In this short video, I explain how a childhood spent moving between countries shapes the way you attach, belong and say goodbye as an adult, and what we can work on together by video.
You can also send me an email
Online third culture psychotherapy helps adults who spent much of their childhood in countries other than their parents’ own, because of a parent’s diplomatic, military, missionary, aid or corporate career. 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, wherever you live now.
I help you understand how those moves shaped your sense of belonging, your friendships and your way of leaving, and I help you grieve losses that were never named when you were young. This page is part of my psychotherapy for people living abroad, within my wider online psychotherapy. If your struggle is mainly about one recent move, relocation psychotherapy is a closer match.
To take the next step, you can request a free 30-minute call, book a session time, read through my client policy or message me.
Online third culture psychotherapy is for adults who grew up moving between countries and cultures, often because of a parent’s work, and who now feel the cost of that childhood in their adult lives. You may be restless, unsure where you belong or quick to leave people and places. You want to understand how your upbringing shaped you and build a sense of home that does not depend on a map.
Some international lives call for a different focus. If one of these lines fits you more closely, the linked page will serve you better.
You can also send me an email
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.
“Across the 9 countries I have lived and worked in, and having moved country myself at 12, I have come to believe that adults who grew up between cultures are rarely as rootless as they fear. Their roots are simply in people and in moments, not in places. The difficulty is that every move cut some of those roots, and nobody stopped to mourn them. So the grief stays frozen. Under the easy charm I often hear a hidden question, ‘If I let you matter, will you be gone by summer?’, and alongside it a practised reply, ‘I will leave before anyone can leave me, it is easier that way.’ When that old grief is finally allowed, people can begin to stay.”
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.
Tom is 36 and works in Toronto as a consultant. His father was an aid worker, so Tom grew up in Nairobi, Jakarta and Brussels before boarding school in England. He is warm, quick and liked by everyone. His girlfriend of 3 years has asked him to move in with her. Since then he has been applying for jobs in Singapore and Dubai, and he cannot explain why to her, or to himself.
I would not start with the job applications. I would start with the goodbyes Tom had to make at 8, 12 and 15, and with who helped him through them. In a first video session he would probably notice that the urge to leave arrives exactly when someone asks him to stay.
I have presented this clinical example as a compound of 22 years of clinical practice.
You have adapted to every new place you were taken to, and the adapting has left you unsure where you yourself belong.
There is no correct moment and no correct reason to begin. A sense that your upbringing between countries is shaping your adult life in ways you do not choose is reason enough. You do not need a diagnosis, a crisis or a neat explanation. In 22 years of practice, and from my own move between cultures as a child, I know when restlessness and rootlessness have become a pattern that deserves real attention.
I will help you see what is happening, what keeps it in place and what you want to change. These 6 questions may help you decide whether to reach out.
If so, the tiredness is worth listening to. You may change cities, jobs or friendship groups every few years and call it adventure, while some part of you is exhausted from being new once more.
I would look at whether the moves are free choices or an old rhythm repeating itself. That tells us whether this is a lifestyle you love or a pattern that keeps you from settling. If this sounds like you, book a session with me and we look at the rhythm together.
Yes, both can be true at once, because they protect different needs. The longing for roots protects your wish to be known over time. The urge to leave protects you from the pain of losing people, which you learned early and often. When both are active, you may sabotage the very stability you crave.
I do not treat either wish as the problem. In the depth work I trained in, we meet these as parts of you, each with something to say. I help you understand what each is guarding, so that staying or going becomes a choice rather than a reflex.
If friends always disappeared when you moved, distance can still feel like the end of a relationship. A friend who forgets to reply, a partner on a work trip or a group chat that goes quiet may set off an old alarm. You may check, reach out again or hold on more tightly than you would like.
Your wish to stay connected is legitimate, and I will not shame it. What we work on is the alarm that sounds before any loss has happened. We look at its roots in those childhood goodbyes, and you practise asking for contact directly rather than bracing for the next ending.
Many people who grew up moving are skilled at instant connection. You can be warm, interested and likeable with strangers anywhere. Yet when someone wants to go deeper, you may become busy, vague or suddenly ready for the next place.
I help you slow this down so we can see exactly when closeness starts to feel dangerous. Often it is when the other person begins to count on you. I have real compassion for that protective habit, which once kept you safe, and I will also ask you to own it when it leaves people hurt.
Learning to rely on yourself through every move can make other people’s needs feel heavy. A partner who wants to plan the future, or a friend who wants to see you every week, can feel like pressure. You may become practical, change the subject or quietly create distance.
My view is that self-reliance was a sensible response to your childhood, and I will not ask you to give it up. I help you see what the distance protects you from and how to stay present without feeling engulfed. You learn to name your limits before withdrawal becomes disconnection.
Adapting to each new country may have meant changing your accent, your manners and even your opinions to fit in. As an adult, you might not know which version is the real one. That uncertainty can feel like emptiness or fraud, when it is actually the result of years of skilled adaptation.
I help you sort through the different versions of yourself and find what runs through all of them. I will challenge you when you hide behind the chameleon, but I will not hand you an identity. The aim is a steadier sense of who you are that you can carry anywhere.
If your childhood between countries showed up in these questions, book a free call to talk it through, or choose a session time if you are ready to begin.
You can also send me an email
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.
You do not need to explain your whole story in your first message.
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Understanding how your childhood moves shaped you matters, but the work must also change how you stay, attach and decide in your adult life.
I will help you understand how growing up between cultures shaped you, recognise the patterns of leaving and holding back that came from it, and make changes you can feel in your relationships and choices. Insight into your childhood is useful, but only when it changes how you live now.
In 22 years of practice I have found that people who grew up moving need a therapist who stays steady and engaged. I tell you what I notice, I guide our focus and I challenge explanations that keep you on the move. These 6 questions show what we work towards.
Related reading: Where am I from when I grew up in 2 countries?, Where do I belong if neither country feels like home? and Will therapy reach me if English is not my first language?.
I help you separate the core pattern from its many surface forms. Restlessness, short relationships and trouble with commitment are often signs rather than causes. Underneath may sit unmourned losses, a deep habit of self-reliance, or a belief that every bond is temporary.
I tell you what I think is happening, what needs attention first and which stories about yourself keep you stuck. When you are ready to look, book a session with me and we begin with the first goodbye you remember.
By learning to read its early signs. There is often a sequence: someone gets closer, you feel a flicker of unease, you start browsing jobs abroad or finding faults in them. Seeing the flicker gives you a moment to choose differently.
In our sessions I help you take that sequence apart and look at what triggers it and what it shields you from. Seeing it is only part of the work. We practise staying with the unease, in sessions and in between, until you can use it in an ordinary week with your partner.
Steadying yourself does not mean forcing yourself to stay put or pretending the restlessness is not there. It means being present enough to feel it and decide what to do. Some restlessness is curiosity worth honouring. Some is an old alarm about losing people.
I help you notice the build-up sooner and understand what your body is responding to, perhaps an anniversary, a commitment or a feeling of being known. Between sessions I will ask you to practise simple daily ways of settling yourself.
Saying it plainly starts with knowing your own feeling and need, and which of them are yours to carry. If you learned to manage feelings alone during each move, saying “I need you” or “I need space” directly may feel strange or risky.
Together we find words that are honest, specific and proportionate, such as telling your partner that talk of buying a house frightens you and why. I challenge you when you go silent and vanish, and also when you expect others to read the cues of a childhood they did not share.
Decisions become clearer when you separate restlessness, fear of loss and other people’s expectations from what you genuinely know and value. Some people who grew up moving never decide at all, keeping every option open so nothing can be lost.
I help you look honestly at your options and what each one would ask of you, including the cost of always keeping one foot out of the door. You get my professional view, and I will challenge avoidance, but the choice remains yours.
Home may never be one place, and that is fine. Lasting change often shows up as a few relationships you allow to deepen, a place you choose to stay in for longer than usual, and rituals that link your past countries to your present life.
Together we work out what needs to change and what is already right for you. Your adaptability and international outlook are gifts, not faults. The aim is a life in which you belong to people and choices you have made yourself, wherever on the map that is.
You can also send me an email
You do not need a diagnosis, a clear timeline of every move or the right words. We start with your life now and what you want to change.
When you begin, I listen carefully, help you name the main difficulty and give our work a direction from the very first hour. You do not have to list every country and school before we start.
For most adults who grew up moving, structured individual work in my online psychotherapy fits well, because the work is about your inner patterns and history. If restlessness is straining a relationship and your partner is willing, online couples therapy offers long-term relational development and healing. If you already know you want a longer course, a therapy bundle gives you savings and a plan you have committed to.
I ask what brought you to therapy now, how your life is going, what feels hardest and what you have already tried.
By the end of the session, I share my first understanding and suggest how we could work. You then decide whether my approach makes sense to you. If you would like to speak first, request a free 30-minute call.
Individual work is right when the focus is your inner life: your sense of belonging, your relationship with change, your grief and the way you attach to people. We can explore your partner, friends and family in depth without any of them joining the call.
In individual work I provide direction, continuity and honest challenge, and for someone used to endings, simply staying in the same therapy over time can be meaningful. If your difficulties go wider than your upbringing, online psychotherapy describes my structured individual work as a whole.
Couples therapy fits better when the relationship needs attention in its own right. If you and your partner keep clashing over settling down, if one of you keeps pulling back while the other pursues, or if trust has been damaged by sudden departures, working together usually helps more.
In couples sessions I help you both see the cycle between you, own your share of it and build safer ways of being close. Online couples therapy is long-term relational development and healing, and some people start with individual work and bring their partner in later.
The right pace depends on how strong the patterns are, how much space your life has and how much continuity the work needs.
I usually suggest weekly or fortnightly sessions at first. I will tell you honestly if longer gaps would weaken the work, and when we can meet less often. If you move country during therapy, we simply continue by video, and noticing how that move affects you can become part of our work.
A bundle makes sense when you know the work will take a number of sessions and you want continuity rather than deciding each time whether to come back. Committing in advance can be a meaningful step in itself.
A bundle reduces the cost of each session and gives you the safety of an agreed plan. The options are set out on therapy discounts and bundles and in the cards further down.
Our work has done its job when you can choose to stay or go freely, allow relationships to deepen and feel at home in yourself. The restlessness may still visit, but it no longer makes your decisions for you.
We look at progress openly, and I have no wish to make therapy one more place you cannot leave. We can space sessions out, pause or end once the work has served its purpose, and we plan that ending carefully, because good endings may be something you never had. Returning later does not mean the earlier work failed.
Not sure this is the right starting point? Here is how third culture psychotherapy compares with the options people who grew up abroad most often consider.
| Option | Choose it when | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Online third culture psychotherapy (this page) | You grew up between countries and feel the effects as an adult. | Weekly 1-hour video sessions at first |
| Online repatriation psychotherapy | You are returning to a country you once called home. | A focused course of video sessions |
| Relocation psychotherapy | One recent move abroad is the main strain. | Video sessions around the move |
| Online attachment therapy | How you bond and pull away matters more than geography. | Steady video sessions over time |
Online third culture psychotherapy is individual psychotherapy by video, in English, for adults who grew up moving between countries, often as the children of diplomats, military families, missionaries, aid workers or international employees. It helps you understand how that childhood shaped your belonging, relationships and choices, and how to build a steadier sense of home.
I work in depth, with the whole person, including the losses and adaptations of your early years and what you inherited from your family. You will find it under my psychotherapy for people living abroad.
Come when your upbringing seems to be shaping your adult life in ways you do not choose: restlessness, short relationships, a lack of belonging or grief you cannot place. Trust your own sense that the pattern has gone on long enough.
I look at how long these patterns have been with you, where they show up and what they have cost you. If they keep repeating whatever country you live in, they deserve proper attention.
Yes, often it can. I cannot give you a single home country, and I do not promise a specific outcome. What therapy can do is help you grieve what was lost, understand how you learned to belong everywhere and nowhere, and build belonging in relationships and choices.
In my clinical experience, many adults who grew up moving discover that their sense of not belonging is tied to goodbyes nobody helped them with. When we give those goodbyes their due, belonging often becomes more possible.
No. Childhood moves often bring real losses: friends, homes, schools, pets, languages and whole ways of life. If nobody acknowledged them at the time, the grief can stay unfinished for decades.
I help you name those losses and give them the weight they deserve. Many people find that once the old grief is allowed, present-day restlessness and detachment begin to ease.
Both are ways of coping with repeated goodbyes. Fast closeness lets you connect before the next move. Distance protects you from the pain when it comes. Neither is a flaw in your character, only a sensible childhood strategy that still runs.
I help you see which way you move under pressure, what it is trying to protect and what it costs you and others now. Then we build steadier options: letting people closer gradually, and taking space without leaving.
We start with your life as it is now. I ask what brought you, what your relationships and work are like, and what you hope will change. We may sketch the countries you grew up in, and you leave with my early sense of the pattern and a proposal for our work.
There is nothing to prepare. You can book that first hour directly, or try a free 30-minute call to see how talking with me feels.
Plan for a longer course of sessions rather than a quick fix, often several months. Patterns that formed across a whole childhood of moves usually need time to understand and loosen. If there were other painful experiences, such as boarding school or family instability, the work usually takes longer.
Working with adults who grew up moving, I have seen a clearly agreed first stretch with open reviews achieve far more than drifting. At each review we decide together whether to continue, meet less often or move towards an ending.
Yes, and for many people who grew up moving, it suits them well. Video means our work does not have to end when you next change country, which can be important if endings have shaped your life.
You need a private room, headphones, a stable internet connection and a laptop or tablet. The calendar shows all times in your own time zone, and we can answer any doubts on a free call.
Third culture work is individual psychotherapy, booked as 1-hour online sessions with 50 minutes of therapy. Fees in US dollars are kept up to date on my prices page.
If you know the work will take a while, a therapy bundle saves 10 per cent on each session and gives you a structured plan. The options are on therapy discounts and bundles.
Pick a first session on the booking page, or ask for a free 30-minute call if you would like to talk first. Times are shown in the local time of wherever you are living now.
If no time suits you, or your situation feels acute, write to me. I keep some room for acute cases, usually a time within days, and acute psychotherapy, living abroad explains how that works. Choose a time, and we begin with the life you have now.
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!
