Counselling for Immigrants and Children of Immigrants, Online

I offer online counselling for immigrants, children of immigrants and international students, by secure video from the UK. It's a space to talk about belonging, family duty, identity and the strain of living between two cultures. I'm a trainee counsellor, trained in Sri Lanka and the UK, and sessions are in English, £45 for 50 minutes.

Immigrant mental health: what moving countries can do to a person

Migration is usually described in practical terms: visas, jobs, housing, school places. The emotional side gets less room. You might have left a career that took fifteen years to build, or parents who are getting older without you. You might be grateful for a safer or freer life and still grieve the one you left.

The psychologist John Berry spent decades studying what he called acculturation, the changes that happen when people from one culture live in sustained contact with another. He described how the strain of that process, known as acculturative stress, varies a great deal from person to person, depending on things like why you moved, how you were received and what support you had (Berry, 1997). If you'd like some reading to start with, my free resources on living abroad and migration collect reputable guides in one place.

Acculturation stress: Berry's four ways of living between cultures

Berry described four broad strategies, based on two questions. How much do you keep your heritage culture? And how much do you take part in the society around you?

1. Integration: keeping your own culture while also taking part in the new one.
2. Assimilation: taking on the new culture and letting the old one fade.
3. Separation: holding on to your heritage culture and keeping some distance from the new one.
4. Marginalisation: feeling cut off from both.

In a large study of 5,366 immigrant young people settled in 13 countries, those with an "integration" profile had the best psychological and social adjustment, and those who felt connected to neither culture had the worst (Berry and colleagues, 2006).

Two things are worth holding on to. First, these are patterns rather than boxes, and most people move between them. Second, integration isn't purely a personal choice. Berry has long argued that it works best when the wider society is open to it. If you've felt unwelcome, that's not a failure of your adjustment.

Second-generation immigrants and bicultural identity

If you're the child of immigrants, you may never have moved anywhere yourself and still feel the move in your bones.

You might be fluent in your parents' expectations and in your friends' world, translating between them all day. You might feel too Sri Lankan, Nigerian or Polish at work and too British at family weddings. Perhaps you carry a quiet debt: your parents gave up so much that wanting something different for yourself feels like betrayal.

There's some encouraging research here. A meta-analysis of 83 studies with more than 23,000 participants found that being bicultural was positively linked with both psychological and social adjustment, and more strongly than identifying with just one culture (Nguyen and Benet-Martínez, 2013). The old idea of the person "caught between two worlds" didn't hold up well.

That doesn't make it easy. Many people want to keep their culture and also want room to breathe within it. In counselling we can look at both, without deciding for you which matters more. You might find my pages on identity and belonging and family duty and self helpful.

Counselling for international students in the UK and Europe

Studying abroad brings its own mix: academic pressure in a second language, family hopes and sometimes family money riding on your results, and a social life you have to build from scratch.

Research suggests that some groups of international students are slower to seek formal help. A 2022 review of Chinese students in the UK found they seemed less likely than home students to look for formal mental health support, relying more on friends (Magnusdottir and Thornicroft, 2022). A smaller American study found that stigma about mental illness partly explained why South Asian students felt less positive about counselling than white students did (Loya and colleagues, 2010).

If you're studying in the UK or elsewhere in Europe, your university's counselling service is usually the first place to try. If you'd rather speak to someone outside the institution, I keep a few lower-cost places for students. If you're far from home and unsure whether what you feel is loneliness or something heavier, the free loneliness test can be a gentle place to start thinking about it. It isn't a diagnosis.

"I want a therapist who understands my culture": does it matter?

This is one of the most common wishes people have, and it makes sense. Explaining your family to someone who doesn't get it can feel like doing their job for them.

The research is more interesting than a simple yes. A meta-analysis found that people moderately prefer a therapist of their own ethnicity, but that matching made almost no difference to outcomes on average (Cabral and Smith, 2011). Another meta-analysis found that when clients rated their therapist as culturally competent, outcomes tended to be better. Therapists' ratings of themselves didn't predict anything (Soto and colleagues, 2018).

In other words, what counts is whether you feel understood. I trained in Sri Lanka and the UK, and I have a particular interest in collectivist and South Asian family life. I still won't assume I know what your culture means to you. I'll ask, and I'll let you correct me. There's more about this on my page on counselling for South Asian women and families.

Homesickness counselling and grief far from home

Some losses of migration are obvious. Others are quiet: the smell of a particular market, being able to make a joke without explaining it, being someone's neighbour for thirty years. Homesickness can arrive years after the move, triggered by a song, a festival you celebrate alone or a parent's voice on a bad phone line.

There's often grief when someone back home becomes ill or dies and you can't be there, or can only be there for a few days. People around you may not understand why it hits so hard, or why you feel guilty as well as sad. Counselling for migrants doesn't need to make that grief smaller. It can give it somewhere to go. I write more about this on grief far from home, and the glossary entry on homesickness explains why it can return years after a move.

Cross-cultural and culturally sensitive counselling online

"Intercultural" or "cross-cultural" counselling can sound like a special technique. In my practice it means something simpler. I pay attention to how culture, migration, racism, religion and family shape what you feel, instead of treating your distress as a purely private, individual problem. I'm also honest about the limits of what I know, and I check with you rather than filling the gaps with assumptions.

Being culturally sensitive also means not turning your culture into the problem. A close family isn't automatically "enmeshed", and wanting your parents' approval isn't a sign that something is wrong with you.

How I work with culture and family

I work in a person-centred way. That means I don't treat independence as the only healthy goal, and I won't push you to confront your parents or cut ties. Nor will I tell you to keep the peace at any cost.

Mixed feelings are welcome here. You can love your family and be hurt by them. You can be proud of where you're from and tired of explaining it. Counselling is a place where both can be true at once. If you're working out how close is close enough, my page on boundaries with family may be useful, and if you'd like to raise counselling with your parents, there's a guide on how to talk to South Asian parents about therapy.

Online therapy for immigrants: fees, format and limits

• Who I am: Michelle Fernando, a trainee person-centred counsellor and BACP student member, working under regular clinical supervision. I'm completing an MSc in Counselling and Psychotherapy at Keele University.
• Format: online counselling by secure video, 50 minutes. Evening sessions are available, UK time.
• Language: English.
• Fee: £45 per session, charged in pounds, with a few lower-cost places for students, trainees and people on a low income. The fees page has the details.
• Where it sits: sessions are delivered online from the UK. If you live elsewhere, they aren't part of your local healthcare system.

I don't offer immigration advice, specialist trauma treatment, or help with active suicidal crisis, psychosis, eating disorders, addiction, couples or children. If you need any of these, I'll help you think about where to turn. In an emergency, call 999 in the UK or 112 in the EU. My UK helplines page lists free services there.

If you're living away from home for work rather than migration, my page on online therapy for expats may fit better, and the guide on how to find a therapist abroad explains your local options too. When you're ready, you can book a session.