What Requests I Work With

• Experiences of anxiety and uncertainty

• Decision-making problems

• Life crises

• Conflicts in relationships with oneself and others

• Losses

• Experiences of traumatic events

• Boredom, loss of meaning, feeling of emptiness

• Challenges with experiencing and expressing anger

• Feelings of inadequacy, inability to cope with what is happening

Biography

I was introduced to existential therapy during my undergraduate psychology studies, before encountering other therapeutic approaches. After graduating from Southern Federal University in 2021, I was still uncertain about how to practice, where to study, and how to grow in this career path, but I wanted to work in a format of live contact with people. At the same time, I was fortunate to enroll in studies and later intern at a psychological center. I was doubly lucky that the mentor who chose me practiced in the existential direction herself. Everything aligned perfectly. The center I joined offered a variety of therapeutic methods and techniques, and there was the opportunity to learn them additionally: practicing together, creating common projects. I have always enjoyed approaching work somewhat experimentally—offering the client perspectives and techniques from different approaches. The experimental format itself, as a therapeutic tool, represents an active method of work, inviting the trial of new behavior (whether in the realm of the specific or the imagined). It still seems valuable to me for research, as the main focus of existential therapy, because it throws the possibility for acquiring and describing new experiences in the therapy process alongside another.

Working experience at the center allowed me to form a fairly broad view of what therapy could be. But the training at The NP Bechtereva Training Center allowed me to deepen into the existential direction. From 2022 to 2025, my main training spanned several parts. Three stages of retraining, further education, seminars, groups—all expanded my knowledge and conceptions, shaping a therapeutic stance and worldview. The language of the existential approach feels native to me: descriptive, resorting less to labels and diagnoses, remaining open to the difficult-to-bear aspects of human existence, allowing contradictions to coexist together in one space of experience. Such a language, in my opinion, allows one to approach lived experience directly (how am I experiencing what is happening?), while concurrently naming or observing how my experience becomes named (what is happening to me?).

As I see it, the path of exploration leads to greater openness and interest in the diversity of one's own experiences, which can already reduce tension. Existential therapy is limited in form for problem-solving, as symptom treatment; exploration is simply exploration. A broadened understanding of oneself and one's situation in the world rather gives the ability to see one's own possibilities and limitations. And based on this, make choices—how now to live with this (I can still joke during the therapeutic process, by the way, is this my limitation or possibility?).

In therapy, cooperation is important as a form of therapist-client relationships: collaborative determination of therapy goals and objectives, meeting regularity, methodologies used. The process of relationship building adheres to principles of honesty and openness, constrained by the roles of therapist and client.

Accreditations and Memberships

• Existential Counselling and Care Alliance (ECCA)

Professional Education

Psychological and Psychotherapeutic Education

• Academy of Psychology and Pedagogy, Southern Federal University, bachelor's degree, 2021

• School of Preventive and Personal Counselling for consultants, 2021

• Crisis Counselling Technologies, ANO "NIIDPO", 2022

• Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling ,first stage, The NP Bechtereva Training Center, 2023

• Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling ,second stage, The NP Bechtereva Training Center, 2024

• Practical Existential Therapy, The NP Bechtereva Training Center, 2025

• Existential Psychotherapy and Counselling, third stage, 2025

Key Principles of My Approach

• Descriptive exploration as the main method of work

• Cooperation as a form of client-therapist relationship

• The client and therapist relationship as a separate focus in work

• Existential lens focusing on the possibilities and limitations of the experience of existence

• Each therapy is created in a collective live process, therefore unique for each client

• Requests create a direction for exploration but can be changed and redefined in its process

• Openness to applying methods and perspectives from other therapeutic approaches

Languages

Russian

Work Format

In-person in Rostov-on-Don, online