Individual Therapy · Cascais

Individual Psychotherapy in Cascais

Some people arrive with a clear problem. Others arrive with the sense that something is off and no vocabulary for it — that they are functioning, competent, well-reviewed at work, and quietly not enjoying any of it.

Both are legitimate starting points. You do not need a diagnosis to begin, and you do not need to have hit a crisis to deserve the hour.

What we work with

Anxiety that has stopped being situational. Low mood that outlasted the reason for it. Anger that arrives too fast and costs too much. Sleep that broke and did not come back. Grief, including the kinds that are not socially recognised — a career left behind, a version of yourself that fit better somewhere else. Patterns in relationships that keep producing the same ending with different people.

What a session is actually like

Fifty minutes, weekly, same time each week. You talk; we notice things and say them. Sometimes we will stop you mid-sentence to ask what you just felt, because the thing that matters is usually in the pause, not the paragraph.

It is not advice. If it were advice, you would already have taken it — you are not short of advice. It is a room where the parts of your experience you have been managing alone get a witness and a second perspective, consistently, over months.

Progress is not linear. There are sessions that feel like nothing. There are sessions after which you are irritable for two days. That is normal, and it is worth knowing in advance.

Living abroad, specifically

Cascais collects people who moved. Something particular happens to a person about a year in: the novelty stops covering the loss, and the sentence I chose this starts working as a gag rather than a comfort. You cannot complain to people back home, who think you are on permanent holiday, and you cannot complain to people here, who are in the same position and equally invested in it being fine.

That is a solvable problem and a common reason people start therapy in this part of the coast.

Practical details

Where: Praceta Marquês Pombal 1, 2755-247 Cascais — free parking outside
Getting here: A5 or the N9 through Cascais; roughly 10 minutes from Cascais or Estoril, 5 from Birre, Manique or Alcoitão
When: Weekday sessions including early morning, mid-morning school-run slots, and after 18:00
Length: 50 minutes (weekly)
Fee: €80 per session
ISTDP option: 90 minutes, €140 per session, every two weeks
Language: English
Invoices: Issued with your NIF
Online: Available across Portugal

The 90-minute ISTDP option runs every two weeks rather than weekly — the longer session gives Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy the room it needs to work in depth in a single sitting.

A first session, not a commitment

The first meeting exists so that both of us can find out whether this will work. Fit matters more than method — if it is not right, we will say so and point you elsewhere. Nobody is asked to commit to a course of therapy before they have sat in the room once.

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