🇩🇪 Munich

Munich has the highest rents and the highest cost of living in Germany. To stay in this city you have to work well and earn well, and that builds a loop: the more you work, the less time there is to notice how you are.

For an Iranian immigrant that pressure has two layers. Many arrived on a scholarship or a job offer and feel indebted to the family who stayed in Iran: they have to prove the leaving was worth it. In that position, saying something as simple as I am tired gets heard as failure, and that is what pushes asking for help back by years.

The insurance rules in Bavaria are Germany's national rules: covered treatment only with a licensed contract therapist, after an assessment session and insurer approval. In Munich the demand is very high and the waiting lists run longer than the national average.

If you want a therapist who holds an insurance licence and speaks Farsi, you arrive in practice at a search with no answer. Most people eventually either abandon treatment or continue in German, and part of what they came to say stays where it was.

Bavaria is more conservative than northern Germany and its social networks are more closed. Friendships form slowly, and many Iranians in Munich say that even after years they have no relationship they could cry in.

That loneliness, alongside long working hours, is the precise ground that depression and anxiety grow in. The important point is that this is not evidence of weakness in you. It is the result of the conditions you are living in.