Relationship counseling in English for individuals. You work on your side of the relationship, online from anywhere in Switzerland.
Book Free 20-Min Intro Session
One person in the room
I work with individuals on their relationships. I do not offer couples sessions. You come on your own, and we look at your relationships from where you stand: with a partner, a former partner, a parent, a friend or a colleague.
That can sound like half a solution. In practice a great deal shifts when one person understands their own reactions and begins to respond differently. You cannot rewrite the other person. You can get clearer about what you feel, what you need and what you are no longer willing to do.
What brings people to relationship counseling
- Conflicts that return in the same form, whatever the topic was at the start
- Codependency: your mood depends on theirs, and your own needs come last
- Communication that breaks down into silence, sarcasm or long explanations nobody hears
- Anger that arrives fast and leaves you ashamed afterwards
- Difficult emotions such as jealousy, guilt, resentment or fear of being left
- The question “Why do my relationships always end the same way?”
When the relationship is international
Many of the people I meet live in a relationship that crosses countries, languages or both. This adds pressures that couples at home rarely face.
One partner moved for the other’s job and now has no career, no network and a quiet sense of being owed something. Two people share a flat and a calendar and no longer feel like a team. An argument starts in English and ends in someone’s first language, because certain feelings do not survive translation. Families are far away, so the partner becomes the only support, and that is a heavy role for one person.
None of this means the relationship is failing. It does mean there is more to talk about than who forgot the shopping.
How we work
We take a recent situation and go through it slowly. What was said, what you heard, what you felt, and what you did with that feeling. Often the reaction makes sense once we see where you learned it.
Then we practice. How to say a need without an accusation. How to stay in a hard conversation without exploding or disappearing. How to hold a boundary when the other person is unhappy about it. I draw on Gestalt-informed counseling, CBT, ACT and body-oriented methods, because relationship stress is felt in the body long before it is put into words.
“I am grateful to Maryna for making me feel safe and fully accepted, no matter what state I am in.”
D.R., Creative Professional
Counseling or therapy
My title is psychosocial counselor (SGfB), and my degree is an MSc in Psychology. Counseling deals with the difficulties of living with other people: conflict, distance, decisions, separation. Psychotherapy is a regulated treatment for mental illness, and that is not what I provide. I make no diagnoses and prescribe nothing. If you are unsure which of the two you need, start with Counseling vs. psychotherapy in Switzerland.
If you are afraid of your partner or are being hurt, please contact the police or a victim support service. In an emergency call 144.
Practical details
Each session is 50 minutes, by video, on an encrypted platform. Meeting in person is possible on request, wherever you are in Switzerland. I charge CHF 120 for a regular session. We begin with a free 20-minute introduction so you can decide without pressure. Counseling is normally not reimbursed by Swiss basic insurance. I work in English, Ukrainian and Russian.
Related pages: Counseling for expats in Switzerland and Anxiety and stress counseling.
Read more about relationships
- When the same argument keeps coming back
- One partner needs space, the other needs to talk
- Different meanings of closeness in a cross-cultural relationship
- How to ask for emotional support
Questions about relationship counseling
Can my partner join the sessions?
No. I work with one person at a time, and the sessions stay yours. If you both want to work together in the same room, a couples therapist is the right address, and I can point you to where to look for one.
My partner will not come to counseling. Is it still useful for me to go alone?
Yes. Most of my relationship clients come alone. You learn to read your own patterns, to say things more clearly and to decide what you want. When one person changes how they act, the dynamic between two people usually moves as well, though I cannot promise in which direction.
We come from different cultures. Can you help with that?
Cross-cultural relationships are a regular part of my work. Ideas about closeness, money, family duty and how openly to argue differ more than most couples expect. I moved countries myself, so I know how easily a cultural difference gets mistaken for a personal flaw. We sort out which is which.