In this short video, I explain why returning to your home country after years away can feel so disorienting, and how we work through it by video while you resettle.
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Online repatriation psychotherapy helps you when you have moved back, or are about to move back, to the country you once called home, and the return is far harder than anyone warned you. We meet one to one by video, in English, in 1-hour sessions with 50 minutes of therapy, at a time that suits your time zone before, during and after the move home.
I help you understand the reverse culture shock, grieve the life you left abroad and find a way of belonging at home that includes who you have become. This page belongs to my psychotherapy for people living abroad, part of my wider online psychotherapy. If you are moving onward to a new country instead, relocation psychotherapy fits more closely.
Whenever you are ready, you can set up a free 30-minute call, choose a session, look at my client policy or get in touch with me.
Online repatriation psychotherapy is for adults returning to their home country after years abroad, who find that home no longer fits the way it once did. You may have come back for a job, for ageing parents or because a contract ended. You want to make sense of the return and build a life at home that feels like your own again.
Not every move needs this page. If one of these lines describes you better, the linked page will be a stronger match.
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These reviews describe clients’ experiences of working with me. They come from my wider practice and do not all relate to online sessions. Each person’s experience is their own, and a review does not promise a particular outcome.
“If I look back over the last 5 months of practice, the people struggling most with a return home were the ones who expected it to be easy. They prepared for the move abroad for months and for the move back for a weekend. I think that is the central mistake. Coming home is a move, and it carries a loss. In sessions I often hear one voice asking ‘Why does nobody here want to know who I became?’ and another saying ‘Fine, I will keep it to myself and get on with it.’ Some people also carry a third voice that pulls both ways at once: ‘I need my family close again, yet every visit makes me want to run.’ When the return is treated as a real transition, people usually find their footing.”
Mark Colclough, MA, psychotherapist and EFT couples therapist
I am Mark Colclough, MA. I have practised since 2004 and offer online psychotherapy and couples therapy in English.
My training brings together your emotions, your thoughts and your relationships. My deep passion is the moment when what happens between you finally makes sense, to each of you and to each other. I have lived and worked in nine countries, so I know something of life across languages, cultures and borders.
Read about my background, or explore online psychotherapy and online couples therapy.
I meet regularly with experienced psychotherapists to reflect on my work, question my understanding and develop my skills. Supervision is part of the professional care I bring to individual and couples work, including online sessions.
My focus is thoughtful practice, integrity and responsibility.
You are welcome to ask about the kind of support you need.
Tell me where you are based and your time zone. We can then consider whether online sessions together are suitable.
Camille is 45 and moved back to Lyon last spring after 9 years in Melbourne, to be near her father after his stroke. Her Australian partner came with her and is struggling with French. She visits her father every second day and feels like a teenager again around her older brother. At dinner parties she bites her tongue when people dismiss Australia. At night she scrolls through photos of the beach she used to swim at before work.
I would begin with what Camille lost in leaving Melbourne, because nobody around her has acknowledged it. In a first video session she would probably notice how quickly she slips back into being the dutiful younger sister, and how angry that makes her.
I have presented this clinical example as a compound of 22 years of clinical practice.
You expected coming home to be the easy part, and instead you feel more lost than you did abroad.
There is no right moment to begin and no right reason. You might come before you fly back, in the first unsettled months, or a year later when you thought it should have passed. A sense that home no longer fits is enough. You do not need a diagnosis or a crisis. In 22 years of practice, and from having moved between 9 countries myself, I know when the strain of returning has become a pattern that needs attention rather than time.
I will help you see what is happening, what keeps it going and what needs to change now that you are back. Use the 6 questions below to judge whether your return calls for that.
If so, take the tiredness seriously. You may be juggling a new job, housing, schools and family visits while pretending none of it is a big deal, because you are only going home. The effort of acting settled is draining in itself.
I would look at whether this fatigue belongs to the first months of return or has become how you live. That helps us tell passing strain from something deeper. If this sounds like you, book a session with me and we look at what is draining you.
Yes, both can be true. Relief protects your connection to family, language and roots. Grief protects the self you built abroad: the friends, the freedom, the version of you that people at home have never met.
I do not see either feeling as the wrong one. In my way of working we give each part a voice and ask what it is protecting. I help you make room for the grief, so you can stop measuring home against abroad every day and start choosing what you want from life back here.
After years away, you may long to be seen by the people who knew you before. When a friend changes the subject or a parent talks over your stories, it can feel like proof that you no longer matter in the same way.
Your wish to be known by your own people is legitimate, and I will not make you feel needy for it. We look at the fear underneath, which is often an older fear of being overlooked within the family, and you practise asking directly for the kind of attention you need.
Many returners describe this. You make plans to see everyone, then feel suffocated an hour into the visit. You want closeness and you want to escape, sometimes in the same afternoon, and you cannot explain the swing to yourself, let alone to them.
I help you slow this cycle down, so we can see exactly when the wish to connect becomes a wish to get away. Often it is the moment an old role is handed back to you. I have compassion for that protective reaction, and I will also ask you to own it when it leaves people you love confused.
Many returners learn quickly to stop talking about where they lived. It feels safer to say little than to watch people’s eyes glaze over. Gradually you become polite, practical and private, and the most important years of your adult life go unspoken.
My view is that some privacy is wise, and I will not push you to share everything with everyone. I help you see what the silence protects you from and what it costs you. We look for the few people who can hear more of your story, and for ways to say where your limits are before quiet becomes isolation.
Abroad, you may have been the foreigner, the adventurous one or the person who made a life from scratch. At home that identity has no place to stand. You may feel neither local nor international, and ashamed that something as ordinary as coming home has shaken you so much.
I help you look at which parts of the person you became abroad you want to keep, which belong to the past, and what new shape your life at home could take. I will challenge you when you shrink yourself to fit back in, but I will not tell you who to be. The aim is to feel at home in yourself, wherever you live.
If you recognised your return in these questions, book a free call to talk about it, or choose a session time if you already know you want to start.
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Tell me briefly what kind of support you are looking for.
Include your country and time zone so we can discuss whether online work together is possible and find a suitable time.
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Understanding why the return is so hard matters, but our work also has to change how you live at home, talk to your family and plan what comes next.
I will help you understand what the return is stirring up in you, see the patterns that keep you stuck between 2 countries and make changes you can feel in a normal week at home.
From 22 years of practice and many moves of my own, I have found that people resettle more fully when the therapist takes an active role. I tell you what I see, I guide the focus and I question stories that keep you stuck. These 6 questions show what we work towards.
Related reading: Why does home feel foreign now that I am back? and Should I go back home, or stay where I am?.
I help you separate the main difficulty from the surrounding noise. Low mood, irritability and restlessness are often signs rather than causes. Below them may sit grief for the life abroad, the loss of a role or status, an old family dynamic that has come back, or a sense that you no longer fit anywhere.
I give you my view of what is happening, what needs attention first and which explanations are keeping you stuck. When you want to begin, book a session with me and we sort through it together.
By learning the early signs. There is often a sequence: you walk into your parents’ kitchen, your voice changes, you start to agree with things you do not believe, and later you feel resentful. Spotting the first step gives you a moment to respond as the adult you are now.
Together we replay the family scene slowly, frame by frame, to find what sets the old role off and what it shields. Spotting it is only a start. We practise a different response, in sessions and between them, until you can use it at a Sunday family lunch.
Steadying yourself does not mean pretending you are happy to be back. Some of the overwhelm is a fair reaction to a huge change. Some comes from older patterns the return has stirred.
I help you notice the rise earlier and understand what your body is responding to, perhaps a family gathering, a bureaucratic office or a street that holds old memories. I will ask you to practise small daily ways of settling between our sessions.
Clear speaking begins with knowing what you feel, what you need and what is yours to carry. Fear of sounding arrogant about your life abroad, or a build-up of resentment, can lead you either to say nothing or to snap over something trivial.
Together we find words that are honest, specific and well judged, such as telling a parent you need more say in your own time, or telling a friend you miss talking about your years away. I challenge you when you silence yourself, and also when you expect others to understand an experience you have not shared with them.
The choice becomes clearer once you separate guilt, duty and other people’s expectations from what you actually know and want. Many returners keep a suitcase half packed for years, never committing to home and never leaving, while the indecision itself costs them.
I help you look honestly at the realistic consequences of staying and of leaving, and at what would have to change for either to work. You get my honest view, and I will say so when I see you avoiding the question, but the decision remains yours. If you move abroad again, relocation psychotherapy can support that move.
Change has to show up in your actual weeks. You may need friendships with people who have also lived abroad, clearer limits with your family, work that uses what you learned, or regular contact with the country you left so it stays part of you.
We sort together what needs to change and what can stay. Your international outlook is not a problem to be fixed, and neither is your attachment to home. The aim is a life back here that honours both, with choices that follow your own values.
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No diagnosis, polished account or perfect phrasing is needed, only the return as you are living it now.
From the first hour I listen for the heart of the return, name it with you and set a clear direction. Your wider life story can arrive bit by bit.
For most returners, structured individual work in my online psychotherapy is the right setting, because the return is shaking your own sense of self. If the move home is straining your relationship and your partner is willing, online couples therapy offers long-term relational development and healing. When you already expect the work to stretch over the first year back, a therapy bundle gives you savings and the steadiness of a plan.
I ask why you came back, how long you lived abroad, what the return has been like so far and what feels hardest now. I also ask what you have already tried.
Before we finish, I give you my first understanding and suggest how we might work. You then decide whether my approach feels right for you. If you prefer to speak first, book a free 30-minute call before you commit.
Individual work is right when the return is mostly unsettling you: your identity, your mood, your place in your family, your work and your sense of belonging. We can look closely at your relationships with parents, friends and partner without any of them joining the call.
In individual sessions I bring direction, continuity and honest challenge, and having the same therapist from before the move to after it can matter a great deal. If your difficulties reach beyond the return, online psychotherapy describes my structured individual work as a whole.
Couples therapy is the stronger choice when the relationship itself needs sustained attention. If one of you wanted to return and the other did not, if a foreign partner is struggling in your home country, or if you keep having the same fight about where to live, working together usually helps more.
In couples sessions I help you both see the cycle between you, own your part in it and find safer ways of being close while life is changing. Online couples therapy is long-term relational development and healing, and some people begin alone with me and bring their partner in later.
The pace depends on how hard the return is hitting you, how full your week is and how much continuity the work needs.
I usually suggest weekly or fortnightly sessions at first. I will tell you honestly if the gaps are too long to hold the thread, and when we can meet less often. Because we meet online, you can start while still abroad and continue in the same rhythm once you are home.
A bundle makes sense when you know the return will need support for a while and you want continuity rather than deciding after each session whether to go on.
It also trims the price of every session and puts an agreed structure around the months of resettling. See therapy discounts and bundles for the options, and the cards lower down this page.
Our work has done its job when you feel more at home in yourself, can be with your family as the adult you are now, and make choices about where and how you live with clarity. You may still miss the place you left, but the missing no longer runs your days.
We review progress openly and I do not keep you in therapy for its own sake. Coming back later, perhaps before another move, does not mean the earlier work failed.
Not sure this is where to start? Here is how online repatriation psychotherapy compares with the options returners most often consider.
| Option | Choose it when | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Online repatriation psychotherapy (this page) | You have moved back home, or are about to, and it does not fit. | Weekly 1-hour video sessions at first |
| Relocation psychotherapy | You are moving on to a new country instead of going home. | Video sessions around the move |
| Online third culture psychotherapy | You grew up between countries and no place feels fully like home. | Steady video sessions over time |
| Online identity crisis therapy | The question of who you are now matters more than the move. | 1-hour video sessions at your pace |
Online repatriation psychotherapy is individual psychotherapy by video, in English, for adults returning to their home country after living abroad. It helps with reverse culture shock, the grief for the life you left, the return of old family roles and the question of who you are now, so you can build a life at home that fits you.
I work in depth with the whole person, including the older family patterns that often resurface on return. This work sits inside my psychotherapy for people living abroad.
Come when the return is costing you sleep, mood, closeness or direction, or when you still feel like a stranger at home months after arriving. Your own sense that something is off is enough reason.
I look at how long you have felt this way, whether it is spreading into work and relationships, and what you have stopped doing since you came back. If it is not easing with time, it deserves proper attention.
Yes, often it can. I cannot make home feel the way it did before you left, and I do not promise a particular outcome. What therapy can do is help you understand why the return is so disorienting, grieve what you have lost and find new ways to belong.
In my clinical experience, reverse culture shock is often harder than the original culture shock, because nobody expects it, including you.
No. Missing the place where you lived an important part of your life is a normal form of grief. It does not mean you made the wrong choice, and it does not make you ungrateful to your family.
I help you make room for that grief without letting it run your life. We also look at whether the missing points to something you need, such as a certain kind of freedom or community, that you could build at home.
Because coming home brings back both the closeness you longed for and the old roles you outgrew. Some days you want your family near. Other days you need distance to stay the person you became abroad. The swing is not a flaw in your character.
I help you see when you move towards them and when you pull back, what each move is trying to protect and what it costs on both sides. Then we look for steadier ways to stay close without losing yourself.
We start with where you are now. I ask about your time abroad, why you came back, what daily life is like and what you hope will change. By the end you will have my first reading and a suggested way forward.
There is nothing to prepare. Book your first session when you are ready, or begin with a free 30-minute call if you want to meet me first.
Plan for a course of sessions over the first months back, rather than a single conversation. That is often enough to make sense of the return and change some of the patterns that make it hard. If old family pain has resurfaced, the work usually takes longer.
From what I have seen with returners, a clear first stretch with honest reviews does far more than open-ended drifting. At every review we weigh up, together, whether the return still needs this rhythm.
Yes, and that is a strong reason to work by video. We can start while you are still abroad, carry on through the move and continue once you are home, without you having to find and explain yourself to a new therapist.
You need a private room, headphones, a reliable connection and a laptop or tablet. The calendar always shows times in your current time zone, and we can clear up any questions on a free call.
Repatriation work is individual psychotherapy, booked as 1-hour online sessions with 50 minutes of therapy. The current fees, in US dollars, are set out on my prices page.
If you expect to need support through the first months back, a therapy bundle saves 10 per cent on each session and gives you a structured plan. Read more on therapy discounts and bundles.
Choose a time on the booking page, or request a free 30-minute call if you want to talk first. Whichever country you are in today, the times appear in your local time zone.
If nothing fits around the move, or the return has become acute, write to me. I keep some room for acute cases, usually a time within days, described under acute psychotherapy, living abroad. Book that first session, and we begin with the return as it is.
You can also send me an email
I want therapy to help you understand your experience and make choices you can use in everyday life. We pay attention to feelings, needs and the responses that happen before you have time to think.
Our online room should offer enough trust and honesty to explore what is difficult. I bring attention and professional judgement. You bring your experience, questions and the right to say when something does not fit.
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P.S. I’ll call you in a bit!
