Zurich concentrates two things: the financial industry, and private wealth at a level found in very few places.
That combination produces a particular kind of patient, and it is not the one people expect. Not somebody whose life has fallen apart, but somebody whose life is by any external measure enviable, and whose quality of life is poor. The career is intact. The money is not a problem. And something has gone quiet, or hard, or numb, and there is nobody to say it to.
Because that is the difficulty with a life that looks like this from outside. Complaining is unimaginable. To whom would you say it, and in what terms? The wealth that solves every practical problem removes the vocabulary for the ones it does not solve, and people end up managing something serious for years with no language for it and no one to use it on.
What arrives in my consulting room from Zurich is usually that: drinking that has become structural, a relationship with food that runs the day, sleep that has stopped, a marriage conducted at a distance. Underneath, almost always, the same thing. A life that works and does not feel like anything.
Why both matter for trauma
EMDR addresses the traumatic memory itself. It is a specific procedure with a specific target, and for a discrete event it can be remarkably effective and sometimes quick.
Analysis addresses something different: what a person has constructed around the event, over years, in order to live with it. The vigilance, the shame, the way relationships have been arranged to avoid a particular kind of exposure.
For a single incident, the first is often sufficient. For trauma that ran through childhood, treating only the memory leaves the structure standing. On that difference.
And the practical obstacle in Zurich
The professional world in banking, insurance and law is smaller than the city’s size suggests, and the analytic community smaller still. For a senior person, being treated locally can mean being treated by somebody who supervises a colleague or will be at the same dinner in March.
Working with a clinician in London removes the calculation. Nothing is held in Switzerland, and nothing is disclosed to any employer without your written consent.
Practical
Zurich is one hour ahead of London. English, and French if easier. UKCP-registered psychotherapist and Jungian analyst, HCPC-registered art psychotherapist, twenty-five years of practice and over twenty using EMDR. Both registers are public and can be checked independently.
EMDR therapy in London and trauma therapy.
Common questions
Is EMDR compatible with analytic work?
In my practice they sit alongside each other rather than competing. EMDR addresses the traumatic memory itself; analysis addresses what the person has built around it. Holding both is uncommon, and for trauma that began in childhood it is often what the work requires.
Why not work with an analyst here?
Zurich has more depth psychology nearby than almost anywhere. What is scarcer is a clinician who is both analytically trained and has spent over twenty years using EMDR. And for many senior people the local analytic community is small enough that confidentiality is the deciding factor.
How long does EMDR take?
A single traumatic event can sometimes resolve quickly. Prolonged or childhood trauma is slower and broader work, and I would rather say so plainly.