SONIA, the digital nomad psychologist
2/5 committed to her flexlife⠀ 10/10 confident she’s living the lifestyle she wants everyday 4 years of being a digital nomad⠀ Main interests 100% pay the bills⠀ Follow along⠀
It all started with hearing about talking to a therapist via video chat while Sonia was on her sabbatical. She had never really thought about this before so she started researching it and discovered that it might be possible to work online as a psychotherapist. She built her website, developed online counselling offers and a year later, she started getting her first clients. Flash forward 3 years, she currently has 20-30 clients at a time, seeing 10-15 of them every week.
Now her clients are much more international than her previous therapy work at home: she often talks to people in 7 or more different time zones every week. On top of all the usual counselling topics, this means she also work a lot with different intercultural issues. She tries to schedule all of her clients on 3 days of the week and to leave time for some other meetings, like peer supervision groups, mastermind groups, book clubs. Her travels this year started in Australia, then Thailand, Vietnam, now she is in Malaysia, next Thailand again where she will present a conference and then Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand. Sonia rated 2/5 on her commitment to her flexlife. She says:
“I love this life and for now, I definitely want to live like this. But 5 years ago I would never have imagined that this is where I would be and how I would live, so who knows what the future holds?”
Her advice to people considering this type of lifestyle is to talk to people who have been there. Look behind the pretty IG picture, this life can be very difficult and lonely. One’s actually more likely to be depressed in paradise than back in a settled life, as all the routines and support systems are lacking or harder to maintain. If this is what you really want, go for it.
MASTER TIP: As a digital nomad herself and someone who works as a therapist with lots of expats, digital nomads, and global citizens, Sonia can't stress enough how important routines, self-care and the right support networks are. Join groups + communities, reach out to friends/family to keep in touch with them. And also don’t spend too much time on IG. 😉✌🏼⠀