01The job brought you. The job is not a life.
Sofia has quietly become one of Europe’s tech and finance hubs, and the expats who land here are often the capable ones: the IT lead sent to build a team, the finance director covering the region, the engineer who took the package because the numbers made sense. What the numbers did not include was the evening after work, when the colleagues go home to families and old friends and you go home to a very nice flat in Lozenets and the same four streaming apps you had in Manchester or Munich.
The loneliness here is specific. It is not the loneliness of a rough city. It is the loneliness of a good life with nobody in it who knew you before.
02I know this country from the inside
I grew up in Bulgaria. I know why your colleague said “ще видим” and meant no. I know the nod that means the opposite of what your body expects, the bureaucracy that runs on knowing someone, the way Bulgarian friendship is slow to open and then absolute, and the winter in Sofia when the smog sits on the city and the mountain disappears for weeks. I also know why you cannot explain to anyone at home why a country this affordable and this beautiful can feel this far away.
Most English-speaking therapists available to expats in Sofia are working from the outside in. I am working from the inside out, and that changes what you have to explain and what you can simply say.
03When your relationship carries the whole posting
Couples here often arrive on one contract. One partner has a role, a team and a reason to get up. The other has a residence card, a language they cannot read, and days that have to be invented. Resentment grows in that gap, usually silently, because complaining about Bulgaria feels ungrateful when the salary is good. And if you came for a Bulgarian partner, there is another layer: the family Sundays, the grandparents with opinions, the name days you did not know existed, and a mother-in-law whose warmth comes with a key to your flat.
I work with individuals and couples in exactly these positions, online, in English, around your working day. The work is building a life in Sofia that has more than one pillar, so the relationship can stop being the only thing holding the move up.
04When the move strains your relationship
A move to Bulgaria often falls unevenly on a couple, one settled by work, the other isolated by admin and language. The relationship can become your only familiar ground here. I work with this directly, see relationship crisis abroad and trailing partner support.
05Why online
A suitable English-speaking therapist can be hard to find locally in Sofia. Online with me gives you consistent English-language support wherever you are and continuity if you move again. Individual GBP70, couples GBP100.
06How I work
We begin where it hurts and make sense of it together, integrative and relational, drawing on attachment, parts work and trauma-informed therapy. If you are unsure online therapy across borders fits, I assess it openly first: suitability.