reason, our work may include noticing sensations, impulses and emotional responses as they arise — learning to stay close enough to experience to hear what it may be communicating, without becoming overwhelmed by it.
There is no prescribed way a session has to unfold.
We begin with what is there.
Following the current
There are moments in life when an old way of living no longer seems possible, but the new one has not yet become clear.
A river offers a different image of change. It does not travel in a straight line.
It encounters stone, drought, fallen branches, steep ground and unexpected openings. Sometimes it moves quickly. Sometimes it seems almost still. Sometimes its old course is no longer possible and another way has to emerge.
Perhaps something similar happens in us.
Counselling does not have to be about deciding immediately where you should go.
Sometimes it is about becoming quiet enough to notice:
Where is there movement?
What feels alive?
What matters now?
What might my life be asking of me?
There can be a kind of knowing that arrives before we can fully explain it. Learning to listen to that quieter movement can become part of finding our way.
Psychology — and something more
I have a psychological background, and my work is informed by approaches including parts and shadow work, inner-child work, trauma-informed practice and nature-based approaches.
But I also understand the human being as more than a collection of psychological processes.
There is a dimension of our experience that can be difficult to put into clinical language.
Our sense of meaning.
Our relationship with life.
The moments in which we feel deeply connected — to another person, to nature, to ourselves, or to something larger than ourselves.
You might call this spirituality.
You might use an entirely different word.
You don’t need to hold any particular belief.
For me, what matters is that there is room for this dimension of human experience when it matters to you.
Nature as relationship
Nature is not only somewhere we can go to feel better.
It can also show us something about how we live inside ourselves.
A river changes course without having failed.
A tree carries the marks of what it has survived.
A landscape contains growth and decay at the same time.
Nothing in a living ecosystem remains permanently still.
Nature can remind us that we, too, belong to life — rather than standing outside it trying to control it.
For some people, this relationship with the natural world becomes an important part of the therapeutic process.
For others, it doesn’t.
There is no requirement to be particularly “outdoorsy” or spiritual.
Sometimes sitting beneath a tree changes nothing.
Sometimes it changes the conversation completely.
What might bring you here?
Individual counselling may be helpful if you are experiencing:
🌊 a life transition or period of uncertainty
🌊 grief, loss or separation
🌊 anxiety or persistent inner unrest
🌊 low mood or a loss of vitality
🌊 recurring relationship patterns
🌊 difficulty with boundaries
🌊 a strong inner critic or feelings of inadequacy
🌊 experiences from the past that continue to shape the present
🌊 a sense of disconnection from yourself
🌊 questions of meaning, belonging or direction
🌊 the feeling that something in your life is asking to change
You do not need to arrive with a diagnosis.
We can begin with your experience.
Living between cultures
For more than twenty years, I have lived outside my country of origin and raised my family within another cultural and linguistic context.
I know from my own experience that living abroad can be enormously enriching — and that it can also touch surprisingly deep questions of identity and belonging.
Where is home?
Who am I when the familiar reference points disappear?
How much do I adapt — and what of myself do I want to preserve?
Sometimes these questions become particularly present during periods of transition, loneliness, relationship difficulties or when the life we have built abroad no longer feels quite as it once did.
I offer counselling and therapeutic support in English, German and Spanish, with a particular understanding of the experience of living between cultures.
Where we can meet
In Berlin
I offer in-person therapeutic sessions at Heilpraxis Mommsenstraße in Berlin-Charlottenburg, within the scope of my work as a Heilpraktikerin für Psychotherapie. I am usually in Berlin during the first week of each month.
€90 / 60-minute in-person session
If you are looking for counselling rather than psychotherapy, we can also use my time in Berlin simply to meet: I offer a free initial conversation in person in Charlottenburg, after which our counselling sessions can continue online.
Online
I work online with people in Berlin and internationally, offering counselling in English, German and Spanish.
Online work can offer continuity wherever you are — particularly if you travel, live between places, or simply prefer the flexibility of meeting from your own space.
Fees depend on the format and nature of our work and will always be agreed transparently before we begin.
Before deciding whether you would like to work with me, we can have a free 20–30 minute introductory conversation.
How we begiN
It gives you an opportunity to tell me briefly what brings you here, ask questions, and get a sense of whether working together feels right. If we decide to continue, we can then discuss the form and frequency of our sessions.
A place to begin listening
I don’t believe that another person can tell us what our life should look like.
But I do believe that when we are met with enough curiosity, safety and attention, we can begin to hear ourselves differently.
Sometimes what first appeared to be an obstacle turns out to have been protecting something precious.
And sometimes healing is not about becoming who we were before. It is about bringing what has become separated, protected or fragmented back into relationship.
The Japanese art of kintsugi offers a beautiful image for this: what has been broken is brought together again without hiding the places where it fractured. The traces remain — and become part of its beauty.
Perhaps something similar can happen within us.
When what has become separated can belong together again, the currents underneath are allowed to flow.
And perhaps the current itself — that movement of tenderness, aliveness, creativity, love and connection — is some of the beauty we thought we had lost.
Not lost, perhaps. Only waiting to flow again.
I