Online
Therapy in Italian, from wherever you live now
I work online with Italians who have moved abroad — for study, for work, for someone. Anxiety and panic attacks, stress, relationship difficulties, and what comes with starting again somewhere else.
Language
You can speak a language fluently and still not be able to say the difficult things in it.
It is a distinction most people discover in therapy rather than anywhere else. A working vocabulary builds quickly; an emotional one does not. You end up describing what you feel with approximate words, and noticing that the approximation takes something away.
There is a more concrete reason too. What gets talked about in therapy almost always predates the move — a childhood, a family, a city. It was lived in Italian, and translating it while recounting it is extra work at exactly the moment you need less of it.
This does not mean therapy in another language does not work. It means that if Italian is yours, there is no reason to add that effort.
Anxiety and panic attacks
The most frequent reason. Sometimes it was already there before leaving; sometimes it appears in the first year, when the excitement of the move runs out and the routine is what remains.
The first attack usually happens somewhere ordinary, and from there the perimeter tightens. Living in a new country makes that more expensive: the things being avoided are also the things you were still learning to do.
Loneliness and homesickness
Not a disorder, in no manual, and one of the most frequent subjects. Friendships that take years to rebuild, a network still two thousand kilometres away, occasions you are absent from.
It becomes a clinical matter when it starts closing things down: when you stop going out because it is an effort, and the effort grows precisely because you do not go.
Work and recognition
Starting again from a lower position than the one you had. Working in a language you are good in but not brilliant in. Feeling you have something to prove at every meeting.
These wear more than they appear to, and tend to be called tiredness until they stop being that.
Couples and families at a distance
Couples where two people left and only one found their place. Couples living apart. Relationships with parents that change once distance turns them into phone calls.
Couples work can be done online even from two different cities.
Hours
I work on Italian hours, but not only
Within Europe there is barely a problem: an hour's difference at most, and evening in Italy is evening in London, Berlin or Madrid too.
With the Americas a window can almost always be found: early morning here is late evening in New York, and early Italian afternoon is the start of the day on the west coast.
With Asia and Oceania it is tighter but not impossible — early Italian morning usually works, which is evening in Japan or Australia.
Before committing to anything
Write with your time zone and the hours that could work, and I will tell you straight away whether there is a compatible window. It is the first thing to establish, before anything else.
When the clocks change in Italy and not where you are, the time shifts by an hour. We sort it out between us; it happens twice a year.
The platform
Sessions are held on a private platform with an encrypted connection. I send the link before each session; nothing to install, no account to create.
You need a stable connection, a room where you will not be interrupted, and headphones. That last one matters more than it sounds.
Length, fee, payment
Forty-five minutes per session, €100. Couples sessions run sixty minutes and cost €130. These are the same fees as in-person sessions.
Payment by bank transfer, including from abroad. A receipt is always issued: if you file an Italian tax return it is deductible at 19% as a medical expense on traceable payments.
If you come back, or move again
The work does not stop. People returning to Italy either continue online or move to in-person sessions in Milan, Monza or Cernusco sul Naviglio.
People moving on again continue from wherever they land: the time zone changes, nothing else does.
Where I am registered
I am registered with the Order of Psychologists of Lombardy, section A, no. 18949. The register is public and verifiable. I practise under Italian regulation, wherever you happen to be.
The first session
Forty-five minutes to understand what we are dealing with: how long, in which situations, what you have already tried. I ask the questions. At the end I tell you what I have understood and what I would propose.
Getting in touch
WhatsApp or email, whichever you prefer. Say which country you are in and which hours could work — it means I can reply with something useful straight away. I usually answer within 24 hours.
Moving does not only mean leaving a place. It means leaving the version of yourself that was obvious there.
Dr. Giuseppe Iannone — Psychotherapist
FIRST STEP