English-speaking therapist in ThessalonikiOnline, at your own pace.

Many people who contact us from Thessaloniki describe a life that looks good from the outside but feels harder from the inside. A few patterns come up often.

Study, research and academic pressure. Postgraduate students, doctoral researchers and visiting academics often work long, unstructured hours with uncertain funding and a constant sense of being evaluated. Perfectionism, procrastination, anxiety and low self-esteem can grow quietly in that environment, especially when you are far from the people who knew you before.

Building a social life from scratch. Thessaloniki is friendly, but long-standing friendships here often go back to school and family, and newcomers can find it slow to move from pleasant acquaintance to real closeness. Feeling on the edge of things for months is common, and it is one of the reasons we wrote our page on therapy for expats.

Winter and routine. The city's winters are colder and damper than many visitors expect, and when the busy summer gives way to short days and a quieter social calendar, energy and mood can dip. If that dip deepens and lasts, our page on depression explains what to look out for.

Relationships across borders. Couples where one partner is from Thessaloniki and the other is not often navigate different expectations about family, independence and how conflict is handled, and that can be enriching as well as tiring. You can come on your own for relationship counselling or together for couples therapy.

Sessions are held on Google Meet, last 45 minutes and are usually weekly at first. In the first session your therapist asks what has brought you to therapy, about your background and about what you would like to change, and you agree on an initial plan together. Our therapists work in an integrative, evidence-informed way, adapting established approaches to the person and using cognitive-behavioural techniques where they are helpful. Because the connection between client and therapist is one of the most consistent predictors of a good outcome (Flückiger et al., 2018), we encourage you to tell us early if something is not working for you.

Where someone also needs medical input, such as an assessment for medication, we work alongside doctors and psychiatrists with the client's agreement.

Many people in Thessaloniki, particularly students and early-career researchers, live in shared flats where walls are thin and privacy is scarce, and that can make an online session feel daunting. A few simple arrangements usually solve it. Headphones mean that only you can hear your therapist, and a white-noise app or a fan running outside your door masks your own voice. Some people agree a regular "do not disturb" hour with flatmates, while others take the session from a parked car, a booked study room or a quiet corner of a friend's flat. Your therapist will understand if the setting is not perfect; what matters is that you feel free to speak.