Sven Collip

A reaction that is too strong. A pattern that keeps returning. An exhaustion with no obvious cause. My first instinct is not to call it a disorder. What is needed first is a place where the weight of it can be met without being judged.

A large part of the suffering does not come from the feelings themselves but from what we think about them — from the demands we place on ourselves and the judgement of our own experience. So I ask early on how you look at what you have described to me.

Often it helps to take the contradiction seriously: one part wants what another fears, and both have their reasons. When these inner parts are given a voice, much that was only felt as a block becomes comprehensible. The aim is then not to silence one of them but to find an understanding from a settled position. In my experience people find considerably more room to move that way than they can see while they are in it.

Several years in a Buddhist monastery shaped the way I work. What mattered there was long, undistracted exposure to my own psychological patterns, with nowhere to step aside to. That experience still informs how I look at change, at crisis, and at what goes on inside a person.

My practice is in Eschweiler, near Aachen in western Germany. Alongside the work I do here, I offer Buddhist psychotherapy online, in English.

This is the part of my work that travels best. It does not depend on a room or a health system, only on the willingness to look closely at what is actually happening. Online sessions are open to people living in the EU or Switzerland; if you live elsewhere, write to me first and we will see what is possible.

The first session is there to understand what brings you, and to see whether I am the right person for it. It commits you to nothing further.