Therapy when you are new to Denmark

The part nobody warns you about

The practical difficulties are the ones people prepare for: the CPR number, the housing, the tax. Those get sorted.

What tends to arrive later, around month eight or somewhere in the second winter, is quieter. You are competent in your job and a beginner at everything else. Your friendships here are all under two years old, and none of them knows who you were before. Your parents are getting older on the other end of a phone call. You are funny in your own language and slightly flat in this one, and you can feel the difference.

Danes are not unfriendly, but adult friendship here forms slowly and often through institutions — work, a forening, a sports club, having children the same age. If you arrived without those, the city can stay politely closed for a long time.

None of this is a disorder. It is also not nothing, and it is a perfectly good reason to talk to someone.

What we often see

• Delayed grief. Something happened before you moved — a death, a divorce, an illness — and the move took all the capacity that mourning it would have needed.
• Relationship strain. One of you moved for the other's job. That imbalance shows up years later, and rarely says its own name. See couples therapy.
• Work stress in a second language. Performing in a language you did not grow up in costs energy every day, and it is invisible to everyone around you. See stress and burnout.
• Old trauma surfacing. Distance and safety can allow something to come up that was not safe to feel where it happened. This is particularly common in people who came here from war or persecution.

Therapy in your second language

You can do good work in English, and most of our international clients do. But be aware of one thing: emotional memory is often stored in the language it was laid down in. People can describe a childhood in fluent English and feel nothing, then say one sentence in their first language and be undone by it.

That is useful information rather than a problem, and we work with it. Shirin Azour also works in Persian (Farsi). If your first language is neither Danish, English nor Persian, say so at the start — it changes how we listen, not whether we can help.

The Danish system, in short

This confuses almost everyone who arrives, so here it is plainly:

• Your GP (egen læge) is the entry point to the public system. For certain reasons — including bereavement, assault and some cases of anxiety or depression — a GP can issue a referral that gives roughly 60% public subsidy on psychology.
• But that only works with a psychologist who holds a ydernummer, an agreement with the public health service. There are limited numbers of these, and they typically come with waiting lists of several months.
• We do not have a ydernummer. We are saying that clearly because it is the single most common misunderstanding. With us there is no referral and no waiting list, and you pay the full fee.
• Sygeforsikringen «danmark» is a voluntary supplementary insurance that many people in Denmark join. Group 1 or 2 membership gives 300 DKK back per session, or 450 DKK if you are 16–25. It is worth joining if you expect to need therapy — though note there is a qualifying period for new members.
• Your employer may already cover it. A large share of Danish employment contracts include health insurance covering 8–12 psychology sessions a year. Most people do not know they have it. Check. See insurance and reimbursement.

Confidentiality

Nothing we discuss goes to your employer, your insurer, the authorities or anyone else without your written consent. If an employer's insurance is paying, they receive confirmation that sessions took place — not what was said. Danish confidentiality rules for authorised psychologists are strict, and they apply regardless of your nationality or residence status.

Getting started

Write two lines about what it concerns and we will answer. Or book a time directly — you do not need a referral, a CPR number is not required for a first conversation, and there is no waiting list.