English-speaking online counselling

Why language matters more in therapy than elsewhere

You can run a career, a friendship group and a relationship in a second language and do it well. Describing shame, grief or the exact texture of a thing you have never said out loud is a different task. Nuance is where the work happens, and nuance is the first thing lost in translation.

For men living away from where they grew up, counselling in English is often the only hour in the week that requires no translation at all — of language, and frequently of culture too.

Being a gay or bi man away from home

Moving can be liberating and isolating in the same month. Some men are far more out abroad than they ever were at home; others have quietly gone back in because the local climate demanded it. Both are hard to explain to friends back home, who tend to see the photographs rather than the Sunday evenings.

• Losing the friendships that used to hold you, and the effort of rebuilding at forty
• Being out in one country and not out to family in another
• Dating in a scene whose codes you have had to learn from scratch
• Distance from ageing parents, and what that will mean
• Deciding whether the move is permanent, and what going back would cost

Practicalities

Sessions are 50 minutes by private video and are never recorded. Appointment slots run early and late, so a session usually fits without rearranging your working day. Everything is arranged online — no travel, no waiting room, no local practice to be seen entering.

The practice is UK-registered and works to the BACP Ethical Framework, and is registered with the UK Information Commissioner's Office for data protection.