Inés Zulueta Iturralde
Psicologa sanitaria bilingüe en Madrid
My name is Inés Zulueta and I am a bilingual psychotherapist based in Madrid. I started my professional journey in New York City, where I provided mental health counseling for parolees. At my return to Spain, I delved in other areas of psychology; working with children and teenagers with special education needs, and treating adult expats from different cultural backgrounds who had a wide variety of therapeutic goals.
My main goal as a therapist is to create a safe, stable bond with my patients so they can find a healthy way to cope with their suffering. I adapt to their individual needs in order to guide them in their change process. More about me
"If you can change your mind you can change your life" (William James)
What is psychotherapy?
We could define it as the therapeutic relationship that is established between a therapist and a patient in order to achieve a shared set of goals.
One of the main objectives of psychotherapy is to change the way we perceive the world, others and ourselves; particularly when it is harmful, or limits our potential. We must be willing to change our belief system and learn different coping strategies in order to perceive, feel and behave differently; or be able to get out of a harmful situation.
Why go to therapy?
We might sometimes realize that we aren’t functioning the way we used to in the past, that we are feeling “not our usual selves”. Perhaps we are feeling an excessive amount of suffering in certain situations, making them unnecessarily heavy to bear. We might feel we are not enjoying our lives due to being too burdened, too worried or too numb. Wether there is a situation in which we feel trapped; or we are not evolving in the way we wanted or needed but we do not know how to change things. It is in these moments were we might consider attending psychotherapy.
The first step can be dauntingly hard: We do not know what to expect from our therapist, we might worry about being very uncomfortable in the session, or not knowing how to put what we are going through into words… It is normal to feel these things at first. However, the painful symptoms we are experiencing are messages that need to be listened to. They are signs that something is not working the way it is supposed to and we need to invite change or deeper understanding.
What kind of problems can I help with?
After and during my experience living in a culture and language different from my own, I have been working with people in that same situation for 10 years.The experience of living abroad or being an expat is full of exciting novelty, but it also comes with it’s own difficulties: the language barrier, cultural shock, having to create a new support system…I can easily relate and understand the necessity of emotionally expressing ourselves in our own language. It is one of the reasons I am a bilingual counselor: in order to be able to offer that to my english speaking patients.
In addition to the experiences of being an expat (I see patients that do not necessarily fit into that category), many of my patients deal with different challenges: Anxiety, depression, interpersonal problems, panic attacks, social anxiety, apathy or numbness, stress, fears and phobias, insecurities, ADHD and procrastination, grief and loss, sleep related problems, addictions, self-esteem and assertiveness issues, trouble adapting to life changes, anger management…
If you believe you might benefit from starting therapy with me, you may contact me here