Expat Counselling: Learn to live anywhere!
With the world shrinking and more and more people working from home (post Covid) and more and more people relocating to far flung places, many people are seeking expat counselling, support, and therapeutic guidance.
People can find themselves in unfamiliar parts of the world, with people who don’t understand them or their culture.
Where we came from and how we grew up is massively important to understanding how we think, feel and behave as we do. That comes from our attachments with our parents, but also from our geographical and cultural background.
As an expat we sometimes take our issues with us, in addition to the new added pressures of being in unfamiliar surroundings, with people we don’t know how to connect with, expat counselling can help.
We may want to live somewhere else (I’ve lived in Cyprus for a number of years, and have spent 6 years living Thailand and Indonesia, in Southeast Asia.
I travel frequently for pleasure and to work with clients wherever they are. When we relocate, we still want and need to be understood, to have our heritage and culture understood and to understand the new culture and any specific ways of behaving or communicating which will assist us in our new adventure.
This has never been more important than when choosing a counsellor/therapist. If your counsellor is unable to identify with your culture and the way things are, or were, then it will be difficult to connect at the level required for a successful therapeutic relationship.
A UK trained and qualified expat counsellor/therapist can better understand just where you’re coming from.
Expat counselling is available from anywhere in the world. Online therapy and online counselling has indeed shrunk the world, my clients are from every continent and country.
The thing they all have in common is, they want to connect with someone who has the skills and the insights to help, and they want to do that online.
I’m Paul Parkin – A therapist and life coach. This is why you should work with me:
As someone who had experiences being an expat myself, I understand so well the struggle that new expats has to overcome, no matter it’s a different culture, tradition or even the mindset of people. The aspect of fitting in while still being true to oneself is challenging.
I have worked with many expats all around the globe and helped them to overcome these barriers that keep them from living a happy life in foreign countries.
What some of my recent clients have said about our work together.
‘After having struggled for a good four years with anger I took the step to seek counselling for the issues making me so angry and aggressive.
Living in Belgium, a foreign country with a very different culture to mine, I did not want to go see a counsellor locally. This is when I first found Paul’s site.
After the counselling I can honestly say I feel less angry, and have things back under control at work. I used to hate going to work and now sometimes I even want to go to work, the positive sides of my job are in focus.
Paul’s counselling is very strategy based, with me he did not really go delving into the past and dredging up old hurts and things. It was all about now and how to approach things now.
He is very supportive and understanding as well as flexible when it comes to planning sessions around your budget.‘
Alan, Belgium
‘I chose online counselling because I was living in a country (China) with very limited access to counselling services. From the start Paul was very accommodating, even downloading WeChat to get around the Great Firewall! The last few months have been a time of transition in my life, but Paul has been with me every step of the way, supporting me to make healthy decisions and to remember to always be mindful of how my thoughts are driving my moods and actions.
I have always struggled with emotion regulation, which has caused me all sorts of problems throughout my life, not least in my relationships. Paul has helped me learn to pause and breathe before responding to things, rather than just reacting, which has made a huge difference to how I now deal with issues in my current relationship. His non-judgemental attitude also gave me a new insight into both mine and my partner’s history of addictions, enabling me to be more supportive of my partner while we both work on ourselves, and to understand that we are all works in progress.
Thanks so much Paul, and hope to speak to you again in future.‘
Libby, UK