What Requests Do I Work With

• Companionship in illnesses, including those limiting life span

• Support during maternal crises and anxieties

• Problems of meaning

• Identity crisis

• Issues of choice

• Experiencing social disarray, feeling lost, loneliness

• Ontological emotions: anxiety, shame, guilt; and limiting coping strategies regarding them

• Conflicts with oneself, the world, and other people

• Painful (traumatic) emotional experiences

• Emotional difficulties, burnout issues among doctors, medical and other helping practitioners

Biography

My professional journey took shape in the medical realm, starting from high school graduation in 1998.

After graduating from medical university in 2004 with a sub-internship in obstetrics and gynecology, state distribution obliged me to work as a pediatrician. This misunderstanding, confrontation with social challenges and limitations, marked the beginning of my peculiar path: from pediatrics to psychotherapy.

Trying to return to beloved obstetrics, in 2006 I accidentally met American midwife Molly Caliger, leading an internship project for American midwives “The Russian Birth Project” in St. Petersburg. The subsequent friendship greatly influenced my worldview and radically transformed my practical thinking. I first heard the words “phenomenological” and “holistic” and, thanks to Molly, discovered the significance of philosophy in clinical practice. From 2006 to 2011, my three children were born one after another, and I practiced medicine during night shifts, adapting to family circumstances.

I realized my special interest in working with people individually and the complexity of achieving this within the medical system.

I mastered the profession of breastfeeding counseling. This expanded my experience of personally understanding a woman in her motherhood, complementing medical practice.

In 2016, my main interest centered on palliative medicine. I underwent training at BelMAPO and worked as a doctor in a children's hospice, facing existential questions head-on.

Palliative care physician colleague, Anna Sonkina, instructor of “Communication Skills in Medical Care, Calgary-Cambridge Model” opened my eyes to the healing potential of communication in medical practice.

In 2017, I completed her course at Sechenov University, Moscow.

My interest and practice led me closer to the human soul and further from clinical medicine.

In 2018, I met existential therapist, teacher, translator, Irina Glukhova, and realized I had found something that resonated strongly within me. Texts from Heidegger, Kierkegaard, A. Holzhei answered my inner inquiry.

Through these themes, I finally found solace and answers in my professional and personal quests.

From 2019 – 2021, I completed the advanced training program of I. Glukhova “Existential Therapy and Dasein Analysis” at BSPU.

Since then, my private existential counseling practice began under supervisory guidance.

I also continued to practice clinical medicine.

In 2022, completed professional retraining at BelMAPO, qualifying as “Psychotherapist, Psychologist.”

In 2025, enhanced my qualifications at N.P. Bekhtereva Training Center with the program “Practical Existential Therapy.”

I continue participating in programs and readings practicing existential worldview. Communicating with experienced colleagues, integrating my experience within the language of existential issues, develops and strengthens my worldview practice.

I enjoy uniting all my professional experience of working with people.

I dedicate special place and opportunity to the existential worldview. Being more of an “alternative” to the scientific one, it can enrich any approach to counseling and treatment, offering engagement with fundamental human life questions.

I find Dasein analysis closest to me, but in practice with clients, I strive to maintain personal openness to their expectations and preferences.

*BelMAPO – Belarusian Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education;

*BSPU – Belarusian State Pedagogical University.

Accreditations and Memberships

• Existential Counseling and Care Alliance (ECCA)

Professional Education

Medical Education

• Belarusian State Medical University (BSMU), Pediatric Faculty, Pediatrician, 2004

• Professional retraining in specialty “Psychotherapist, Psychologist”, Belarusian Medical Academy of Postgraduate Education (BelMAPO), 2021

• Specialization “Palliative Care”, “Psychological Approach in Working with Critically Ill People”, BelMAPO, 2016

• Medical Communication Course “Communication Skills in Medical Care, Calgary-Cambridge Model”, Sechenov Medical University, Moscow, 2017

Psychotherapy and Counseling

• “Existential Psychotherapy and Dasein Analysis” advanced training program, Belarusian State Pedagogical University, 2019-2021

• “Psychosomatics, Integrative Therapy” advanced training program, psychotherapy department BelMAPO, 2021

• “Practical Existential Therapy”, N.P. Bekhtereva Training Center, 2025

Key Principles of My Approach

• Phenomenological approach — focusing on describing the experienced reality

• Working to clarify the world view, assumptions underpinning personal understanding of life situations and one's actions within them.

• Refusing to medicalize human suffering in favor of defining psychopathology as “suffering due to one's own existence.”

• The therapeutic process is above all therapeutic relationships, within which our shared conditions of human existence and personal ways of relating and coping with them become available for analysis.

• Partnership model: the client defines their tasks in work, using different facets and possibilities of my experience for a joint search for unique solutions.

• Existential perspective on the origin of emotional, behavioral, and other difficulties, focused not on clinical concepts, but on existential philosophy. However, such a focus does not mean rejecting other ways to consider human suffering, including within the medical model.

• Therapy is joint cultivation towards truthfulness, not just a tool to alleviate feelings.

Current Groups, Courses, and Projects

• Individual Counseling Project “Philosophy of Motherhood”

• Collaborative group research project of experience “Motherhood. Group of Existential Experience.”

Languages

Russian, Belarusian

Work Format

Online, In-person in Minsk