Therapy in English for Expats in Berlin: When Freedom Becomes Its Own Prison
You left to escape something. Maybe a career that felt like slow death, or a city where everyone kept asking when you'd settle down. Berlin promised you could finally breathe. That you could be anyone, do anything, reinvent yourself completely.
So why do you feel more trapped than ever?
The Paradox No One Mentions
Berlin attracts people running toward something and away from something in equal measure. What nobody tells you is that infinite possibility can be its own kind of hell.
Three years in, you're still explaining to people back home that you're "working on projects." Still in a WG because committing to your own flat feels too permanent. Still going to the same parties in Neukölln where everyone's having the same conversations about authenticity whilst secretly wondering if this is just an expensive way to avoid growing up.
The freedom you came for has become the thing keeping you stuck.
Berlin strips away illusions faster than anywhere else. Without the familiar structures of home - the career ladder, the social expectations, the people who've known you since school - you're left with just yourself. And sometimes what you find there isn't what you expected:
- The winter that lasts from October to April and makes getting out of bed feel heroic
- The social scene that's simultaneously hyperconnected and utterly superficial
- The reality of being at Berghain surrounded by people yet feeling completely invisible
Meanwhile, people back home are buying houses and having babies whilst you're explaining why you're still "figuring things out" at 32. The gap between where you thought you'd be and where you actually are becomes impossible to ignore.
When Exploration Becomes Avoidance
You're surrounded by other people who are also avoiding major life decisions, which makes it feel normal until you step back and realise you're all collectively postponing something. The club scene that seemed liberating becomes a way to numb the growing anxiety about whether you're wasting your life. The creative community starts feeling like a mutual delusion society where everyone's pretending their situation is temporary whilst years slide past.
And beneath it all, a question you keep not asking: at what point does "finding yourself" just become a way of never committing to anything?
The real problem isn't that you haven't figured out what you want. It's that you've made not knowing into an identity.
"I'm still exploring." "I'm keeping my options open." "I don't want to be trapped."
These feel like wisdom, like refusing to settle for less than you deserve. But at some point, refusing to choose becomes a choice. And it's usually not a particularly good one.
When you can do anything, you often end up doing nothing. When every door is open, you never walk through any of them. You just stand in the hallway, congratulating yourself on not being trapped in a room. The irony is that you came here to escape feeling stuck, and you've built a life where being stuck has become your defining feature.
What You're Actually Running From
This isn't really about geography. It's about what choosing something definitive means.
If you commit to a place, a person, a career direction, you're admitting this is your life. Not the rehearsal. Not the temporary situation until you figure out what you really want. This is it. And if this is it, then you have to reckon with all the ways it might not be enough. You might be ordinary. You might be mediocre. You might discover that the problem wasn't the constraints back home—it was you all along.
So you keep moving, keep exploring, keep your options open. Because as long as you haven't chosen, you can't fail. You're not settling, you're not giving up, you're not admitting defeat. You're just... still figuring it out.
Except you're not figuring it out. You're avoiding having to.
The exhaustion isn't from the doing. It's from never landing anywhere. From living perpetually in transition. From maintaining the performance of freedom whilst feeling increasingly trapped by it. You can't build anything substantial because you might leave. You can't invest in relationships because they're probably temporary. You can't commit to projects because what if something better comes along.
And beneath all of it, you're lonely. Not the dramatic loneliness of isolation, but the particular loneliness of being surrounded by people whilst never letting anyone properly in.
What Psychodynamic Therapy Actually Addresses
This isn't about adjusting to Berlin life or learning to love the city. It's about understanding why choice feels impossible when you theoretically have infinite options.
Psychodynamic therapy looks at what you're actually running from—not just the external stuff like boring jobs and conventional expectations, but the internal patterns:
- The fear of mediocrity
- The terror of commitment
- The anxiety that choosing one thing means losing everything else
- The belief that your real life will start once you've figured yourself out completely
Often, the thing that feels most liberating (the permission to avoid traditional adult responsibilities, to keep exploring, to refuse to settle) becomes the thing keeping you trapped in patterns that stopped serving you years ago. The work is about understanding how freedom became a prison. How keeping your options open became a way of never having to risk anything. How "finding yourself" became a defence against being found wanting.
At some point, you have to accept that there is no perfect choice. No city where everything clicks into place. No career that feels completely right. No version of yourself that finally, definitively, doesn't need any more work. Choosing something doesn't mean giving up on everything else. It means accepting that life happens in the particular, not the theoretical. That meaning comes from depth, not breadth. That you can't explore your way into a life that feels real—you have to actually build one.
Why Therapy in English Matters
You need to be able to express the complexity of feeling simultaneously privileged and miserable, free and trapped, creative and completely unproductive. That requires nuance that's hard to achieve in your second language. You also need someone who understands that your problems aren't solved by gratitude or perspective. Sometimes the freedom you thought you wanted genuinely has become its own kind of hell, and pretending otherwise doesn't help.
I'm a UK-trained psychodynamic therapist offering online therapy to expats in Berlin and international clients worldwide. This is psychodynamic work, which means we look at patterns rather than just symptoms. Why escape keeps feeling necessary. Why choice feels impossible. Why freedom feels increasingly like its own kind of imprisonment.
The Details:
- Format: Weekly online sessions (50 minutes) at the same time each week
- Credentials: BACP registered; currently undertaking advanced training at Tavistock Relationships
- Fees: £65 for individual therapy, £95 for couples therapy
- Availability: Worldwide (excluding USA and Canada)
You don't need to have answers or arrive with the right words for what's wrong. You just need to be willing to stop avoiding the questions.
Online psychodynamic therapy in English for expats in Berlin who came for freedom and found something more complicated instead. Available worldwide except USA and Canada.
