If you search for help with this, most of what you’ll find is written for someone starting therapy for the first time: how to find a therapist, what online therapy is, whether it “really works.” That’s a different question from the one a lot of expats are actually asking, which is closer to: I already have a therapist. We’re making progress. I’m moving in six weeks. What happens now?

It’s a strange gap in most of the guidance out there. Global platforms and directories are built around matching new clients to a new therapist. Almost none of them are built around the person who already has a working relationship with a therapist and simply needs that relationship to survive a change of address.

Why This Situation Gets Overlooked

Part of it is structural. A large online therapy platform makes money by matching supply (therapists) to demand (new clients) at scale. Continuity — keeping the same two people working together through a move — isn’t really what that model is optimized for. A small, independent practice is more naturally built around an ongoing relationship with a specific therapist, which is exactly what continuity through relocation requires.

Part of it is also that relocation itself gets treated as a logistical problem (visas, housing, schools) rather than something that touches the therapeutic relationship directly. But if you’ve been in therapy through a move, you probably already know that it does. The move itself often becomes material worth exploring — the losses, the disorientation, the identity shifts that come with starting over somewhere new. Losing your therapist at exactly that moment, because of a border rather than because the work was finished, is its own kind of disruption.

What Actually Changes When You Relocate With an Ongoing Therapy Relationship

The relationship, not the room, is doing most of the work

A useful thing to know if you’re anxious about switching to video mid-treatment: research on the therapeutic alliance in videoconferencing consistently finds that the quality of the working relationship between client and therapist holds up well over video, and that alliance quality — not the format — is what predicts whether therapy actually helps.¹ That doesn’t mean format is irrelevant. It means the two people who already built something together in the room are very likely to be able to continue building it over a screen, because the relationship itself is portable in a way the office is not.

Time zones and scheduling become the practical variable

Depending on where you’re moving, your weekly session might shift from a convenient afternoon slot to an early morning or a late evening one. This is worth raising with your therapist before you move, not after — a session that’s technically possible but scheduled at 6am your new local time rarely survives more than a few weeks. Some clients switch to a slightly different day or time permanently; others treat the first month post-move as a trial period to see what actually holds up against a new job, a new commute, or a new time difference.

Gaps happen, and they’re not necessarily a problem

Moves are chaotic. Internet doesn’t work in the new apartment yet, paperwork takes over your week, you miss a session or two. This is normal, and it’s rarely the end of the work — but it is worth naming explicitly with your therapist rather than letting sessions quietly lapse into “we’ll pick this up eventually.” An explicit plan (“let’s aim to resume within three weeks of your move, even if it’s just a short check-in”) tends to hold up better than an open-ended pause.

When It Makes Sense to Continue With the Same Therapist

Continuity tends to be worth prioritizing when:

• You’re in the middle of active, specific work — processing a particular loss, working through a defense pattern, rebuilding trust after a rupture — and starting over would mean re-explaining a lot of context to someone new.
• Your therapist is licensed or otherwise able to see you legally in your new location (this is a real constraint in some jurisdictions and worth confirming directly, rather than assuming).
• The relationship itself feels like a stable point during an otherwise destabilizing period — which, for many people moving abroad, is precisely what a familiar therapist provides.

When It Makes Sense to Find Someone New

Continuing isn’t automatically the right call. It sometimes makes more sense to end well and start fresh when:

• The move puts you in a very different time zone that makes a workable weekly rhythm genuinely difficult, long-term.
• Your new location raises specific, local needs — a different language for family sessions, a specific cultural context, or a modality your current therapist doesn’t offer — that a local or newly matched therapist could address better.
• You were already considering a change before the move, and the relocation is simply a natural, low-friction point to make it.

If you’re in this second situation and starting the search for a new therapist essentially from scratch, our comparison of online therapy platforms for expats walks through the practical differences between a large matching platform and a smaller, named practice like ours — useful context before you commit to either.

Practical Steps for a Move That Doesn’t Cost You Your Therapy

1. Raise it early. As soon as a move is more than a possibility, mention it in session. A good therapist will want to plan around it rather than be told two weeks before the fact.
2. Check the legal picture, not just the logistical one. Some countries and licensing bodies have specific rules about a therapist seeing a client who has relocated across a border. It’s a short, worthwhile question to ask directly rather than assume either way.
3. Test your setup before the actual move. A trial video session while you’re still in your current location tells you far more about the likely quality of the connection than assuming it will “probably be fine.”
4. Agree on a re-entry plan. Rather than leaving the return to therapy open-ended after the move, agree on an approximate date and a fallback (a shorter check-in call, for instance) if the full session isn’t realistic yet.
5. Expect the first few post-move sessions to be different. They often become, at least partly, about the move itself — which is not a detour from the work, it generally is the work, for a while.

How This Looks in Our Practice

We’ve been running online sessions for expats since 2020, and continuity through relocation is one of the more common reasons clients move from in-person to online with us, or ask to keep sessions running while based elsewhere in Europe for a period. Piotr works with ISTDP, which in our experience translates well to video precisely because it depends on the quality of attention between therapist and client rather than on shared physical space. Sylwia works with couples using EFT, which is often especially relevant for couples where one partner’s relocation is itself part of what brought them to therapy.

If you’re already working with us and a move is coming up, the simplest first step is to mention it at your next session so we can plan the transition together rather than reactively. If you’re new to us and specifically looking for a therapist who can travel with your career or relationship across borders, get in touch and we can talk through whether that’s a realistic fit.

1. Simpson, S. G., & Reid, C. L. (2014). Therapeutic alliance in videoconferencing psychotherapy: A review. Australian Journal of Rural Health, 22(6), 280–299.
2. Carlbring, P., Andersson, G., Cuijpers, P., Riper, H., & Hedman-Lagerlöf, E. (2018). Internet-based vs. face-to-face cognitive behavior therapy for psychiatric and somatic disorders: An updated systematic review and meta-analysis. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy, 47(1), 1–18.