How do I find a therapist in Copenhagen as an expat?

Why does being an expat change what you need from therapy?

You arrive without the shared ground a therapist usually stands on, so part of every session goes on supplying it. The school system you grew up inside, what your family does at a funeral, whether a raised voice in your house meant danger or meant nothing much: none of it is assumed, so you explain. Explaining is work. It holds you one step outside the thing you came to talk about, and it leaves you tired in a way you put down to the week rather than to the hour you just spent.

Fluency makes this harder to catch. Accounting for your own life clearly is a skill you have practised for years, in interviews, at work, with every new friend, and it holds up at exactly the moment you would rather be interrupted. Your therapist asks a plain question about your mother and you answer with the history of the country she lives in. Both of you are working. Neither of you is any closer. Read more about feeling homesick years after the move.

What happens when therapy is in your second language?

The language a session runs in decides which subjects come up and how close you get to them. A word you learned as a small child arrives with the room it was first said in. The same word in a language you learned as an adult brings the meaning and leaves most of the weight behind¹. Therapists who work across several languages describe the same thing from their own consulting rooms: the language in use shaped how emotional subjects were opened, how trust was built and how cultural difference got handled². These are their accounts of their own practice rather than a measured effect, which is roughly the standing I would give it.

• Distance has its uses. Shame and fear find words more easily at one remove, which is why something you have never said in your first language arrives in your third¹.
• Switching tells you where the feeling lives. If you slip into your first language when your mother comes up and back into English for work, that is information, not an interruption.
• The smooth version costs you. A tidy account in your working language is easier to deliver and harder to be moved by.

Working in English is no compromise. I would rather you said the sentence in the language it belongs to, one I do not speak, and then told me what it meant, than hand me a polished English version with the heat gone. Read more about therapy in your second language.

What should I ask a therapist about their own background?

Ask plainly what they have lived. A therapist who works well across cultures is not unsettled by the question, and how they take it tells you more than the answer does.

• Living abroad. Have you lived outside your own country, and for how long?
• Language. What is your first language, and which language do you dream in?
• Feelings in another language. How do you work when my feelings are in a language you do not speak?
• Family expectations. What do you do when what my family expects of me sits against Danish norms?
• Couples. Have you worked with couples whose partners grew up in different cultures?

You are not listening for a particular biography. You are listening for whether the question interests them. Mine: I was born in London and raised English, my family moved to Denmark while I was a child, and I was raised Danish as well. I work in both languages and I know both cultures from the inside.

What if one partner is Danish and the other is not?

The strain in a mixed-culture couple is real, and it is not evidence that the relationship was a mistake. What I meet first is rarely a cultural disagreement. It is hurt. One of you feels unseen by the other family and braces before a visit is even planned; the other feels asked to choose between the person they love and the people who raised them. By the time either of you puts it into words, it has turned into a theory about Danes, or about your country, and the hurt underneath has gone quiet. Couples who hold 2 cultures do report this cluster: families and friends not accepting the relationship, disagreement about values and rituals, and the work of conducting a relationship in a language that belongs to neither of you³.

Nationality explains less than it promises. Two people raised in the same town disagree about Christmas, about money, about how loudly you are allowed to miss your parents. What differs for you is that a ready-made explanation sits close to hand, and reaching for it ends the conversation at the point it was about to become useful. The partner standing nearer the family that has not accepted the relationship carries more of it, and saying so matters more than dividing the weight evenly for the sake of fairness. Read more about expat couples therapy, couples therapy alone and expat divorce therapy.

Does the work still fit if you are leaving, or already gone?

Sessions run in the room in central Copenhagen or online wherever you are, and an ending you plan for is better work than one that simply stops.

• Travel for work. Online sessions hold the thread while you are away.
• Already left Denmark. You finish online what you started here.
• Leaving within a year. Say so in the first session and the work gets shaped around the date.
• No room in the week. Concentrated formats exist for people who cannot come weekly.

Read more about online or in-person therapy, fly-in couples therapy and weekend sessions.

How do I check a therapist and stop explaining myself?

In Denmark the training behind the word psychotherapist varies widely, so the checking falls to you, and it is reasonable to do it out loud.

• Training. Ask what training they did, how long it took and where.
• Supervision. Ask whether they are in regular supervision.
• Languages. Ask which languages the work runs in, and what happens if you switch mid-sentence.
• Terms. Ask what the practical terms are, including cancellation.
• Confidentiality. Ask what stays confidential and what gets written down.
• Hand over the ground in writing. How your family handles conflict, what you are expected to do for your parents, what you gave up to come here. Give it to me before the first session rather than spending sessions on it.
• Say it the moment you catch it. When you notice you are briefing rather than speaking, say that sentence out loud in the room.

That last step is my clinical judgement rather than a measured finding. What I see is that the briefing stops once somebody else names the ground you are standing on, and the relief shows in the shoulders before the client can account for it.

None of this is enough when the answers stay vague, when you are still supplying the same background in the fifth session, or when the difficulty pressing on you is not the move at all but something that was already hard before you left. Shared background is no substitute for competence in the trouble you bring. How much of the distance between you and a therapist is language and how much is fit is not something you can settle alone in advance, and it is worth asking about directly. The free 30-minute call is a reasonable place to test it.

Questions people ask

How do I choose between individual therapy and couples therapy when the move is what is straining us?

Start where the pain is loudest, and say in the first session that you are unsure. If the strain sits mostly between the 2 of you, couples sessions reach it faster; if it sits in you, individual work gives you room without an audience.

What actually happens in a first session with an expat therapist?

You describe what brought you, I ask questions, and at the end you decide whether to carry on. You are assessing me while I am listening to you, and saying so out loud is a good start.

Do I have to tell the whole story of my move before the work can begin?

No, and you are welcome to hand me that background in writing instead of spending sessions on it. The time then goes on what the background is doing to you now.

Will therapy in English be good enough if English is not my first language?

Yes, provided you are free to switch the moment a word only exists for you somewhere else. Say that in the first session, so a switch is treated as material rather than as an interruption.

Is it worth starting therapy if I might leave Denmark within a year?

Yes, and say so at the start so the work is planned around the date. Sessions continue online after you move, and short focused work is a reasonable thing to ask for.

If you are new here and looking for help in English, start with my page on expat therapy in Copenhagen to see what I offer.

Sources

1. Diakonova-Curtis, Bilingualism as a tool in psychotherapy, Psychotherapy Bulletin, Society for the Advancement of Psychotherapy, 2016
2. Verkerk, Backus, Faro, Dewaele and Das, Language choice in psychotherapy of multilingual clients: perspectives from multilingual therapists, interviews with 10 therapists in the Netherlands, Language and Psychoanalysis, 2021
3. Mayer, Challenges and coping of couples in intercultural romantic love relationships, qualitative interview study, International Review of Psychiatry, 2023

How this article was written: I choose the subject and the angle. An AI assistant researches and drafts. I read the draft, correct and improve it and stand behind every clinical statement. The professional and clinical judgement is mine.