At House of internationals we believe in personalized therapy methods for internationals. And the understanding of your circumstances is of great value for your journey to mental health.
All houses have foundations. This house rests on the wish that you may be seen and see yourself with kind eyes.
What does that mean? We have borrowed a cornerstone from Søren Kierkegaard, who wrote that what makes us human is our ability to relate to ourselves. We are our own defenders, but more often, we act as our own harshest prosecutors—frequently suffering not just because of external circumstances, but first and foremost because of ourselves.
We want to challenge that. Our ambition is a compassionate gaze that dares to take everything into account, for only through this can we engage in the most meaningful conversations.
Our approach is inspired by Carl Rogers, who challenged the psychology of his time by stating that humans are always already in the process of exploring and unfolding life.
He believed that this personal journey—rather than rigid psychological models of the „right‟ way to live—should be at the center of helpful conversations.
Another psychology heavyweight, Milton H. Erickson, was frequently asked later in his career about the general theory behind his work.
He responded in line with Rogers, saying he did not operate from a general theory—because in his many years of practice, he had never met a general client.
Michael White, who co-founded narrative psychology in the 1980s, was a true master of this democratization of therapy.
One of his first jobs was treating children with involuntary physical symptoms. Instead of placing these children into predefined diagnostic boxes and offering standardized treatment, he engaged them in warm, open conversations about their own unique experiences with their challenges.
Through this approach, White managed to form an alliance—with the child and the parents—against the problem itself, and together, they developed numerous creative and effective responses to it.
There is a clear connection between White’s respectful, ground-level approach to these children in the basement of Adelaide Children’s Hospital and Kierkegaard’s insight into “the secret of helping”—that if one is truly to succeed in helping another, one must first and foremost find them where they are and begin there.
You can also hear an echo of Erickson, who resisted the pathologization of people in psychology. “My clients are not sick, but stuck,” he often said.
We can all feel stuck in life and need a push or a lift from time to time. But for help to be effective, it must be tailored to the individual and their unique situation—and this is not, first and foremost, a matter of technique.
Many helpful techniques and methods have been developed (and we use only the most up-to-date, evidence-based approaches—see below), but before any of that, something else is required:
A compassionate gaze, at eye level.
See how we can help, weater you see individual, couples, family or counselling at organizational level:
Listen to this episode of the Podcast „Samtaler fra skammekrogen‟, hosted by Ann-Helene Maack and Kate Dahl from Career Denmark: