HORÓ Psychotherapy - Aleksandra Staneva, PhD

27/10/2025

Lately I have been immersed in an advanced depth psychology studies on Jungian Shadow work, the deep, disciplined kind that asks us to face what we would rather not see. As part of this work, I watched the Netflix series ’Monster: The Ed Gein Story’ as a case study through a Jungian lens.

Reflections on Shadow work through the series Monster: the Ed Gein story

19/10/2025

Abre la puerta! Open the door!🚪
On seeking safety in sameness

We rarely think of sameness as dangerous. Familiar routines, predictable relationships, the quiet repetition of what we already know. These things feel like safety. They ask nothing new of us. They keep us steady. They keep the heart carefully guarded.

But what feels safe is not always what gives life.

Sameness often becomes a hidden defence, a shield we do not realise we are carrying. We repeat emotional patterns that once protected us, even when they now confine us.

We stay with what is familiar, even when it no longer nourishes us.
We choose people who awaken the same ache, because the ache is known.
We shrink our needs to avoid disappointment.
We hold tightly to control and call it strength.
We mistake stillness for peace when it is really a fear of feeling.

Sameness whispers to the nervous system: you survived this before, you will survive it again. But survival is not the same as living. Emotional repetition is rarely harmless. We return to what we know to avoid what feels unbearable: the grief of what never was, the tenderness of longing, the risk of being truly seen.

To step out of sameness is not easy. It requires courage to enter the unknown. To feel again. To let the frozen places thaw. Our defences were formed for a reason. They once saved us. They helped us endure. But what once protected us may now be what keeps us small.

Real safety does not come from repetition. It comes from connection, honesty, and the willingness to meet life as it is. It grows slowly, through presence. It requires us to risk something new.

Sameness may feel safe, but it is a room without windows. Growth asks us to open a door we have kept closed for too long. And somewhere beyond that door is the quiet beginning of freedom.

Are you ready to open the door?

Yours in curiosity,
Aleksandra

19/10/2025

"Traumatized children need the Other even more than normal children, albeit with a characteristic ambiguity because the primary need for a securing Other was not fulfilled. This is why abused children often hide the abuse from the external world usually they are very much aware of the consequences of discovery, consequences that always come down to separation. This is precisely what is unbearable for them, because they have never lived through normal separation and still need the Other. This explains the frequently paradoxical bond between the child and the abuser, which appears yery strange from outside and often leads to accusations of complicity in the child."
—Paul Verhaeghe, On Being Normal and Other Disorders: A Manual for Clinical Psychodiagnostics

Art by Lucian Freud

Reflection with Two Children (Self-Portrait)

15/10/2025

When the N***s came to power, a writer began collecting people’s dreams and uncovered the effects the regime had on the collective unconscious. https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/how-dreams-change-under-authoritarianism?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dhfacebook&utm_content=app.dashsocial.com%2Fnewyorkermag%2Flibrary%2Fmedia%2F593157555

15/10/2025

Right now, the world doesn’t make space for the feminine.

Stillness feels like laziness, feeling feels like weakness, and intuition feels like a luxury we can’t afford. Society rewards speed, control, and doing, while our wild, tender, creative self is pushed aside, silenced, or ignored.

But she is still there. She holds our grief, our rage, our joy. She carries vision, courage, and deep knowing. She reminds us we can feel and act, dream and protect, grieve and create, all at once. Our Feminine. The inner Soulful expression of life itself.

In this year’s Red Goddess Women’s Circle, we gather to meet her, to honour her, and to practise living in alignment with her energy. We reclaim what the world tries to dismiss.

If you are ready to stop shrinking, stop hiding, and start walking with her, this is your invitation.

22 Dec 2025
5-7.30pm
Annerley, Brisbane QLD

📧 horoforwomen@gmail.com

11/10/2025

It’s Parental Alienation Awareness week here in Australia.
Do you know what PA is?

Is parental alienation valid, or a psychological manipulation of a child by one parent to undermine the targeted parent.

10/10/2025

Your dreams speak. Your imagination heals.

Images from your inner world aren’t random, they are messages from your soul.
See them. Listen. Ask. Draw. Write. Let them guide you.

Every shape, colour, or scene carries wisdom your mind can’t always reach.
Treat them as allies, as healers, as keys to your own transformation.

🤎Working with Dream & Imagination Images

Notice & Capture
Keep a journal. Write down or sketch any vivid dream or image from imagination.

Pause & Observe
Look at the image without rushing. What draws your attention? What feelings arise?

Enter the Image
Imagine stepping into it. Explore the scene. Who or what is there?

Ask & Listen
Gently ask the image or figures questions. Listen for answers: thoughts, feelings, or sensations.

Express & Reflect
Draw, paint, write, or simply sit with it. Reflect on what your soul may be trying to tell you.

Treat each image as a teacher or guide. Even small details can carry profound messages.

With love,
Aleksandra 🤎

10/10/2025

The emerging concept of matrescence is birthing a new mothering culture, and raising awareness about the bind of modern motherhood

10/10/2025

Dreams, imagination, and creative expression each reveal symbolic truths from the unconscious guiding us toward wholeness in ways that words alone cannot.

Integrating Jungian dreamwork, art as medicine, and symbolic picture interpretation allows for a deeper, more embodied dialogue between psyche and soul.

the dream world that reveals what words cannot,

the creative process that restores flow and vitality, and

the symbolic image that bridges the conscious and unconscious.

Healing, to me, is not only about insight, cognition and intellectual understanding of what’s happening in our lives, it’s about listening to what the image, the dream, and the creative act are trying to tell us, … and dancing with it both inside and into our relationships and lives.

08/10/2025

“Everything young grows old, all beauty fades, all heat cools, all brightness dims, and every truth becomes stale and trite.

For all these things have taken on shape, and all shapes are worn thin by the working of time; they age, sicken, crumble to dust unless they change.

But change they can, for the invisible spark that generated them is potent enough for infinite generation.
No one should deny the danger of the descent, but it can be risked.
No one need risk it, but it is certain that someone will.

And let those who go down the sunset way do so with open eyes, for it is a sacrifice which daunts even the gods.

Yet every descent is followed by an ascent; the vanishing shapes are shaped anew, and a truth is valid in the end only if it suffers change and bears new witness in new images, in new tongues, like a new wine that is put into new bottles.”

C.G. Jung (Symbols of transformation)

Art: C.G. Jung

03/10/2025

The world is heavy these days, with extreme political strife, on the verge of collapse, genocide, dread, and the quiet ache of hearts carrying grief too large to name.

It feels like we are reversing back into fascism, racism, homophobia, full blown patriarchy, and extreme inequality on all levels. Everything we have been fighting for, striving for, aching for…feels overshadowed by greed, power, cruelty, and individualism , resulting in irreparable damage and hopelessness.

As a therapist, I sit with people in this darkness, and I feel it too.

It is a strange and difficult time to be alive.

It feels like a counterintuitive step to go and look inside when the world is screaming (literally) and needing us to “do something!”.

Yet the way is in. Before anything we can do out there we need to look inside.

When we turn toward our own shadows, our fears, our grief, our anger, we do not become weakened. We become conduits for life, for clarity, for healing.
Even in the turbulence, there is a deep current within us that remembers how to endure, to love, to hope.

“We were made for these times.” rings my teacher’s Clarissa Pinkola Estés voice in my head.

This isn’t just a comforting thought; it is a call to presence. Being “made for these times” means we have within us the resilience, courage, and creativity to navigate darkness without being consumed by it.

It means we can hold both the grief of the world and our own hearts, tending to our inner life while also showing up in small ways for others. It invites us to trust our instincts, face our shadows, and step into action, not because the world is easy, but because we were built to endure, transform, and create light even in hard times.

So here I stand and remember, with the strength of a million women before me, that we can connect, unite, and dig deep into the golden well of compassion, presence, and courage to find peace both within and beyond ourselves, because without peace inside, there is no peace out there.

With love and a little light,
Aleksandra 🤍

01/10/2025

Rest in Power Jane! Your kindness and connection with the Wild has been transformative for generations of girls, me included. What a legend! 🦍❤️‍🔥