About Me
My qualification, theoretical orientation, and work experience.
I am a fully qualified counsellor registered with the British Association of Counsellors and Psychotherapists (BACP) and adhere to their Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling. (BACP is a regulatory body for members of the counselling profession).
My formal training is Integrative counselling which means I combine different therapeutic tools and approaches to fit the needs of the individual client. I tailor my work to my client experiences, emotions, feelings, and approach to life. Each counselling journey as uniquely different as you are.
My main approach is relational, and I believe that the relationship between counsellor and client is the core of successful therapy. I also utilise Humanistic (person-centred and existential ways of working), Psychodynamic and Cognitive Behavioural (CBT) psychotherapeutic models, as well as inform my work with Attachment and Developmental theories. I often integrate Mindfulness and Creative practices into my work.
I hold a Postgraduate Diploma in Integrative Counselling from the Inter-Psyche Training Institute. I am extremely passionate about psychotherapy and continuously deepen my knowledge with the latest research and developments.
Before retraining as a counsellor, I worked in the events sector, organising international training and retraining programmes for health care and higher education professionals. I also spent several years providing legal advice for the community. Now, I run my private practice and work as a volunteer counsellor.
The qualities I bring to the therapeutic process.
Compassion
I am no different from the clients I see. Like everyone else, I am human. I have been through both wonderful and difficult experiences that shaped me into the person I am today. I went through grief and depression and in my suffering was born the compassion and desire to help others. Through helping others, I learnt how to be compassionate to myself. It works similarly in the therapy context bringing therapists sensitive awareness of their clients suffering and motivating them to assist. In its turn, therapists’ compassion helps clients to relate to their suffering with compassion and enables better coping with life challenges.
Openness
My experience of working with people from diverse backgrounds and own transition from one culture to another (immigration from Russia to the UK) has taught me to recognize and understand my own culture and how it influences my relationship with other people and be truly open to the culture that is different my own. I believe that openness and sensitivity to the difference help to make a deeper connection in the counselling process and facilitate the collaboration towards positive change.
Creativity
I see creativity as a natural part of the counsellor role and therapy as a process. Counselling nurtures new ideas, perspectives, and knowledge. It allows us to be open to new and nonobvious thoughts and ideas, relate to them, and this way gain more insight about ourselves. It is also always a co-construction of the desired outcome, which in itself is a creative act. The therapist and client need to be willing to explore, test, and discover in order to grow or build something new. My own experience of being in therapy served as a gateway to my creativity, it nurtured and taught me how to express, make sense and good use of my imagination.