English Speaking Therapist | Forward Therapy Stockholm

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Religious Abuse in Sweden: Recovering from Religion in a New Country
Religious abuse is the lasting psychological damage caused by growing up inside, or being drawn into, a controlling religious environment, cult, or high-demand doctrine. It can involve deep shame and guilt, despair, self-doubt, confusion over sexuality, and a fear of ever questioning what you were taught. For many people who relocate to Sweden, the experience of settling into a new country is exactly when this trauma resurfaces. This article looks at why moving abroad so often triggers old religious abuse wounds, what deconversion and recovering from religion can look like once you arrive, and how secular, evidence-based support can help.

Why Religious Abuse Resurfaces After a Move

Relocating asks you to rebuild almost everything at once: your home, your routine, your friendships, and often your sense of who you are. That process of rebuilding tends to strip away the noise that once kept old memories at bay. If you left a restrictive church, a family shaped by doctrine, or a group that asked more of you than it ever gave back, arriving somewhere new is frequently the point at which those experiences finally ask to be reconciled. Sweden did not cause this. It simply removed enough of the familiar scaffolding that what was underneath became visible.

Sweden’s Secular Paradox: Nature, Church, and the Space to Deconvert

Sweden is consistently ranked among the most secular nations in the world. Church attendance is low, and religious belief rarely comes up in daily conversation. Yet the Church of Sweden remains stitched into the culture in ways that surprise many newcomers. Plenty of Swedes who would never describe themselves as religious still marry beneath its ceilings, if they marry at all, and festivals like Midsummer and Lucia carry a churchly shape even where the belief behind them has largely gone. This is the paradox worth understanding: a high cultural footprint paired with low religious authority.

Some people here will tell you, half-serious, that the real religion of the Swedes is nature: the forest, the archipelago, the long light of a northern summer, treated with something close to reverence. For someone working through the effects of religious conditioning, this landscape can be clarifying. It offers meaning without obedience and belonging without conformity. For anyone who has gone through a deconversion, or who was indoctrinated into a religion or cult in their country of birth, that combination can be the start of something genuinely new.

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Recognising Religious Abuse: Signs You Might Not Have Named Yet

Religious abuse rarely announces itself directly. More often it shows up as a cluster of familiar, exhausting patterns that can be hard to trace back to their source. Common signs include:
- Struggling with stress at work, even if the work is not challenging
- Deep shame and guilt that persist even when you no longer hold the beliefs that created them
- Despair or hopelessness, particularly around questions of identity, purpose, or belonging
- Self-doubt and confusion about what you actually believe or want, separate from what you were taught
- People-pleasing and fawning, an automatic instinct to defer to others or avoid conflict at any cost
- Isolation, especially from an emotionally unavailable partner, family or former community members who remain inside the belief system
- A loss of identity, or the sense that you never had the chance to find out who you are outside the doctrine
- A fear of questioning authority, or of even privately doubting ideas you once accepted without challenge
- Confusion over sexuality, particularly where a religious upbringing framed desire, gender, or intimacy in narrow or shaming terms
Recognising these patterns as the legacy of spiritual abuse, rather than a personal failing, is often the first real step toward recovery.

Spiritual Abuse and Its Long Reach

Spiritual abuse describes the use of religious belief, authority or community to control, frighten or manipulate someone, often in ways that look ordinary from the outside. It can involve isolation from the wider world, strict rules around appearance, relationships or sexuality, and a culture that punishes doubt as though it were sin. Because it is dressed in the language of care and salvation, spiritual abuse can be difficult to name even years after leaving the community that caused it. Many people only recognise it in hindsight, once distance (geographic or otherwise) has given them room to see the pattern clearly.

Sometimes it appears in the resonance of an abusive partner, or controlling boss. Making the connection between religious abuse and what is going on now in your life can be crucial for moving forward.

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Recovering from Religious Abuse with Evidence-Based Support

Working with a secular therapist means the conversation is never steered toward faith, prayer or conversion of any kind. Instead, it is grounded in evidence, curiosity and respect for your own account of your life.

Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is one of the more established approaches for recovering from religious trauma. It gives shape to the automatic thoughts that religious conditioning often leaves behind: the sense of being watched, the belief that certain feelings are shameful, the conviction that rest must be earned. CBT does not argue with your history. It helps you notice which of your present-day thoughts are genuinely yours, and which were handed to you a long time ago by someone else.

Narrative therapy sits alongside this well, particularly for anyone rebuilding an identity in a new country. It treats your life as a story you are entitled to deconstruct and retell, rather than a verdict handed down by an institution. This is especially useful around sexuality, where a religious upbringing often leaves people with a script written by someone else, one with little room for nuance and even less for difference. Reclaiming that story in your own words is frequently where the real relief begins.

Neurodiverse people sometimes find that religious environments were particularly ill-suited to how their minds work: rigid expectations, unspoken social rules, and little patience for a different way of processing the world. A well-being focussed, secular approach to counselling can make space for that difference instead of pathologising it.

Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö: Where to Begin

Whether you have settled in Stockholm, made a home in Gothenburg, or landed in Malmö within easy reach of the bridge to Denmark, rebuilding a life abroad tends to raise the same underlying questions. Who am I now that my former life is gone? What do I keep from where I came from, and what am I finally free to put down?

Online therapy makes this kind of reflective work easier to access, wherever you have landed. A session over MS Teams or Zoom fits around a new job, a partner adjusting to their own version of the move, or a schedule still finding its rhythm, without requiring travel across a city that may still feel unfamiliar. And if you are having difficulties with a partner who refuses to go to couples counselling, don’t worry: start with the seeing a therapist about the relationship you have with yourself. That will help you to find your strength again.

A Different Kind of Conversation

If any of this resonates, coaching, counselling and well-being support built around narrative therapy and evidence-based methods like CBT can offer real traction: not answers handed down in isolation with a ChatGPT bot, but a process of working things out for yourself, at your own pace, with someone who understands this territory.

Some clients prefer speaking with a male therapist, particularly when working through experiences shaped by religious authority where they did not have the choice. Others simply find it easier, in a new country, to talk with someone who understands the disorientation of being an outsider looking in. As an Australian-British man who has made his own share of moves across borders and cultures, I’m familiar with the challenges and frustrations of relocation and re-establishment. If that sounds like the kind of conversation you have been looking for, you are welcome to get in touch.
September 14, 2026
ChatGPT Isolation: Escaping the Trap of the Fake Therapist
In today’s hyperconnected world, working remotely or for yourself might seem like the pinnacle of freedom. You imagine autonomy, flexibility, and the luxury of working from anywhere. But when you’re an expat living in Sweden or another non-English speaking country, and your closest coworker is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) chatbot, the risks of isolation can go far deeper than most people realise. ChatGPT Isolation describes what can begin as a practical convenience but slowly becomes a trap of emotional reliance and disconnection from real human support.

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The Rise of ChatGPT Isolation and AI Companionship

For many freelancers, remote workers, and digital nomads, tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and other generative AI systems have become a silent coworker offering feedback, summaries, or just the comfort of a reply. In moments of professional uncertainty or relationship loneliness, it can feel soothing to type out a worry and get a reassuring message back.

Generative AI is a powerful tool for productivity. But there is a growing body of evidence that this interaction, while seemingly helpful, comes with psychological risks:
- MIT Media Lab researchers warn of “metacognitive laziness,” where users become less likely to think critically after prolonged AI reliance.
- ABC News Australia and The Times UK suggest AI may be eroding writing skills, attention spans, and working memory.
- A Wall Street Journal article and follow up in Futurism and VICE describe the case of Jacob Irwin, who developed psychosis after becoming convinced that ChatGPT was a conscious being. Irwin, who had a history of autism spectrum traits and possibly ADHD, began to experience delusions, hallucinations, and an altered sense of reality that led to hospitalisation.
As someone who works therapeutically with clients around the world, I’ve heard similar stories: individuals relying on AI tools as companions, using them to process emotions, or confiding in them as if they were therapists. These tools, no matter how articulate or responsive, cannot provide the co-regulation, reality-checking, or emotional nuance that a human can.

Generative AI is a fake therapist.

It’s important to acknowledge that for some neurodivergent individuals AI chatbots can feel like a safe and predictable interaction. People with autism, Aspergers, ADHD, or AuDHD in particular find ChatGPT helpful and supportive. These AI bots don’t require complex social navigation and can provide a sense of stability. For some, this is a lifeline. But it’s also a space that requires careful boundaries. AI can offer support, but it cannot replace real relational connection.

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The Dangerous Allure of a Digital Listener

What makes AI feel so comforting in these situations?
- It replies instantly
- It never judges
- It seems knowledgeable
- It mimics empathy
But here’s the catch: it’s not listening. It doesn’t really know you, can’t challenge your distortions, and may reinforce your assumptions. ChatGPT Isolation means more than just social disconnection. It can hallucinate facts, offer incorrect advice, or perpetuate harmful ideas. And in the absence of real human interaction, it can deepen feelings of disconnection.

When you’re already working remotely, especially across time zones, in a foreign culture, or without regular social contact, AI can begin to fill the void. But it doesn’t actually close the gap.

ChatGPT Isolation in Sweden: The Hidden Struggles

Remote work in Sweden comes with its own particular set of challenges. Imagine living in a compact city apartment designed for warmth and cost-efficiency, but with little room to psychologically separate your work from your private life. Now add a Swedish winter: long, dark, and often silent. The stillness that initially feels peaceful can, over time, become isolating.

Many expats arrive in Sweden to be with a partner, pursue a degree, or chase a change in lifestyle. They continue working remotely for organisations based in London, New York, Berlin, or Sydney, sometimes across vastly different time zones. This means late-night meetings, irregular sleep, and missing out on everyday social rhythms of local life. They may feel cut off from both their adopted home and their colleagues abroad.

Language and cultural barriers only add to the sense of distance. Casual socialising can be difficult. Colleagues and acquaintances may seem polite but reserved. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, stress begins to build. You start sleeping poorly. You feel unnoticed. Your sense of purpose gets hazy. And in the quiet hours, you might begin to confide more in a chatbot than a real person.

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The Illusion of Freedom

From the outside, remote work and self-employment seem liberating in comparison to the stress of a Swedish workplace. But many find there’s no “off switch”. Your living space becomes your workplace. You’re your own harshest boss. And relationships strain under the weight of unspoken needs.

Even in urban hubs like Stockholm, Malmö, and Gothenburg, you can go weeks without a real conversation beyond a Slack message or chatbot reply. And if you’re living in towns like Umeå, Kiruna, Borås, Örebro, Lund or other places known more for their calm than their community, those feelings can grow even more intense.

If you’re struggling emotionally, it can be hard to know where to turn. Many English-speaking expats don’t feel comfortable navigating the Swedish healthcare system, or find it difficult to get timely appointments with a GP or therapist. In summer, much of the country slows down entirely. You might find yourself feeling lost just when you need support the most.

Real Human Help Beats ChatGPT Isolation

As an English-speaking therapist and coach who works online across Sweden and internationally, I help remote workers and expats:
- Talk through isolation and its ripple effects
- Make sense of the “AI companionship” trend and how to relate to ChatGPT Isolation more mindfully
- Navigate relationships that are affected by long-distance dynamics or different cultural contexts
- Deal with emotionally distant partners including gaslighting and coercive control
- Build routines that affirm identity, rhythm, and purpose
- Reconnect with what’s real and sustaining in life
I offer after-hours counselling and coaching in English from the convenience of your own home or office.

Let’s Take the First Step Towards Ending ChatGPT Isolation

If you’re feeling emotionally over-reliant on AI, disconnected from those around you, or unsure how to build a more grounded life in Sweden or wherever you’re living. Don’t wait until you crash.

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You deserve better than silence, burnout, or artificial empathy.

Reach out now to book a session. I offer regular check-ins, supportive therapy, and collaborative strategy work to help you reconnect with yourself and others.

You don’t have to do this alone. Let’s talk.
July 24, 2025
Working in Sweden: How Expats Handle Work Stress and Feel Seen

Feel invisible working in Sweden? You’re not alone. Here’s how to stay grounded, navigate cultural norms, and reconnect with your sense of self.

You’ve landed your job, sorted your personnummer, and even mastered the subtle art of queueing in Swedish supermarkets. But at work? Things feel… off. You’re doing your job well — but somehow, they don’t see you. Not invited to fika chats. Not included in the easy banter. And when you speak up, your ideas seem to fall flat or get brushed aside.

For many expats and foreign-born professionals in Sweden, the workplace can feel like a polite but impenetrable fog. This isn’t just about language — it’s about invisible norms, indirect feedback, unspoken expectations, and a cultural preference for low-key everything. If you’ve ever felt like you’re technically included but not really belonging, you’re not alone.

Let’s unpack why this happens. Let’s consider what you can do to stay grounded, connected, and confident while working in Sweden in a system that might not see you as clearly as you’d like.

1. A Culture of Consensus — and What It Doesn’t Say

Swedish workplaces are known for their “flat hierarchies,” where the boss is more of a facilitator than a dictator, and decisions are made through group consensus. On paper, this sounds wonderfully egalitarian — but in practice, it can leave newcomers confused and out of sync.

You’re unlikely to be given direct instructions or open praise while working in Sweden. This is not manipulation or coercive control. Feedback tends to be indirect, sometimes cloaked in silence. In meetings, people pause a lot. They speak softly. They leave long gaps. And if you come from a more direct or expressive work culture, you might read this as passive, dismissive, or even cold.

The result? You might start second-guessing yourself — “Did I say too much?” “Was I too assertive?” “Did I just overstep?”

This isn’t about doing it wrong — it’s about operating within an unfamiliar social grammar.

Try this: Instead of trying to match Swedish indirectness, aim for respectful clarity. Express your ideas with warmth and openness, and then invite feedback gently. For example: “I have an idea I’d love your thoughts on…”

2. When You Feel Like You’re Not Really There

You might be showing up to work every day — contributing, collaborating, keeping pace — and still feel oddly invisible. It’s a kind of quiet exclusion, not always intentional, but real enough. You’re not being mistreated, but you’re also not quite part of the fabric.

According to a BBC report, burnout and work stress in Sweden is on the rise. For many navigating expat work stress in Sweden, this sense of being on the outside looking in can build slowly. It’s not about one big moment, but a series of small silences. When they speak over you. When they don’t respond to your suggestions. When you realise you haven’t had a proper chat with anyone in days.

Swedish work culture prizes independence and understatement. That means Swedes often save social energy for outside work hours, and even then, relationships take time. So if you’re feeling left out, know this: it’s not your fault — and you’re not alone.

Try this: Don’t interpret distance as disapproval. Instead of withdrawing, consider gently naming what you’re noticing with someone you trust: “I’ve been trying to get to know people, but it’s been tricky. How do you usually build relationships here?”

This is where therapy or coaching can help — not by fixing you, but by giving you a space to hear yourself think. As a counsellor, I often assist people feeling adrift while working in Sweden. Rumination, or overthinking, can actually create more stress. Whether you’re based in Stockholm or working remotely from elsewhere in Europe, having a sounding board — someone who listens with empathy and helps you make sense of what’s happening — can be a lifeline.

3. The Social Side of Working in Sweden — And Why Fika Isn’t Just Coffee

On the surface, fika is a coffee break — maybe with a cinnamon bun, maybe with some small talk. But beneath that, it’s a social ritual. It’s where Swedes build trust, bond, and — let’s be honest — some of the real decision-making happens.

But for newcomers, fika can be confusing. You’re not always sure they are inviting you. You might feel like you’re intruding. You might sit down, then realise no one really talks to you.

Understanding cultural differences in relationships is important. In a culture where emotional energy is often subtle, fika is paradoxically both low-pressure and high-stakes. It can be where you start to feel connected — or more left out than ever.

Try this: Shift your goal from belonging to simply showing up. You don’t have to perform, just be present. Ask a question. Share something small. Familiarity, not flashiness, builds connection over time.

In cities like Uppsala or Malmö, where international workers are common but social structures remain tight, these small acts of consistency help you ease into connection, on your own terms.

4. Staying Grounded When You’re Questioning Your Value

When your input is overlooked and your social cues don’t land, you may begin to question your value. This is especially true for foreigners working in Sweden who are navigating workplace silence.

The danger is that you begin to shrink: you stop offering ideas, start editing yourself, and eventually retreat emotionally. It’s a quiet erosion of confidence.

Try this: Anchor yourself in what you know to be true. Write down your values, your strengths, the things others have appreciated in you. These are reminders of your professional identity — they’re not up for negotiation.

This is often the turning point when people seek therapy or coaching. Through regular conversations, I help clients rediscover their inner reference point. I offer encouragement and reflection, not performance tips. Just a place to reconnect with yourself.

5. You Don’t Have to Fix Yourself to Fit In

Sometimes the loudest message isn’t spoken: it’s the quiet pressure to adapt, to adjust, to tone yourself down. But adaptation is not the same as self-erasure.

When working in Sweden, the ideal of ‘lagom’ — not too much, not too little but ‘normal’ — can feel hard to achieve. But you don’t have to erase your energy or personality to survive here.

Try this: Think about how you can translate yourself, rather than change yourself. What environments support your confidence? What kinds of interactions give you energy?

Whether you’re based in a startup in Gothenburg or working freelance from home, your sense of belonging doesn’t have to depend on others’ approval. It can grow from the inside out — with a little support.

Final Thoughts: Finding Your Place Working in Sweden Without Losing Yourself

You may have started working in Sweden with curiosity and hope, only to find yourself feeling invisible at your job. You’re not imagining it, and you’re not overreacting. Cultural norms can be subtle but powerful — and they affect how we see ourselves.

Whether you’re navigating expat work stress in Sweden, trying to understand Swedish work culture, or just needing a safe space to process what’s happening, know this: you don’t have to figure it all out alone.

I offer online counselling and coaching in English to individuals living across Sweden and Europe. Whether you’re in Malmö, Stockholm, Gothenburg or Uppsala, I’m here to help you reconnect with your confidence, find language for what you’re experiencing, and move forward with clarity.

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Try this: Book a consultation today. Let’s talk about what you’re facing — and explore what might feel possible next.

June 8, 2025
Keep Your Head: Managing Mental Health During Coronavirus in Sweden
Mental Health has become a buzzword expression around the world since the COVID19 pandemic began. When regulations and public health advice keeps us socially distant, how can go about managing mental health during Coronavirus to keep it together?

The coronavirus COVID-19 is a source of stress for many English speakers in Sweden. While health authorities in the UK, Australia and San Francisco enact policies such as of ‘lock-down’, containment, quarantine and ‘shelter-in-place’, the Swedish government proceeds with a business-as-usual approach, emphasising personal freedom and relying on the Swedish culture of collective responsibility. Expats and other English speakers immigrants in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmo are understandably worried. When your adopted country follows a policy dramatically different to most others and at odds with many scientists it makes sense that you might feel vulnerable.

Request a counselling appointment over video or phone

If you are alone, confused and unsure what to do, the first thing is to focus on what is within your control and let go of what isn’t. That’s part of what I call ‘keeping your head’. Everybody has the capacity to lower their own stress response, although knowing this isn’t enough. We start by becoming aware of what is going on in the body and then act to change how we feel. That takes practice but it is your first step in managing mental health during Coronavirus.

Symptoms of Coronavirus Pandemic Stress

Both irritability and withdrawal from contact with others are common signs of acute stress and declining mental health. These parallel the ‘fight or flight’ response that has evolved to protect us. You might be experiencing one or the other or both. The usual symptoms of anxiety and depression – difficulties with concentration or memory, restlessness, panic, a sense of hopelessness or doom, sadness and feelings of worthlessness – might also be present. If you take the time, you will notice their corresponding sensations.

Take a few moments now to sit in silence and notice what is happening in your body. Where do you feel tension? How busy are your thoughts? What sensations do you feel when you pay attention to your breath or your heartbeat? Try this 3 minute STOP technique to ground to the present moment and recover your awareness.

Forgetfulness, trouble focusing and an inability to solve problems or know what to do are signs that anxiety has affected your cognition. The Acute Stress Response (also known as ‘Fight or Flight’) has another manifestation: Freeze. This is the kind of paralysis of both thought and action we might experience when a stressor starts to shut down cognitive functioning. To the body, it’s the same phenomenon as an animal might experience when suddenly confronted, like a deer that freezes at the realisation it has been seen or the ‘rabbit-in-the-headlights’ response of a beast on a road at night. When a stressor becomes overwhelming, our capacity to reason and use logic drops away and our animal self reacts in self-protection.

The Importance of Self Care and Managing Mental Health during Coronavirus

I work with expats and English speakers around the world and have noticed the impact to mental health is similar whether the person is in Birmingham, Bahrain or Beijing. People are on edge with the ongoing changes to public health ‘rules’ as well as the uncertainty about the virus itself. Many are WTF (working from home), whether by choice or obligation, and this is putting pressure on relationships and disrupting well-being routines that were taken for granted. Even those in the ‘open’ cities of Sweden – Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmo, Uppsala – are struggling emotionally and physically. As much as the government campaigns might try to convince us otherwise, the coronavirus pandemic and ‘social distancing’ divides us, it doesn’t bring us together. We have to work at staying connected, while managing mental health during Coronavirus, and that takes energy.

The 5 Fundamentals of Well-Being are:
1. Adequate sleep;
2. Regular, nutritious meals;
3. Regular exercise;
4. A balance between work, rest and play;
5. The opportunity to talk about problems.
How many of those can you tick off? Checking in with yourself is just as, if not more, important as connecting with others. To know what you need from others, you first need to have good contact with yourself. If you have noticed things don’t feel right, take some time to listen to your sensations and see if you recognise your emotional state. You might like to try one of these self-compassion exercises. Your body can guide you to what is important right now. Listening to your body is the first step to keeping your head. And if you are struggling with knowing what you need, a conversation with a supportive professional can help.

To make an appointment or find out more about my services, contact me.
July 31, 2020
What To Do When Your Husband, Wife or Partner Refuses to Go to Couples Counselling
Relationship counselling starts too late for most couples and when one of the partners decides they need help, it’s not unusual for the spouse to be resistant to couples counselling. So what can you do if your partner won’t attend therapy?

People often delay relationship counselling out of embarrassment or to avoid cost. Some partners will refuse as part of the power-play that is occurring in the relationship. As an English-speaking couples counsellor working in Sweden I found that couples therapy wasn’t always the answer to saving a marriage or other relationship. There are alternatives for dealing with conflict in relationships when couples counselling is not an option.

1. Find an English-Speaking Therapist and Access Your Own Support

If you are struggling with convincing your husband, wife, sambo, or särbo to see a couples therapist, there’s no doubt you can use support yourself. You see the signs that something is wrong in the relationship and feel unhappy. You are both arguing too often, sex is non-existent, or you discover your partner is ‘cheating’ on you (being unfaithful). You might be recognising the toxic signs of emotional abuse, criticism, manipulation or even gaslighting. And you might be exhausted from trying to make changes. Your anxiety is a sign there is something wrong. In this situation the best thing you can do for the relationship and for yourself is to seek your own counselling support.

Expats and others living in Sweden know we’re instructed to always put the life jacket and oxygen mask on ourselves first. Why then do we try to appease our partners or sacrifice our own needs in the hope that our partners see this and change? When change doesn’t happen it can leave us feeling hopeless and depressed. When you’re already struggling with Swedish culture shock, climate or work-issues your relationship or marriage needs to be a place of intimacy and comfort, not one of distress.

Looking after yourself through getting individual support from a counsellor isn’t ‘selfish’. You can’t help someone from a weak position. Being generous with yourself will refresh you and make it possible to either save the relationship or protect yourself if you need to leave. Being stingy with yourself and denying yourself the care you need is more likely to result in you feeling resentful or regretful in the future.

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2. Encourage Your Partner to Book into Supportive Individual Counselling

Often, by the time couples agree on counselling, there is already a lot of toxicity in the relationship. It’s hard to come back to a loving relationship when so much hurt is being felt by just one of the partners, let alone both. When one person is resistant to couples counselling, even if that person eventually agrees to attend, it can take some time before they relax enough to trust the therapist and fully participate in the process. You might have more success in encouraging your sambo or spouse to see an individual counsellor instead pressuring them to attend a couples session. Going to relationship counselling together can present too high a threshold for some couples.

The suggestion your partner attends individual counselling will be more reasonable if you already have your own therapist. If you don’t, your partner might assume you are blaming them instead of seeing it as a shared issue. Be the person you want your partner to be and role model the self-care you would like them to take. When both partners access their own support each individual becomes clearer about their own needs. A couples counselling session will be more successful when and if both partners feel ready to attend.

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3. Can This Relationship Be Saved through Couples Counselling? Is Separation or Divorce Necessary?

Relationship counselling has just two fundamental purposes:
- To support the relationship or marriage to grow or…
- To help the relationship come to an end and assist the couple to separate.
It’s not the job of the couples therapist to take sides or be a referee and support one individual over the other. If you are hoping this will happen in a couples session, it might be better to find a therapist just for yourself! Likewise, if one of the partners wants to end the relationship and the other doesn’t, couples counselling serves little purpose apart from providing the therapist with an income. In this situation, the relationship needs to end. Give yourself the support you need to transition into independence after separation or divorce.

If there is violence in the relationship, and especially if children are witnessing violence, there is no question: you and your partner must separate, at least temporarily. If it is your partner who is committing the violence and they won’t leave, contact the police but get out of harm’s way yourself in any case. No argument is worth risking your safety over.

A couple came to see me in Stockholm asking me to teach them how to ‘fight’ better. I told them it was not something I offered. If they wanted to remain together, I told them I could help them learn to listen to each other and also to be more assertive. There are never two ‘winners’ in a fight and more often it ends in both sides losing. Approaches like the Gottman Method or Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication can be used to train couples to approach each other differently. But these skills rarely work when all the goodwill has been eroded through fighting or toxic silences. This might be time to see a therapist about breaking up.

If you still feel love for your partner, and you know it is mutual, choosing an English speaking couples counsellor might offer a way back to intimacy and trust. But in any case, even if you are in doubt, don’t wait to get help. If you are experiencing unhappiness in your relationship, make an appointment with your own supportive counsellor or therapist today.
January 15, 2020
Online Therapy or Face to Face Counselling?

Meet with me online or face to face in Stockholm

For in-person ‘face to face’ therapy, counselling and coaching in English, click here

For online counselling with an English speaking therapist and coach, click here

December 28, 2013