Asking for help isn’t easy

Picking up the phone to call a psychologist for the first time is hard. Sometimes harder than the problem itself, because it means doing two uncomfortable things at once: admitting that something isn’t right, and accepting that you won’t be able to resolve it alone. Both are culturally difficult.

We live in an environment that rewards looking like you’ve got everything under control, and therapy is the opposite: walking into a room and stopping the performance.

That’s why we’ve written this. So if you’re in that moment of hesitation, you have a clear picture of what you’ll find before you make the call.

How we think about psychology

We don’t see psychology as a list of symptoms to be treated. Most of the things people come to us with (anxiety, low mood, relationship problems, difficulties with children, substance use, a sense of emptiness) aren’t individual malfunctions. They’re reasonable responses to complicated environments, to family stories that never closed, to lives that at some point stopped matching the person living them.

That doesn’t mean there’s no work to do. There’s plenty. It means the work isn’t about “fixing” something that’s broken. It’s about understanding why what’s appeared has appeared, what it’s telling you, and what changes, internal and external, make it unnecessary.

How we work

We combine cognitive-behavioural therapy with emotional and systemic tools. In plain language: we work with what you think, what you feel and what’s going on around you, because the three are connected, and treating only one usually leads to partial results.

We don’t follow a script. Every person arrives with a different story, and the work adapts to that story. What stays constant is:

  • Scientific evidence. Everything we do is grounded in current psychological research. No trends, no pseudoscience, no fashionable techniques.
  • Honesty. We’ll tell you what we see. With respect, but without sugarcoating. We’re not here to tell you what you want to hear. Useful therapy is sometimes uncomfortable.
  • Your pace. There’s no magic number of sessions. Some people need six weeks, others six months, others longer. What matters isn’t the duration. It’s that each session adds something.

Who we are

We’re Vicente Pérez Díaz (col. AO08585) and Isabel Agüera San Martín, registered psychologists with a practice in central Marbella.

Vicente has over twelve years of experience working in the field of addiction, with training and therapeutic work in centres specialising in both adults and adolescents. He offers individual, family and couples therapy, with an approach especially useful when substance use, distress or a sense of emptiness are part of the picture.

Isabel focuses on integrated sex therapy: difficulties with desire, sexual response, identity, and life transitions that affect intimate life. A space where things that usually go unsaid can be spoken.

Between us we cover a broad range of situations: anxiety, low mood, stress, relationship difficulties, grief, self-esteem, substance use, difficulties with teenagers, periods of personal change.

What to expect in the first session

The first session is mainly about getting to know each other. We listen, ask a few questions to understand your situation, and talk about what might help. There’s no pressure to come back, no small print, no need to tell your whole life story in an hour.

By the end of that first session you’ll have a clear sense of three things: what you think is going on, what we see, and what we’d suggest as a way forward. From there, it’s your decision.

The practice is in central Marbella, in a comfortable and discreet space. We also offer online sessions when schedule or distance require it.

What you won’t find here

It’s worth being clear about what we don’t do, because people sometimes arrive with expectations that are worth adjusting:

  • We don’t promise quick results. Effective therapy takes time. Anyone promising you a transformation in three sessions probably isn’t helping you.
  • We don’t give generic self-help advice. “Think positive”, “you’ve got this”, “every day is a new opportunity” aren’t therapeutic interventions. They’re noise.
  • We don’t do coaching or personal development. We’re registered psychologists with university-level training. The difference with coaching isn’t semantic. It’s methodological and training-based.
  • We don’t treat the symptom without looking at the context. If you come in with anxiety, we’re not going to teach you a breathing technique and send you home. We’re going to try to understand why it appeared.

What now?

If you’ve been thinking about calling for a while, this is probably your sign. You don’t need a diagnosis, or a clear plan, or to know exactly what’s wrong. You just need to be willing to look.