Marko Talijan (they/them), belong therapy & workshops

Therapist Directory Listing Category: Psychotherapists and Counsellors

About the Therapist

About the therapist:

My name is Marko Talijan. I work through my practice, belong therapy & workshops, seeing adults and couples both online and in person in Amsterdam and Arnhem.

I trained in relational Gestalt psychotherapy. I also draw on Schema Therapy and Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples, particularly when the work touches attachment, relational patterns or the ways people have learned to protect themselves in intimacy.

The relationship between therapist and client is not a backdrop to the work. It is the work. I try to be honest and present in that relationship. I will not perform neutrality or hide behind technique. I am direct when something needs to be said, and I am gentle when that is what the moment asks for. Sometimes both at once.

Many of the people who come to me are navigating the long-term consequences of living in a world that was not built for them. Minority stress, shame that has been there so long it feels like personality, the exhaustion of managing other people’s comfort. I do not treat these as individual pathology. They are not.

I also work with couples and polycules. I am interested in what happens between people when closeness becomes frightening, when cultural backgrounds pull in different directions, or when old patterns of self-protection start running the relationship.

Alongside therapy, I facilitate workshops and group spaces for LGBTQ+ communities. These are not therapy groups. They are spaces for recognition, learning and the kind of contact that comes from being with people who do not need you to explain.

Sexual identity:

Gay
Queer

Gender identity: I use another term

Gender history: Not as assigned at birth

Non-monogamy: Yes

Intersex: No

Neurodivergent: Yes

Personal pronouns: they/them

Qualifications - Links to websites:

Professional memberships:

European Association for Psychotherapy (EAP)

https://www.europsyche.org

European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT)

https://www.eagt.org

Nederlandse Associatie voor Psychotherapie (NAP)

https://www.nap-psychotherapie.nl

International Association for the Advancement of Gestalt Therapy (IAAGT)

https://iaagt.org

Qualifications - Additional:

Award	Awarding body	Year of award

Experience and approach:

My primary orientation is relational Gestalt psychotherapy, which works with awareness, embodied experience and the quality of contact between people. I also draw on Schema Therapy when the work calls for understanding deeper emotional patterns and unmet needs, and on Emotionally Focused Therapy when working with couples and the way attachment shapes what happens between them. I do not follow one model rigidly. I follow what is most useful for the person in front of me.

I am attentive to what wider social structures do to people from the inside. Queerphobia, cisnormativity, sexism, racism, cultural displacement. These are not abstractions. They become the inner voice that says you are too much. Or not enough. Or wrong in some way you cannot quite name. Many of my clients have carried that voice so long they mistake it for their own.

In therapy we slow down. We look at those patterns together. The work might involve noticing what happens in the body when shame arrives, understanding what you do when someone gets close, or finding places where there is more choice than it seemed. But I am also here for what is hardest. I can sit with pain that has not yet found words, and I work toward repair where something has been broken, whether that is trust, connection to yourself, or the sense that you deserve to be here at all.

I do not prescribe resilience. I do not give homework. I try to offer a relationship in which something can be felt and understood that could not be felt alone.

Ethics is how I orient myself in every session. I do not work beyond my competence. I seek regular supervision. I refer when that is the right thing to do. I take seriously the power that sits in the therapist’s chair, and I try to use it carefully.

Before psychotherapy, I studied general linguistics and worked as a journalist. Both left their mark. Linguistics taught me that language is never neutral, that it organises power and meaning before we even notice. Journalism taught me to listen carefully and to not look away from what is uncomfortable. These are things I bring into the room too.

Approaches: