HomePsychologyAnxiety
You moved here. The anxiety came with you.
Panic, worry that will not switch off, a life that keeps getting smaller. Worked on in English.
What we work on
- Saying it in your own language. Anxiety is hard enough to describe without translating it first. Sessions run in English, so you can give me the vague, embarrassing version and we start from there.
- Mapping what you avoid. Anxiety holds its ground by getting you to sidestep things. We list them, smallest to largest, and start putting the small ones back.
- Understanding the body. Racing heart, tight chest, the sense that none of this is real. Knowing what your body is doing, and that it stops by itself, takes most of the power out of the fear of the fear.
- Separating the anxiety from the move. Some of what you feel is an ordinary reaction to having no network, no routine and no fluent language yet. Telling the two apart changes what you do about each.
Being new somewhere makes anxiety louder
Moving country quietly removes almost everything that used to hold you steady: the friends you could call without planning it, the streets you knew, the doctor who had your history, the ability to sort a problem out in five minutes. None of that is a diagnosis. But take it all away at once and anxiety has considerably more room.
Then there is the layer people rarely say out loud: you chose this. You may have persuaded a partner, left a job, or spent savings to be here. That makes it very hard to admit you are not fine — to your family back home, and often to yourself.
Anxiety is one of the most common reasons people come to therapy anywhere in the world, and it is something that gets worked on rather than waited out. What feeds it is avoidance, not distance from home.
What actually changes
Not that you stop feeling anxious — nobody does. What changes is how much of your week it gets to decide.
- You go back to things you had quietly dropped: the phone call, the trip, the plan with people you barely know yet.
- A panic attack stops being an emergency and becomes something whose shape you recognise.
- You can tell anxiety apart from the ordinary friction of living somewhere new, so you stop reading everything as proof that you made a mistake.
- You have a way of describing it to your partner or your family that does not end in an argument about moving back.
Who it is for
If you are anxious in a country whose language, paperwork and health system you are still learning, and you can no longer tell how much of it is the anxiety and how much is simply being new here.
- What sets it off here specifically: the phone calls in Spanish, the appointments, not knowing how anything works.
- How avoidance is quietly shrinking the part of the city you can move through.
- What your body is actually doing during a panic attack, and why it ends on its own.
- How to explain this to people back home who think you are on a long holiday.
Who it is not for
It is not a crash course in breathing techniques, and it is not a place where you will be reminded how lucky you are to live somewhere sunny. I do not promise a number of sessions or a date by which this will be gone.
When it makes sense to get in touch. When you are avoiding things you used to do without thinking, when sleep has gone, or when you have started organising your week around not having a panic attack.
The first consultation is free.Book the free consultation →
Frequently asked questions
Can I start therapy if I am only in Granada for a few months?
Yes. Some people are here for a semester or a season and want to use that time; others carry on by video call once they leave. We agree at the start what is realistic within the time you have, rather than beginning something that gets cut off halfway.
I do not have a Spanish social security number. Does that matter?
No. This is private practice: no referral, no waiting list, no paperwork with the public system. You book directly, and if you need an invoice for an insurer or an employer, I can write one.
Is this just culture shock? Will it pass on its own?
Some of it may well settle as you build a life here. But anxiety that has you avoiding things tends to grow rather than fade, whatever started it. If you are not sure which one you have, that is a good thing to bring to the free first consultation.
What if I have a panic attack and I do not know how the emergency system works here?
That fear is very common in people who have recently arrived, and we go through it early: what a panic attack is, what it does to your body, and why it ends by itself. Knowing that is usually more use than knowing which number to call.