Dr. Paola Acca is an English-speaking clinical psychologist and psychotherapist in Milan. She receives patients in person in Milan and works online with people living elsewhere in Italy and abroad, in Italian and English, with people from 16 years old onwards, with couples and with families.

She graduated in Psychology at the University of Bergamo and specialised in relational systemic psychotherapy. Over the years she added master degrees in Mindfulness and in EMDR, the protocol used to treat traumatic memories.

She worked for a long time alongside hospitals and public mental health services before moving to full-time private practice in Milan. Public services are where a therapist meets the widest range of people and the least room to choose the easy cases, and that is where a lot of her range comes from.

Her approach is systemic and socio-constructivist: what a person is going through is read together with the relationships and the context it sits in, not in isolation. She is explicit about what she thinks therapy is: a collaborative process built on mutual respect, genuineness and trust, and a place where you can think critically about your own life, identify what you actually value, and take concrete steps from there.

She works with anxiety, mood and personality disorders, trauma, bereavement and couple dynamics, with adults, adolescents, couples and families. For trauma she works with EMDR, which is designed for memories that stay charged long after the event and do not settle with talking alone.

She also works in couples therapy, family therapy and sexology, areas where the difficulty is usually held between two people rather than inside one of them.

A less common part of her work is sport psychology: she has considerable experience counselling and supporting both individual athletes and teams. It is a specific kind of pressure, where performance is public, the timeline is not yours, and the thing you are judged on is your own body.

She studied in San Diego, in the United States, and in Portugal. For someone who has moved country and is now trying to explain themselves in a second language, that matters in a practical way: she has been on that side of it.

You do not have to pick her yourself. At Therapsy every person is matched by a human being, not by an algorithm: our clinical team reads your request, and if Dr. Acca is the right fit for what you are bringing, they will introduce you. The first call is free, and it is there to check that the fit is real before anything begins.

Fewer than 1 in 100 therapists joins the Therapsy team. Dr. Acca was personally vetted by our Clinical Director, Dr. Francesca A. Boccalari, on three non-negotiable criteria: she shares our values, she speaks at least one language beyond Italian, and she has a physical practice in Milan where you can meet in person, not only online.

Paola Acca does not work alone. She takes part in Therapsy’s internal clinical supervision, a standing group where therapists bring their most demanding cases, train together and ask for help when a situation calls for it. Every therapist in the network, Case Managers included, can turn to our Clinical Director for clinical questions and further training, and Therapsy runs regular professional training with senior therapists and external trainers. Scheduling, invoicing, payments and the rest of the paperwork are handled by Therapsy, so that her time with you stays clinical work and nothing else. On your side, the same platform gives you one place to see your sessions, invoices, payments and documents.

At Therapsy you do not have to pick your therapist from a list: you start by speaking with Dr. Francesca Boccalari, our Clinical Director, who listens to what you are going through and matches you with the therapist she believes is right for you: Paola Acca, or one of her colleagues. Then you have a free introductory call with that therapist, and only after that do you decide whether to start.

And if the fit turns out not to be right, you are not back at square one. Dr. Boccalari and her team find you another therapist inside Therapsy, at no cost, without you having to tell your story from the beginning. Choosing a therapist while you are struggling, in a language that is not your own, is a lot to ask of a person. That is the part we take on.

Dr. Acca is registered with the Italian Order of Psychologists. She receives in Milan and works online with patients across Italy and abroad.

Further reading from Therapsy: what EMDR therapy actually is, whether online couples therapy works.