Amalie was born in Norway to Norwegian parents, but ever since she was little she has been in contact with many different cultures. When she was 11 years old, she travelled to an international camp in Japan where she met children from 12 different countries. At 13 she repeated the experience, but this time in the Netherlands, where she met a group of friends from Brazil, Jordan, the Netherlands, and Canada, which she would later visit and learn about their lives with their families.

Amalie has lived in several countries, including a year as a child in the Dominican Republic, a term as a student in Argentina, another term in France, she completed her first year of psychology in England, did an exchange term in Peru, and finally completed her degree and postgraduate degree in Spain. She has a good understanding of the challenges a student abroad may experience, as she says; «It’s often the little things that can be the biggest challenges.» Some examples she mentions are cultural differences in how people relate to punctuality and planning, tendencies for when to have dinner or go out on social activities, the unwritten social rules for communication in another language, and practical things such as administrative processes that can be difficult to understand and require a lot of energy. 

As a teenager, Amalie began working as a mentor for the child protective services, and there began her interest in psychology. She worked with adolescents who came from dysfunctional homes and noticed that she lacked information and knowledge on how she could help them in the best possible way.

In love with the international environment, Amalie decided to study abroad, and completed her psychology degree at the European University of Madrid. During her Master’s Degree in General Health Psychology, she was selected to complete her internship at SINEWS where she was able to learn from Tommy Norheim, her tutor, about clinical practice in a multicultural environment, helping foreign students with the transition to live and study in Spain, lower their procrastination, anxiety, and depression, and how to handle pressure from oneself, peers, and family members. 

During the holidays, Amalie returned to Norway to work as a therapist in a psychiatric hospital. There she worked with cases of intrusive and negative thoughts, high levels of anxiety, difficulties in separating reality from fantasy, interpersonal problems and social skills, addictions, and anger management problems.

Amalie has also completed a master’s degree in behaviour modification from The Therapeutic Institute of Madrid (ITEMA) to deepen her understanding of why we do what we do and what we can do when our behaviour and circumstances cause us problems. For her it is important to help clients understand the origin and current maintenance of their problems, in order to design an individualised intervention so that the clients can begin to feel better.

Amalie describes herself as a warm, non-judgmental psychologist who is very dedicated to her cases. She has experience working with various types of problems, including anxiety, phobias, and ruminative thoughts, the development of assertiveness and social skills, self-esteem, procrastination, self-harm, obsessive-compulsive behaviours, and difficulties that one may experience with aging. Amalie believes in the ability to learn other ways of handling problems in therapy, to develop new tools that allow the clients to continue independently once the sessions are over. She currently combines her clinical work with being a lecturer in psychology at the European University of Madrid, always trying to keep up to date with new advances in psychology.