Carla Najem, a Lebanese psychologist and the founder of The Expat Psychologist, has made it her mission to support expatriates as they navigate the challenges of living abroad. Her journey began in Lebanon, where an early curiosity about human behavior and a deep empathy for others shaped her career path. Now based in Montreal, Carla combines her personal experiences as an immigrant and a mother of two with her professional expertise to guide patients through the complexities of mental health, cultural adaptation, and resilience.
In this exclusive interview with BelleBeirut, she shares insights into her personal journey, her professional challenges, and the unique needs of expatriates.
1- Can you share what inspired you to pursue a career in psychology, and how your upbringing in Lebanon influenced this path?
At a very early age, around 12 years old, I was intrigued by how people feel, think, and behave. I was highly sensitive to other people’s experiences and drawn to observe my friends at school and even myself. My sister got me a diary, and I started what is now called journaling and had a lot of curiosity about my own internal experiences as well. I didn’t know back then that I wanted to be a psychologist, but I knew I wanted to do something that would help people around me deal with challenges.
More into my teenage years, I highly empathized with schoolmates who seemed to be having a hard time. I think when I was like 14 years old, I came to my dad with great ambition, pushing him to help me create an NGO that assigns a friend/buddy to each student (little did I know that those programs existed way before I even thought about it). My dad, of course, encouraged my far-fetched dream with open discussion but not concrete action. As I became more exposed to different careers, it was actually journalism and psychology that were top of my list. I became more sure about psychology when we started delving into philosophy and sociology at school. 
As an adolescent, naturally, I was in my rebellious stage and questioned many norms and concepts in my upbringing. On one hand, I wanted to rebel against society and my parents’ will to challenge misconceptions about psychology. Hearing feedback such as, “You will become crazy working with mentally ill people,” strengthened my determination more. On the other hand, I experienced firsthand many of our cultural, societal, and even political norms that negatively influence our mental health. Norms about not expressing emotions to show strength, norms about raising children with aggression and fear as a disciplining strategy, norms related to gender roles, norms related to relationships, norms related to socioeconomic differences…
As many teens, I wanted to change the world—well, my world—and thought I could. I believed deeply in the importance of one’s emotional well-being, and I also felt so strongly about following my calling. I still feel I was destined for this kind of work.
2- As a mother of two and a professional, how do your personal experiences shape your practice?
One hit in the face I learned as I became a mother, is that I never truly/fully understood my clients experiences before motherhood. I worked with perhaps thousands of parents and children before becoming a mother. I listened, empathized, intellectually understood, guided and helped them to the best of my ability at that time. But when I experienced motherhood I felt a huge shift in my practice. Parenting experiences are extremely complex and unique. I believe it takes being a parent to fully understand the daily struggles and the underlying emotional experiences. Before becoming a mother, I was often uncomfortable with parents asking me if I have children of my own. I thought they were undermining my knowledge, skills and experience. Now I know they were looking to be fully understood.
3- Can you tell us about the transition from practicing psychology in Lebanon to working in Canada? How has this move enriched or challenged your professional perspective?
One of the most challenging experiences of my life. When I moved to Canada, like many of us, my career took a great hit. I had to go back to school, be an intern again, and start over to be licensed here. That process alone was a huge mountain for me after having had a thriving career in Lebanon.
So as I started practicing here, I was dealing with grief over my career, acceptance of where I am right now, rebuilding my confidence, navigating a new culture with multiple subcultures, and adapting to a relatively new language/ dialect. It’s been one hell of a ride to say the least.
One belief that was reinforced through that experience is the unanimity of humanity and human experiences. I learned that despite major cultural, societal, language differences, there is no human experience that we cannot all relate to if we dig deep enough. All humans young or old, white or black, rich or poor are looking to feel safe, be loved, feel good enough, accomplish things, and have meaningful human connection. That understanding greatly influenced my approach in therapy and my own cultural adaptation.
4- What inspired you to launch The Expat Psychologist, and what is the mission of this initiative?
My own expat journey was my main motivator for sure. Being an expat is a highly challenging and distinctive experience that can either become enriching or destructive to one’s mental wellbeing. In my practice in Lebanon, we used to be fully booked on holidays and summer vacations with expats coming back to see professionals in Lebanon. I used to partly wonder, don’t they have the best most well-trained and regulated psychologists/psychiatrists in the west? Soon enough I realized they were looking for real connection, they had greater trust in fellow compatriots, and they needed to be fully understood. When I started practicing here, soon enough my practice filled with Lebanese and arab expats looking for the same thing. Someone who speaks their language, someone who understands their background, someone who gets their jokes, someone who knows the culture, someone who understands the family dynamics, someone they can relate to, someone who can fully get them. The more I saw this clientele, the more I learned that also my own struggles were shared. That the expat experience is a shared/ collective experience. That the worries, concerns, fears, struggles, challenges are common amongst us all.
One of the main difficulty expats struggle with is the lack of connection: difficulty connecting to people around them, to the cultural values and norms, losing important connection they had with friends and family due to distance, feeling of loneliness and isolation in their own experience that people back home can’t relate to. That theme keeps coming up in all of my sessions with expats and even in my own life. It seems to me that all other struggles of anxiety, depression, difficulty in adaptation stem from that lack of connection. Humans are social beings and one of our primary needs is connection. Moving away involves losing old meaningful connections, trying to establish new connections, and adapting as our connection to some people in our lives change with time and distance (physical and psychological). In my work, I combine my psychological expertise and expat experience to help my clients find meaningful connection, discover their strengths and abilities to increase their resilience. Whether they end up changing direction, returnign to their home country, or moving somewhere else does not matter in our work. The focus is on processing the change and grief of expatriation with a lot of compassion while empowering them to be present, action-driven, and build the life they want. Being an expat, or moving away is a life changing experience like many other major life transitions such as death, illness, marriage, children, career change, university… Every major change in life is destabilizing and has an impact on our mental health. How we respond to that big change determines wehther we emerge positively or negatively. Resilience is defined by the ability to go through a life changing experience and have a positive outcome, emerging with growth, success, meaning, and strength.
Often experiences such as immigrating or moving abroad are undervalued as it is often the result of life choice or one’s own decision. So people think the impact is minimal or positive at all times. That’s the reason I wanted to shed light on that experience and all it brings from pain to gain.
6- Your tagline, مغترب بس مش لحالك, is powerful. What does this mean to you and your clients?
My tagline is how I want my clients and audience to feel: not alone, connected, supported, seen, understood, and held in their experiences.
7- What are some common mental health struggles you see among immigrant families, and how do you approach therapy for these cases?
One aspect of my practice is filled with clients who have had a history of mental health issues before immigrating that were either mild or well-managed. Immigration was for most what we call in a clinical setting a trigger, a driver that would tip the client over the edge and lead to a flare of symptoms. So for example, students with a well-managed ADHD or a mild ADHD, struggle greatly when they move to study abroad (I see it in the university population mostly), couples with some communication problems that were well managed before go through major setbacks, children who have an anxious temperament come with full blown anxiety episodes…
Another aspect of my practice is filled with families struggling with the adaptation process. People who I see struggle the most, young adults who are single professionals or university students, middle aged professionals, and families with young kids or teenagers. Young adults/ students who come alone, struggle a lot with a lack of a support system, difficulty making friends, feeling of loneliness, demotivation to fulfill one’s duties. The main problems are anxiety, panic attacks, adjustment disorder and depression. Middle-aged professionals struggle a lot with career changes, existential questions, identity crisis, no sense of belonging, loneliness, and relationship problems. These show up in anxiety, overthinking, rumination, social isolation, and burn out. Families with young kids struggle with lack of support, confusion, lack of direction, behavior problems, and parent burn out. Families with teenagers, often come for difficulty navigating raising adolescents in a foreign environment and different sometimes opposing cultural values. My therapeutic approach for all cases is always guided by compassion and empathy first : seeking to listen, understand, and feel with my clients. Then focused on self-compassion and skills building to shift thoughts, emotions, and behaviors: Learning to be kind to oneself and then acquiring new tools to take necessary and concrete action towards the desired change.
8- Working in three languages must bring its own challenges and benefits. How do you navigate cultural nuances in therapy?
Working in a highly multicultural environment, Montreal, I’ve experienced positive and negative impact of language on my practice. Over the years, I find working with trilingual and bilingual clients, brings ease, bredth and depth to our conversations. With clients who only speak one language, especially Quebecers, it was a challenge to me personally to learn dialect and cultural and language nuances. I realized that my own process of cultural adaptation, greatly impacted my ease with that clientele. Looking back to my first Quebecer client, I see a huge difference in connection and relatedness on both sides vs my clients now. It is still a learning process but that aspect that we often ignore working in non-multicultural environment was eye opening. Even with Arabic speakers, I found it enriching to learn different dialects and cultural norms and values while working with Syrian, Palestinians, Morrocan, Algerian, Tunisian, Egyptian, and Iraqi clients. The impact of language and cultural nuances in therapy is important but I still think that the shared human experience to which we all can relate combined with some cultural awareness and sensitivity can be a good enough equation for therapeutic success.
9- Do you have plans to expand The Expat Psychologist project or offer additional resources for newcomers to Canada?
Yes definitely. I hope and am working hard to be able to reach as many expats in Canada and around the world so I can provide them with educational content as well as specific skills to navigate life as an expat. One of the first resources I am working on are workshops and courses for expats and potential expats (preparation even before making the move). In my future plans, I aim to build a community of expats well-equipped with psychological tools to ride the waves of an expat life with a sense of togetherness, connection and belonging.
You can reach out to Carla Najem through her Instagram page or by clicking on the contact us page here.
