Dr. Frederik Unseld
Coach
I offer a free, structured 60-minute first call: we do a short piece of the actual work together, and you'll feel whether this fits.
I specialise in:
About me
Hello! Maybe you know this feeling: being around people is rarely simple for you. There's usually something running in the background, a tension, an unease that's hard to put into words, and mostly you just want it gone. From the outside, you're doing fine, probably better than fine. But in the places that matter most, in relationships, in closeness, you often don't quite feel like yourself: too anxious, too complicated, not confident enough. And when things go wrong, you look for the fault in yourself first. "Something must be wrong with me."
Maybe you've just met someone it could actually work with, and right on cue, the old fears and patterns are back. Maybe you're in a relationship where the same fights, the same silences, the same reconciliations keep cycling without ever resolving. Maybe you're carrying a breakup you can't put down, and you're starting to see, for the first time, that there's a pattern here. And maybe you're gay, lesbian, or bi, and have never felt entirely welcome as who you are.
Chances are you've wanted this for a while: to feel more at ease in relationships, safer, freer, more like yourself. And chances are you've noticed it's easier said than done. There's a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with willpower. That uncomfortable feeling is usually a stress response in your nervous system, one that's much older than the situations it shows up in. So no, nothing is wrong with you. Your body learned early to stay on guard around people, and it never got to learn what calm and safety feel like from the inside. That can be learned now. It's called psychological safety, and it doesn't happen in your head: it grows through attunement, in contact with another nervous system that genuinely meets yours.
I speak:
Location:
Approach
What people come to me with
A relationship in crisis: You're in a partnership where conflict keeps repeating or distance has settled in, and you want to understand, and change, what's happening between you.
Recurring patterns: In dating, after a breakup, or with your family: you can see something repeating itself, and you don't want to live through it again.
Calm and self-contact: You function well, and you're still rarely at ease, with others or on your own. You want to know what safety feels like from the inside.
A new direction: The old questions are getting quieter, and a new one is getting louder: what's actually yours, in your work, your relationships, your life.
How we work
My sessions are experiential. We talk, we look at what you bring, and I offer shifts in perspective that make a difference. The heart of the work happens in guided inner journeys: a gentle, wakeful state in which you stay in control the whole time, while we work directly with the part of you that learned early on that closeness comes at a price.
Depending on what serves you, I draw on attachment-focused imagery (in the tradition of Dr. Daniel Brown, Harvard Medical School) or on mindful nervous system regulation. Along the way, you collect reference experiences of what safety and connection can actually feel like, so you're not working toward an idea, but toward something you've already tasted. You learn to catch your automatic stress and relationship patterns earlier and to meet them with more calm and more choice. You don't need any experience with hypnosis or meditation.
Between sessions, you'll receive personal audio recordings that I create specifically for you and your process, so the work continues in your own rhythm, before sleep, for example. Clients keep telling me these recordings are what makes the change stick.
What changes
People I work with describe things getting quieter inside: less on guard, less performing, more actually there. You start to arrive in your relationships instead of working on them all the time. And as the struggle eases, the question shifts, quite reliably, from "what's wrong with me" to "what's actually mine": what you want, what your work should be, what your life is for. Clients usually put it simply: "I feel more like myself again."
Who I am
I'm a hypno-systemic coach with a PhD in social anthropology. Before this work, I spent years researching how people build lives and meaning under difficult conditions. I bring the same curiosity to one-on-one work, along with a calm, grounded presence. I work online, in English and German, with clients across Europe and beyond.
How to start
We start with a free 60-minute video call. It has a clear structure: you tell me what brings you, we do a short piece of the actual work together so you can feel what it's like, and I'll tell you honestly whether and how I would work with you, including a concrete proposal for a first phase. No pressure either way. If it fits, you'll know.
Just reach out with your availability and I'll suggest a time.
Experience
Across more than 700 one-on-one sessions, I've worked mostly with people whose themes circle around attachment: anxious attachment and fear of abandonment, avoidant and fearful-avoidant (disorganized) patterns, people pleasing, fawning, and the kind of self-abandonment where you slowly lose touch with yourself in relationships. Some of my clients arrive already familiar with attachment styles, the inner child, reparenting, or nervous system regulation. Others simply arrive with the feeling that something needs to change. Both are good starting points, because this work isn't about knowing more. It's about the place where understanding becomes experience: attachment-focused work (attachment repair) with guided imagery, body awareness, and regulation, so that safety becomes something you can feel, not just something you know about. High sensitivity and neurodivergence are familiar territory from many long-term processes, as are the experiences of queer clients and of expats building a life abroad.
Education
- 2025–2026: Certification as a Trauma-Informed Coach in the Mettagroup Method™ with George Haas, Los Angeles
- 2024–2026: Training in Integrative and Contemplative Psychology with Dr. John Churchill (student of Dr. Daniel Brown)
- 2021–2024: Three-year advanced training in Hypnotic Interventions for Adult Attachment Disorders, based on the work of Dr. Daniel Brown (Harvard Medical School)
- 2022–2024: NLP Master Trainer certification (DVNLP – German Association for Neuro-Linguistic Programming)
- 2021: Certified Hypno-Systemic Coach (German Professional Coaching Association)
- 2020: PhD in Social Anthropology, University of Basel
Services
Intro Call
Individual Session
Insurances
