In this short video, I explain why men so often hold out until something gives, and what our video sessions are like once you decide not to wait.
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Online psychotherapy for men helps you deal with what has been piling up out of sight, whether it shows as a short temper, restless nights, longer hours at work, an extra drink most evenings or a quiet at home that nobody mentions. It is just you and me on a video call, in English, for 1-hour sessions with 50 minutes of therapy, booked at a time that suits your own time zone.
I help you put words to what you feel and change the patterns underneath it. This is the men’s door into my online psychotherapy: that page describes the same depth of work for anyone, while this one starts from the ways men tend to carry and conceal trouble. There are 11 more focused men’s pages, on loneliness, depression, being the nice guy, anger, masculinity and identity, midlife, sexuality, relationships, fatherhood, young men and men living abroad.
From here you are free to arrange a free 30-minute call, pick a session time, read my client policy or write to me.
Online psychotherapy for men is for men who have managed on their own for a long time and are starting to see what it costs them. You live anywhere in the world, you want a therapist who speaks plainly and takes you seriously, and you want something in your life to actually change.
This is the general starting point for men. When one theme clearly leads, the linked page goes more directly to it.
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.
“In my experience, the men who reach me by video have usually been negotiating with themselves for a year or more. They tell themselves it is not bad enough yet, that a holiday or a new job will settle it. Under that bargaining I hear 2 questions. One asks, ‘If I stopped coping, would anyone even see it?’ The other answers, ‘Keep it to yourself and handle it.’ Some men hold a third as well: ‘Know me, but do not come close.’ I think the bargaining itself is the problem. A man who waits for a crisis to earn the right to help has accepted a rule nobody should live by. You can come while you are still standing.”
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.
Patrick is 44 and manages logistics for a shipping firm in Rotterdam. He coaches his daughter’s football team and is the man the neighbours call when a fuse blows. Since the winter he has slept badly, and the one beer after dinner has become 3. His wife says he answers her questions without hearing them. His closest friend moved to Canada, and their calls have shrunk to birthdays. Patrick is annoyed that he cannot fix this the way he fixes everything else.
I would begin with his actual week rather than his feelings, because the week is where Patrick lives. In a first video session we would probably find that the beer, the coaching and the constant helping share one purpose: none of them leaves a quiet moment in which he might feel how far away his friend has gone.
I have presented this clinical example as a compound of 22 years of clinical practice.
You have carried on, worked harder and said nothing, and that no longer holds things together.
No moment is the correct one, and no reason is the required one. A feeling that something is off, or that ordinary life has started to take too much effort, is enough to get in touch. You do not have to arrive with a diagnosis, a neat account or a breakdown behind you. Over 22 years of practice I have learned to see when strain has hardened into a pattern that needs proper work.
I start by helping you see what is happening, what keeps it going and what has to change, and I say plainly what I notice. These 6 questions can help you judge whether to book now.
If so, do not wave it away. You still show up, deliver and pay the bills, but very little of it feels like yours, and the part of the day you look forward to is the hour alone with a screen or a glass.
I would ask how long it has been like this and what carries you through the evenings, so we can tell a heavy season from a settled pattern. If that sounds like your week, book a session with me and we will look at it without dressing it up.
Both can be true, because each protects something different. Part of you takes pride in needing nobody. Another part is tired and would quite like to be asked. So you say ‘all good’, and a small part of you is disappointed every time it works.
Neither side is the weak one in my eyes. I help you hear what each is guarding, so you can decide when to stand alone and when to let someone in, rather than leaving it to habit.
For a lot of men it can, though almost none of them say so. A short reply, a partner who seems far away or a colleague who stops copying you in sets off a churning you keep to yourself. You replay what you said, make yourself more useful, and do not settle until things feel right again.
Wanting to matter to the people around you is not neediness, and I will not treat it that way. What I help you change is how fast the alarm goes off. You learn to ask plainly for what you need, instead of trying to earn it without a word.
That swing is common, and it baffles men as much as the people who love them. Closeness is what you want, and the moment it arrives it feels like pressure.
I help you slow the swing down until we can find the exact point where wanting contact turns into needing to get away. I respect why you learned to guard yourself, and I will also hold you to changing the moves that wound the people closest to you.
Plenty of men shut down under emotional pressure, and from outside it can look like calm. You turn practical, play it down, or disappear into the garage, a long run or the phone. The cost is that the people around you stop knowing what is happening inside you, and in time you stop knowing too.
My view is that your distance is doing a job, and you are allowed space. I help you stay in the conversation a little longer without feeling swamped. You learn to say ‘Give me 20 minutes and I will come back to this’, and then you come back.
After years of providing, performing and meeting expectations, a man can know his role far better than he knows himself. Perhaps you built your life around your father’s picture of a man, or your employer’s picture of success, and it has stopped fitting. That is a sign of long adapting, not of damage.
I help you look at which parts of your life are really yours and which you took on from your family and the men before you. I will push back when I see you shrinking to keep the peace, but I will not give you a ready-made model of manhood. You decide what kind of man you are.
If some of this sounds like you, ask for a free call if you want to check me out first, or book a session if you would rather get going.
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.
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Knowing why you shut down is a start, and the work also has to change how you talk, sleep, argue and choose.
Working with me will help you understand what lies under the stress, the temper or the silence, notice the patterns that keep it in place and make changes the people around you can see. Insight into why you pull away, without learning how to stay, seldom changes much.
I have been a student of men’s work since 2010. Eli Buren, a dear friend and mentor, has been a central influence. I have sat in his work many times. I also draw on Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette, Robert Glover, Sam Keen and David Deida. I have used this work to add to and deepen my training as a psychotherapist.
Across 22 years of practice I have seen that men usually do well with a therapist who takes an active part. I will say what I see, give you things to try between sessions and challenge any explanation that keeps you stuck. Here is what we work towards, in 6 questions.
Related reading: Why is it so hard to ask for help when I’m struggling?, Why do I get so angry over small things? and My wife wants a divorce and I don’t. What now?.
I help you tell the core problem apart from everything that has grown around it. The short fuse, the late nights and the extra drinks are real, but they are often signals rather than causes. Below them is usually something more particular: a loss that never got its due, a fear of letting your family down, or a loneliness you no longer notice.
I bring structure. I tell you what I think is happening, what deserves attention first and which stories are keeping you stuck, such as ‘that is just the way I am’. When it suits you, book a session with me and we start there.
You can learn to notice the early warnings. Before you snap or go quiet there is a sequence: a clenched jaw, heat in your chest, a thought like ‘here we go’. Once you know the first link, you have a moment in which to choose something else.
In sessions I help you slow that sequence down and look at what sets it off, what it shields and what it costs. Seeing it is only half the job. We practise a different response until you can reach for it on a tired weekday evening with nobody prompting you.
Staying steady is not swallowing the feeling or acting cool. It is staying present enough to choose what you do next. Some anger tells you something true about a line someone crossed. Some is an old alarm going off where the danger ended long ago.
I help you catch the rise sooner and understand what your body is responding to. Together we find ways of slowing it that suit you, and you practise them between sessions. A few minutes on most days will take you further than one good hour with me each week.
Saying it clearly starts with knowing what you feel, what you need and what is actually yours to carry. Plenty of men were never shown how to name a feeling, so they joke, say nothing, then let it all out at once.
I help you find plain words that match the size of what you feel. I will challenge you when you swallow what matters, and just as much when you expect your partner or colleagues to guess. We often rehearse a real conversation, perhaps with a brother in another country, until you can say it and stay for the reply.
Choices get clearer once you separate fear, duty, habit and other people’s expectations from what you actually know and want. Some men stall. Others quit a job or a relationship mainly to end the strain of not knowing.
I help you look honestly at the options and what each one would ask of you. You will get my view, and I will say so when you are avoiding the choice, but the choice is yours. When the question is about work, ageing or what the second half of life is for, online midlife crisis therapy for men goes further.
Real change has to reach past our sessions, into your Monday mornings and the conversation you have been postponing. You may need firmer limits at work, less to drink, or friendships where you are not always the strong one.
Together we sort out what needs to change and what is fine as it is. Your drive, your loyalty and your need for time alone are not the problem, and I will not try to file them down. A circle of other men can help too, and online therapy and men’s groups describes how the 2 can work side by side.
You can also send me an email
You need neither the right words nor a tidy story. I start with what is going on in your life now and what you want to be different.
When you begin, I listen carefully, help you name the central difficulty and give our work a clear direction from early on. Many men open with ‘I am not sure why I am here’, and that is a perfectly good opening.
This is a focused form of my online psychotherapy, structured individual work on your inner life and your relationships. If the main trouble sits between you and your partner, and your partner is willing, online couples therapy offers long-term relational development and healing. For longer pieces of work, a therapy bundle brings real savings and a plan we agree together.
In the first session I ask what made you book now, what is hardest at the moment, what you have already tried and what you would like to be different. I also ask about work, sleep, drinking and friendships, because that is usually where the story shows itself.
By the end I give you my first honest reading and suggest a direction. Then you decide whether this is useful to you. Prefer a conversation before you commit? Book a free 30-minute call first.
Individual work suits you when the focus is you: your moods, your reactions, your history, how you see yourself as a man and how you handle work and people. We can go deep into your relationships without anyone else joining the call.
Week by week I keep the thread, give direction and challenge you honestly. For my work with every adult, not only men, online psychotherapy describes my individual work as a whole.
Couples therapy is the wiser choice when the relationship as a whole needs sustained work. If the same argument keeps coming back, if trust has been broken, or if you and your partner live more like housemates than a couple, working on it together usually achieves more.
In couples work I help you both see the cycle between you, own your part in it and build steadier ways of being together. Online couples therapy is long-term relational development and healing.
The pace depends on how heavy things are, how much room your life has and how much continuity the work needs.
I usually suggest starting every week or every other week, and I will tell you straight when the rhythm should change. If you travel a lot or work in rotations, back-to-back online psychotherapy lets us place several sessions over a few days.
A bundle makes sense when you already expect several sessions and want continuity, instead of asking yourself after each one whether to come back.
A bundle lowers the cost of each session and gives you the steadiness of a plan. I will help you judge whether one fits. The options are on therapy discounts and bundles.
The work is finished when you have more choice in how you respond, more honesty in your relationships and less need to numb yourself to get through the week. The old pattern may still show up, but it no longer gives the orders.
I review progress with you openly and do not encourage dependency or therapy without an end. Coming back a few years later with something new is not a sign that anything failed.
Not sure where to begin? Here is how this page compares with 3 men’s pages people often ask about.
| Option | Choose it when | Pace |
|---|---|---|
| Online psychotherapy for men (this page) | Several things weigh on you, or you cannot yet put a name to what is wrong. | Weekly 1-hour video sessions at first |
| Online therapy for depression in men | Months of flatness, irritability or working every hour have pushed out your usual self. | A steady weekly course by video |
| Online therapy for men in relationships | The strain lives mostly in how you are with your partner. | 1-hour video sessions on your own |
| Online anger management for men | Your temper is hurting people, and you want it to stop. | Video sessions close together at first |
It is individual psychotherapy by video, in English, for men who want to understand and change what is weighing on them. It begins from the way men tend to carry and hide difficulty, and you can start here before you are able to name the problem.
My way of working is integrative: the whole man, not the symptom, and that includes what was handed down to you by earlier generations. It sits within my online psychotherapy and opens onto 11 more focused men’s pages.
Come when your way of coping has started to cost you sleep, health, relationships or enjoyment, or when the people close to you keep saying something is wrong. Your own sense that things are off is reason enough.
With 22 years of practice behind me, I look at how long it has been going on and what you are using to keep it down.
Yes. Many of the men I work with say exactly that in the first minutes. I promise no quick fixes, only a direct conversation that goes somewhere.
In my clinical experience, men often find it easier to talk about something concrete: last Thursday, the argument in the car, the drink they did not need. Men’s groups in many countries, the Danish men’s communities among them, have found that men open up most readily side by side, doing something together. We can start with facts and let the feelings catch up.
It does. Being nudged through the door by a partner, a friend or a sister is one of the most common ways men arrive, and the work can still become entirely yours.
Early on I will want both versions: what your partner notices and what you notice. If it turns out the relationship itself is the main issue, online therapy for men in relationships or couples work may suit you better, and I will tell you so.
Both are ways of staying safe when feelings run high. Keeping quiet holds the peace for a while, but what goes unsaid builds up and comes out in a burst that surprises you as much as anyone. Often it was learned early, in a family where feelings were risky or ignored.
We look at which way you tend to move when the heat rises, and at the price of it. Then we practise steadier options: naming what you feel early, taking a break without vanishing, and coming back to finish the conversation.
We start with your life as it is now: what brought you, how it shows up at work and at home, what you do to cope and what you want to change. Your family comes into it too, since that is where most men learned how to handle pressure.
There is nothing to prepare and no right way to say it. Whenever you are ready, book a first appointment or start with a free call.
Plan on a course of sessions over a few months rather than one conversation. That is often long enough to understand your pattern and start changing it. Older patterns take longer.
After 22 years of practice, I prefer a clear first stretch followed by an honest review to months of drifting. At that review you decide with me whether to carry on, meet less often or stop.
Yes, and for many men it lowers the threshold. There is no waiting room, no chance of meeting a colleague on the stairs and no commute to explain. Video also keeps the work going when you travel or move country.
You need a private space, headphones, a steady connection and a laptop or tablet. Every slot in the calendar appears in your local time, and any doubts can be cleared up on a free call.
Individual psychotherapy is booked as 1-hour online sessions with 50 minutes of therapy in each. My prices page lists what they cost today, in US dollars.
If you expect a longer piece of work, a therapy bundle saves you 10 per cent on every session and gives you a structured plan. See therapy discounts and bundles for the choices.
Go straight to booking your first session, or ask for a free 30-minute call if you would rather talk first. The calendar shows times in your local time zone.
If no time suits you, or things feel acute right now, contact me directly. Some of my week is held back for acute situations, so a time within days is usually possible, as acute online psychotherapy describes. Pick a time, and we begin.
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!
