Your Guide to Navigating Expat Life – Counselling Insights from Bergeseen Group

Bergeseen Group is a professional counselling and coaching practice dedicated to supporting expatriates around the world through virtual services. Their mission is to provide consistent, exceptional care tailored to the unique challenges of living abroad and adjusting to expat life.

Bergeseen Group offers evidence-based counselling for emotional and psychological challenges as well as personalised coaching for professional growth, cultural adjustment, and life transitions.

Founder and director Katie Walker has an MS in Clinical Mental Health Counselling from the prestigious Johns Hopkins University. In this interview with MumAbroad, she shares more about what she led her to establish Bergeseen Group, her personal experiences as an expat, and the transformative impact her team brings to clients navigating life away from their original home country.

The Role of Counselling in Expat Well-Being

What are the different services that Bergeseen Group offers?

Expat Counselling with Bergeseen Group offers clients the opportunity to explore and process difficulties related to behaviors, thoughts, feelings, memories, and relationships. Our counsellors are highly skilled, clinically trained professionals who use evidence-based approaches to help clients gain clarity, resilience, and confidence in their lives.

In addition to counselling, our coaching services provide a collaborative and personalised framework for clients facing specific challenges, such as navigating career transitions, adjusting to new cultural environments, or defining and pursuing personal goals. Both our counsellors and coaches bring deep empathy, global experience, and professional expertise to their work, ensuring clients receive the highest standard of care as they navigate life’s circumstances.

What inspired you to found Bergeseen, and how did your personal and professional experiences shape its mission?

Bergeseen is truly where my personal and professional experiences intersect. As an expat living in Spain several years ago and now in Austria, I’ve lived the complexities of building a life in a new country—creating a community from scratch, navigating unfamiliar systems, and sometimes feeling overwhelmed by tasks that would be routine back home. It’s an experience that can be as uniquely wonderful as it is uniquely intense.

As a licensed professional counsellor in the US, I’ve seen firsthand the transformative power of working with skilled, qualified professionals when needed. I also know how difficult it can be to access that level of support while living abroad. This understanding is what drove me to create Bergeseen Group: to make excellent, consistent care accessible to expatriates facing life’s ups and downs.

You’ve lived in several locations and traveled to over 35 countries. How have your global experiences informed your understanding of the challenges faced by expats?

Travelling to a country and moving to a country are completely different experiences. Travel often reveals the Instagrammable, pinch-me beauty of a place—an intense sprint to see and do as much as possible before returning to the real world. Living abroad and life as an expat, on the other hand, is a marathon. It’s about settling into a new reality, where daily life unfolds amidst unfamiliar surroundings, and even simple tasks like grocery shopping or picking up a package at the post office can feel daunting.

My global experiences have shown me both the joys and the struggles of expat life. There’s an undeniable thrill in immersing yourself in a new culture, discovering its rhythms, and building a life from the ground up. But there’s also the quiet weight of disconnection, the challenge of finding a sense of belonging, and the unpredictability that comes with constant adaptation. Having lived in multiple countries, I understand these complexities deeply—not just as a professional counsellor, but as someone who has navigated them myself.

Bergeseen Group’s Approach to Supporting Expats 

Bergeseen Group was founded with the belief that clients deserve consistent, excellent care. To me, that means each counsellor or coach must have a unique balance of academic rigor, professional acumen, and deep levels of empathy and engagement. I recruit and select each member of my team with this in mind. And while I’m sure that the top-tier universities and professional experiences of Bergeseen’s team stand out on paper, they show only a fraction of the incredible lives and engaging personalities of the counsellors and coaches I work with every day. For decades, research has consistently shown that the therapeutic relationship is the most important factor in whether and how therapy works—an insight that guides every hiring decision and client interaction at Bergeseen.

Who are the typical clients that you work with?

The expat experience has evolved considerably over the last twenty years, creating a much broader range of opportunities to live abroad than in the past. Bergeseen’s clients are representative of that shift—they include executives, parents, expats, physicians, teenagers, professional athletes, retirees, university students, and many more. Our purpose is to meet them where they are, with the right counsellor or coach, and help them thrive during critical transitions and journeys of growth. And while a portion of our clients are addressing complexities from expat living, others are working through challenges that began in their home countries, we are here to support expats abroad. 

What are some of the most common psychological and emotional challenges that you see within the expat community?

Expats experience all the same psychological and emotional challenges as everyone else—anxiety, depression, relationship issues, substance use, and the list goes on—but the unique aspects of expat life are exacerbating. In fact, contemporary research shows that expats face these challenges at a rate 2.5 times higher than their peers back home. This makes a lot of sense when you consider the combination of factors in expat life that disrupt one’s sense of stability, identity, and support systems.

How do you tailor your counselling and coaching to meet the unique needs of those living abroad?

Bergeseen Group aims to be a dedicated space where the pressure, culture shock, anxiety, language barriers, instability, and loneliness of expat life do not exist. A therapeutic or coaching relationship with one of our counsellors or coaches will provide relief and validation, as all our team members have personal expat experience. Our clinical and professional training then helps each client feel empowered to navigate their life with resilience, confidence, and hope. We provide a virtual service, so expats can access care from nearly anywhere in the world.

How does the transition to a new culture or environment impact family dynamics, and what strategies do you recommend to help this adjustment?

The transition to a new environment can affect family dynamics in both enriching and challenging ways. While it can bring families closer together by creating shared experiences and fostering resilience, it can also introduce stress, role shifts, and emotional strain. Each family member navigates the changes in their own way, but because they are interconnected, the emotions and reactions of one person inevitably influence the entire family system.

The key to navigating these challenges successfully lies in open communication, mutual support, flexibility, and seeking external resources of support when needed. Mindfulness and compassion can play a powerful role in helping families navigate the challenges of adjusting to a new culture. Both practices promote emotional awareness, understanding, and connection, which are essential when adapting to new circumstances and supporting each other through change. 

As a coach, you’ve worked with a diverse group of clients, from executives to athletes. What are some of the transformative journeys you’ve witnessed through your coaching?

While executives and professional athletes may operate in high-profile environments, their day-to-day emotional challenges often mirror those faced by all of us—anxiety, depression, struggles with meaning, and questions about balancing ambition with personal fulfilment. However, the critical transitions that they confront do seem to carry an unusually high level of intensity that, in my experience, can lead to devastating outcomes if not addressed. For example, executives and athletes frequently step into high-stakes roles in new countries where they are expected to navigate cultural norms, provide themselves to new teams, all while managing their personal lives.

Perhaps the most transformative journeys I’ve witnessed for executives and athletes is the transition to retirement. Stepping away from a career defined by elite performance and public recognition can feel like losing a core part of themselves. My work to help clients embrace these inevitable transitions is focused on guiding them toward a renewed sense of purpose and identity. By addressing these challenges with care and clarity, we help clients turn periods of uncertainty into opportunities for meaningful growth and reinvention.

What do you give to entrepreneurs or executives who are trying to balance professional growth with personal well-being while living abroad?

As an entrepreneur living abroad—who’s been married for 20 years to a perennial entrepreneur—I understand the challenges of balancing professional growth with personal well-being. My husband launched his first entrepreneurial venture at 28, and its success brought incredible opportunities and unique pressures. Today, he teaches at Harvard Business School, coaching aspiring entrepreneurs and specializing in the challenges faced by women entrepreneurs. Living in Austria while managing my practice and supporting my husband’s frequent trips to Boston has only deepened my appreciation for how demanding this balance can be.

Here’s the advice I give my clients—and often remind myself of: success comes at a cost if it compromises your physical or mental health, so prioritise small, consistent self-care practices that recharge you, whether that’s a quiet morning routine, exercise, or mindfulness. Set clear boundaries to ensure your professional life doesn’t overshadow everything else—reserve time for family, personal pursuits, and unplugging, and communicate these boundaries openly. Build a support system of trusted advisors, mentors, and peers who can offer perspective and guidance, especially as an expat navigating unique challenges. Finally, revisit your “purpose” regularly—staying connected to your deeper motivations can bring clarity and fulfillment, even in the busiest seasons.

As a mother of 3 girls, what insights can you share about raising a family while navigating different cultural environments?

Raising my daughters across the US, Spain, and now Austria has been a journey of growth and discovery for all of us. They’ve attended Islamic and Catholic elementary schools in Washington DC and international schools in Spain and Austria. It’s not been easy—there are moments of disconnection, uncertainty, and adjustment—but these experiences have the potential to foster resilience and self-awareness.

The key, I believe, is to approach each transition with realistic expectations, curiosity, and a commitment to creating a supportive family environment. Talk openly about the changes, celebrate the differences, and build solidarity by joining in on some of the griping sessions. Whether during good times or hard times, emotional health and connection are essential. For my daughters, moments of reflection and support—through family conversations, school communities, or professional counsellors—have helped them process and embrace these transitions.

Now that they’re older, my daughters see how these experiences have become part of who they are. They value the perspectives they’ve gained, the resilience they’ve built, and the sense of identity that comes from living in and adapting to so many different cultures. These are lessons I cherish as a parent, and ones I hope to help other families navigate as they embark on their own journeys.

What are your future aspirations for the Bergeseen Group, and its impact on the expat community?

My vision for the Bergeseen Group is simple: to be known as a place where clients consistently receive excellent care—a place where they know they’ll find not just support, but real progress. Ultimately, my aspiration is for Bergeseen to make a tangible difference in the lives of our clients. I want people to say, “This helped me feel better. This helped me develop the resilience I needed. “This helped me figure out what really matters and how to move toward it.” Whether it’s finding balance during a difficult transition or unlocking greater clarity and confidence in their lives, my goal is for Bergeseen Group to be a resource that truly empowers our clients, wherever in the world they call home.

How can people find out more and book a session with you? 

Please email us at info@bergeseen.com or visit our website at www.bergeseen.com to schedule a free discovery call. You can also see more about my clinical orientation at my Psychology Today profile.

Read more interviews and articles on the MumAbroad blog .