The Confidant
For people who carry responsibilityand the questions that have nowhere else to go.
Confidential, psychologically grounded counsel for people in positions of responsibility — in English, by video across time zones, or in person in Freiburg.
People who carry responsibility have many people to talk to.And few they can confide in.
There are advisors for the numbers, lawyers for the contracts, a team for the execution. There is a family that carries part of the weight, and colleagues who understand a great deal. And still some questions remain for which none of these is the right place.
Personal matters often have no place inside the organisation — and at home they can be hard to say out loud. Anyone who has to provide direction outwardly can rarely show their own uncertainty where it arises. And where internal offers for reflection exist, they are sometimes the wrong place for exactly these questions: they belong to the same house.
Working across countries sharpens this further. A counterpart outside your organisation — and outside your market, your board and your professional network — is bound to no one who could be affected by what you say.
Sometimes loneliness grows along with responsibility.
You may recognise one of these situations.
There is no need for a reason that sounds convincing. Usually it is enough that a question has stayed with you longer than it should.
If that sounds like your situation
A place where you do not have toappear in your function.
No title. No role. No expectation waiting to be met.
For the length of a conversation you are nothing but the person who has these questions.
Our work usually begins with a concrete question.
And leads to the questions behind it. Not as interpretation, but as a shared understanding of what lies beneath the visible question.
“How can I live up to this role?”
“Am I allowed to fill it in my own way?”
“I have to deliver — everyone is looking at me.”
“What am I worth the first time I fail?”
“I have to represent decisions I do not believe are right.”
“How far can I go along without losing the stance that made me choose this work?”
“I live between two countries and belong fully to neither.”
“Where am I actually at home — and what did I leave behind to get here?”
“How do I stay a good father, a good mother, with this workload?”
“What price am I willing to pay — and can I answer for it to myself?”
“What will I do once I step back?”
“Who am I when nobody needs me any more?”
And sometimes, right at the bottom, a question that is rarely said out loud:
Did I actually choose this myself —or am I living the life others expect of me?
My approach rests on psychotherapeutic, psychoanalytic and systemic experience and on an understanding of how people develop over a lifetime. None of this enters our work as therapy. It enters as depth of field — a way of seeing which patterns repeat, and how personal history, relationships and professional role are woven into one another.
We speak whichever language lets you think most precisely — English or German. Some things are easier to say in a second language, at a slight distance from oneself; others only arrive in one’s own. Both are welcome in the same conversation.
A frame that adapts to your situation.
For some questions one or two good conversations are enough. For others, continuous support makes sense — then we agree a mandate. For its duration I keep time and capacity free for you. You receive preferred appointment slots and can arrange short calls with me between conversations. I usually reply to a message on the same or the following working day, Central European Time.
Mandates include preferred appointment slots. Conversations not taken up in a given month do not carry over. An invoice can be issued to a company; it states coaching and nothing about content — and my duty of confidentiality applies towards the paying company just as it does towards anyone else.
What is spoken about here stays here. Discretion is not a promise I add on top; it is the condition that makes this work possible at all.
Everything discussed is subject to professional confidentiality.
There is no feedback to your company, no report, no conversation about you.
I take no part in any personnel decision concerning you.
Even where a third party pays the fee, my obligation is to you and to no one else.
I sit outside your market, your board and your professional network — there is no one for me to protect but you.
What people ask beforehand
Six questions that tend to come up before a first conversation.
What clients say
Given in German and translated with permission. Names are withheld.
With unusual presence, clarity and a capacity to hold ambiguity, Mr Becker opens a space for reflection between equals. What comes out of it is inner composure and decisions that hold.
Tobias Becker M.A.
German-licensed psychological psychotherapist (Psychologischer Psychotherapeut), based in Freiburg, Germany
I accompany people in positions of responsibility through professional and personal transitions — grounded in depth psychology, close to lived experience, and with a clear sense of what is actually at stake.
A first conversation
Write me a few sentences about what this concerns. In a first conversation we then look at whether this form of working together fits your situation. Without obligation, and in confidence.
If you are outside Central Europe, please mention your time zone — it saves an exchange of emails.