Maria Sandgren | Licencsed psychologist
PhD in psychology · Cert. ISTDP Therapist
My work as a psychologist
I am a licensed psychologist and certified ISTDP therapist with a private practice in Stockholm. In my work, I meet people seeking help with a wide range of difficulties, from anxiety, low mood, and stress to relationship difficulties, grief, and life crises.
For me, therapy is a collaborative process. I aim to create a safe and open environment where there is room to explore what feels difficult and to understand together the patterns that affect your life today.
I take an active role in therapy and am not simply a listener. Together, we explore what is happening in the moment – in thoughts, emotions, and relationships.
Many people who come to me describe having spent a long time trying to understand their difficulties by thinking their way towards solutions. In therapy, emotions are also given space, as they often carry important information about our needs, relationships, and ways of navigating life.
In my experience, change becomes possible when we not only understand our patterns intellectually but also have the opportunity to experience and explore them in new ways.
Many of the people who seek therapy with me have been in therapy before or have spent considerable time working on themselves, yet feel that something still has not quite shifted.
Others come to therapy for the first time, wanting to understand recurring difficulties in their relationships, work, or emotional life.
What they often share is a wish to understand themselves more deeply and create more space for the life they want to live.
Education and experience
I have been a licensed psychologist since 1997 and received my PhD in Psychology from Stockholm University in 2005. I am a certified ISTDP therapist and have undertaken further training with, among others, Allan Abbass, Jon Frederickson and Joel Town. Over the years, I have worked clinically, conducted research, and taught psychology.
Photography, writing, and psychology
Alongside my work as a psychologist, I am engaged in photography and writing. What interests me in these fields is closely related to what interests me in therapy: human experience, relationships, grief, identity, and the stories we carry with us through life.
I also write about feelings, relationships, and psychological research on the blog on this website and on my Instagram account, @emotionelltmedveten. The texts draw on psychological research and my many years of clinical experience, but do not include accounts of individual clients’ experiences. Their purpose is to provide language, context, and new perspectives on what people may experience—not to offer advice for individual situations or self-help programs. In this way, I can share knowledge from my field while safeguarding the confidentiality that psychological work requires.