PSYCHOTHERAPY

Existence is a good life — truly good: deep, meaningful, and authentically mine. Existential psychotherapy helps people become aware of the conditions that make such a life possible and learn to care for creating those conditions themselves.

So what makes a good life possible? It is when you can feel openly and freely, without being afraid of your own feelings; when you can live your own life rather than someone else’s. And from this, a natural sense of responsibility for your life begins to emerge.

In my work, I rely on a phenomenological attitude — an openness toward what is present, and a genuine effort to understand another person’s experience as they themselves live and feel it.

Such a respectful and careful therapeutic approach leaves a person with the sense that they have been understood not only professionally, but also humanly.

My psychotherapy training took place in London through the GLE-International programme in Existential Analysis with Dr. Alfried Längle and his colleagues.

I’m registered with the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and practise in accordance with its ethical and professional standards.

I have two sons, and I’m very proud of them

interesting facts

I lived in London for 14 years

My education lasted six years and meets the highest European standards

I offer consultations in both Russian and English

My professional and personal interests include neuropsychology and practices at the intersection of Western psychotherapeutic traditions and Eastern philosophy

A favorite book of mine is “The Better Angels of Our Nature” by Steven Pinker

values and beliefs

Openness, acceptance, freedom, the value of relationships, closeness, respect for the otherness of another person, empathy, trust, creativity, authenticity, gratitude, and responsibility

Fear and anxiety are an inseparable part of human life. We are mortal, and the world is fragile and uncertain. We are not promised a single hour - nothing is guaranteed.Fear throws us back to ourselves. And in being brought back to ourselves, we come face to face with our responsibility for our own life.

How often do we disguise fear and anxiety as something else: in our behavior, in our reactions and feel afraid to admit them even to ourselves, taking them for weakness.

And yet, the possibility of looking at reality openly and accepting it can, paradoxically, soften fear and anxiety and often change the way we experience what once frightened us or kept us stuck. This is also where the practice of courage can help: the kind of courage we often need in order to take a step towards what we fear. With the support of a therapist, this path can be walked with care, attention, and gentleness.

In depression, the world of feelings can become fixed in a negative register. A person may feel unable to make decisions; the capacity to love and to enjoy life becomes limited; faith in a better future fades. Work can feel almost impossible. A painful sense of diminished self-worth often appears.

As a person lives through powerlessness, feelings of worthlessness, a loss of inner freedom and pressure from the outside, they may also discover an inner abyss. And in order not to fall into nothingness, they often begin to function for external outcomes: to focus on results, to follow norms, to worry about what others might think. This can make life feel compelled. What they do is done not freely, but out of necessity. The less strength they have, the more they take on. Subjectively, this can feel like a "troubled conscience", a persistent sense of guilt. And of course, all of this is far from a good life.

Sometimes depressive states can be linked to underlying physical or medical conditions. That is why it is important not to "psychologise" everything and to seek timely support from an appropriate medical professional. Modern medication, combined with psychotherapy, often brings good results.

A crisis can be understood as a turning point- a time of transition. It is a state in which the ways we have relied on to reach our goals no longer feel adequate, and life becomes less predictable.

A crisis brings hidden conflicts and imbalances to the surface. It can arise at key stages of development, at certain points in adult life, or in the wake of major losses. In adolescence, the safety and familiarity of a child’s world gives way to new inner forces and new tasks. In midlife, sometimes not until our fifties, many people begin to take stock. And if certain thoughts appear: if I continue living like this, I won’t reach what truly matters; it can’t be that "this is all my life has been"; something essential, something most valuable, has not yet been lived, then a very real midlife crisis may unfold.

Of course, the most acute crises can emerge at any age when someone goes through a profound loss: a serious illness, bereavement, losing a job, or another deeply destabilising event. Such experiences can lead to a crisis of meaning, especially when they disrupt the values that once held us, the identities we depended on, and our sense of belonging within a wider context.

We are shaped to live in a constant exchange between our inner world and the world around us. When this delicate balance between the outside and the inside is disturbed, a person can easily become vulnerable to loneliness. Loneliness arises when we are not in dialogue with another and not in dialogue with ourselves.

Often, loneliness has its roots in earlier experiences of relationships that were incomplete or unsustaining. When we are able to experience a good relationship — closeness, warmth, physical affection it can have a profound impact on our life. Something inside begins to feel nourished and enlivened. Our relationship with ourselves improves. Through an embrace, through tenderness received from another person, we come to feel ourselves more fully. The absence of this kind of experience can leave an inner coldness.

Loneliness can also mean that, in the depths of oneself, a person has not yet truly found themselves. It can feel as if one is left by everyone, even by oneself. Loneliness is a state in which a person lives at a distance from themselves.

Psychotherapy makes it possible to look at the relationship you have with yourself, to clarify what has been disrupted, and to begin restoring it — even if you have never thought about yourself in this way before. This may be preceded by work on self-understanding: Who am I? What am I like? How do I relate to myself? Do I like myself? After all, it helps to know who it is you are going to live your one and only life with.

"No war demands the courage that it takes to look into oneself."
Søren Kierkegaard, 19th-century Danish philosopher

And yet, this is a fascinating journey towards the centre of oneself, one that may never truly end. The work of self-understanding is always long and deep: it brings to light what was forgotten or lost, what lay dormant in us, waiting to be clarified or discovered. It may touch on questions of professional and personal fulfilment at this stage of life, within your current context.

The question of meaning is a profoundly human one.

Over the course of human development, and especially in the Western world, it has become increasingly important in recent times. This question points to a person’s wish to understand their life and to shape it in accordance with their values. Yet as a spiritual being, a person also wants to sense, feel, anticipate, or know the wider connections within which their experiences, what happens to them, and ultimately their own death, can become understandable.

We need a relationship with a larger context in order to sustain our will to live: to find some sense of safety in the midst of an abyss that can feel absurd, and to balance effort, struggle, and the suffering that also accompanies life with fulfilment and at least occasional happiness.

And yet this connection to a larger context can be lost again and again in the pressures of everyday life, in crises, and in emotional or mental distress, especially in depression. At such times, the search for meaning can feel like an unsolvable problem, and it may require specific support.