Counseling in English for people who work in Basel, on whichever side of the border they sleep. Online first, in person in Basel on request.
Book Free 20-Min Intro Session
A city built on science and three borders
Basel lives from pharma and life sciences. Roche and Novartis have their headquarters here. Around them sits a dense cluster of biotech firms, suppliers and research institutes, along with the oldest university in the country. People arrive from all over the world for a lab position, a clinical project or a global role.
The city also stands at the point where Switzerland, Germany and France meet. You can work in Basel, rent in a German town and buy your groceries in Alsace. Everyday speech is Basel German, the paperwork comes in standard German, and French begins a few tram stops away. English carries you through the working day and then stops at the office door.
If you are looking for an English-speaking counselor in Basel, you may know this mix well. The work is demanding and precise. The contract brought you here, and the rest of life was supposed to follow by itself.
Themes that fit a science city
- Long stretches of pressure around trials, launches and reorganizations
- A body that stays switched on after night shifts or long lab days
- Perfectionism in a field where mistakes are not allowed
- A social circle made up almost entirely of colleagues
- Living in one country, working in another and feeling at home in neither
None of this has to reach a breaking point before you talk to someone.
Two pages go further into the most common ones: Burnout counseling in Switzerland and Body-oriented counseling, for stress that shows up as tension, poor sleep or a constant feeling of being on edge.
Fitting sessions into a Basel week
We meet by video unless you ask for something else. A session runs for 50 minutes on an encrypted platform, and you can join from home, from a meeting room or from the other side of the border.
A fixed weekly slot is not required. Some people meet me every week, others every two weeks or once a month. If your roster changes, we book from one schedule to the next.
Face-to-face sessions in Basel can be set up on request. I do not keep a practice room in the city, so we agree on the day and the place together.
The fee is CHF 120 per session, and the first 20-minute conversation is free. Health insurers in Switzerland usually do not reimburse counseling under the basic plan. Sessions take place in English, Ukrainian or Russian.
What a counselor does, and where the limits are
My training is in psychology (MSc), and I am registered as a psychosocial counselor with the SGfB, the Swiss Association for Counselling. In counseling we look at the pressures of your present life and at practical ways to change them. Psychotherapy is a medical treatment for diagnosed conditions, and that is not what I provide. You can read how the two professions differ in Switzerland here: Counseling vs. psychotherapy in Switzerland.
“My condition changed dramatically. I had more energy, a stable emotional state, a good mood, and a desire to ‘live and act’.”
S.M., Parent
Reading for long weeks
- Burnout: how it develops and how to recover
- When your support network in Switzerland feels too small
Looking for another region? Start from English-speaking counseling in Switzerland.
Basel questions, answered
Do you offer in-person sessions in Basel?
On request, yes. Online is the usual format. If you would like to meet in Basel itself, tell me during the free introduction, and we will check which days could work for both of us.
I work in Basel but live in Germany or France. Can I still book?
Yes. Online sessions do not depend on where you live, so you can join from your home across the border. In-person meetings take place in Switzerland. If you prefer, the price can be displayed in EUR.
My shifts and lab hours change every week. How would we schedule?
We plan around your roster. You can book appointments one at a time as your schedule becomes clear, including early mornings and evenings. There is no penalty for an irregular rhythm; what matters is that the sessions keep happening.