03/07/2023
Autobiography
I was born in Kyiv on the eighth of July 1990, in the family of school teachers, intelligentsia in the first generation. My father became a history teacher and my mother a teacher of Ukrainian language and literature. My parents met in Kyiv, having arrived there from the countryside to study. I have a four year older sister. Soon after my birth it was decided to move to my father’s village near Vinnitsa, where he is from. I finished first grade there. My parents figured that socio-economic crisis (the 90th) would be easier to go through there.
Dad worked as a historian in the local school and did some work in the household, my mom took care of us and the household.
Life in the village was good. We had some cattle, cows, chickens and others. We also had a dog and a cat. We enjoyed organic food, clean air. I was surrounded by beautiful nature. When I finished my first grade, the family decided to move to Vinnitsa. I was glad to go to a city.
I did not go to a kindergarten and went to school one year earlier than kids usually do. I did well academically, but socially it was a bit hard for me, I was timid around classmates. As a result, I stayed in the same grade for a second year, because the school environment was too intense for me at that time. Like most people, I cannot say that I was totally happy or unhappy in my childhood. It was good and bad at different times. Either way, I understand clearly that my interest in psychotherapy did not come to me out of nowhere.
I did fine in school, some subjects I knew better than others. I was never stressed at home to study. I, somehow, managed to sit myself at the writing desk and do my homework without extra supervision. On average I had “Good” grades with a downward trend by the end of the school. I knew geography well, due to the fact that my father and I played with geographic and political maps of the world. I knew where the most significant objects were situated, continents, oceans, seas, mountains, etc. I could name and locate most countries and capitals. I was fond of physics and did well in it, thanks to a good contact that myself and a teacher managed to form. In high school I had a really hard time with algebra and geometry. I think the fact that our mathematician's nickname was “Muller” (it's a Gestapo boss from a soviet tv show, “Seventeen Moments of Spring”) and that he used to smash the blackboard with his hand when explaining a theorem had something to do with it.
The English language was a problem for me most of the school years. I could not understand it nor learn it, no matter how hard I tried. The situation remained the same until I joined a private English courses. Within a bit more than six months I progressed substantially. I was no longer lagging behind, I became top of the class in school. It was a transformational experience. I realized then, that the problem may not be in you, but your environment and how it treats you.
It was my mother’s idea to join the courses. I am very grateful to her for that, as knowing English opened many opportunities for me in life. I studied it in a group led by a wonderful teacher, Tatiyana Svichenskaya. I still remember her message to us on the first lesson, - “Do as many mistakes as you need”. Her teaching approach was way more effective than the one in a public school.
When I was around fifteen I had a dream to win a green card and immigrate to the USA. It was very easy to idealize this country at that time. I formed a dream that gave me hope for a good life. I fell in love with American culture through movies and music and that motivated me strongly to learn English. English courses gave me the activity in which I succeeded and felt confident in. I really needed that. I felt great from the realization that I am among top students in the class at the courses. In around 2 years I started to understand the meaning of songs, and soon I could watch movies without the translation. It had a tremendously positive effect on me. I was fascinated and felt more strength to live.
Thanks to the experience of excelling at the English courses I realized that in order to succeed one needs to have a desire, motivation for it, as well as competent and well-meaning teachers or mentors. In five years this experience helped me to make a decision to try to succeed in psychotherapy.
I had friends in the school and neighborhood. I had a few bikes, soccer balls and innumerous amount of soccer sneakers, which had a lifespan of a month or two, as I used them mercilessly playing soccer on asphalt and gravel fields. I got a home PC at fourteen and internet at sixteen.
My parents … it is hard for me to find the correct word here, I want to say either “often” or “from time to time” … quarreled and had strong conflicts at home. It was overwhelming for me when I was little. I could not stand that much verbal aggression. It became clear to me at some point, that my parents’ childhood was not Christmas time, really. They were born in 1955 and 1954. Prominent psychoanalysts, John Bowlby and Francoise Dolto, only at that time made their discoveries about the importance of child attachment to mother, or other person who provides care, in the first years of life. So people generally were not aware of children's emotional needs at that time and childhood emotional traumatization was something usual and widespread everywhere in the world.
Because of traumatization dangerous distortions of the perception of reality take place. An ability to see, hear, feel, trust, believe in good deteriorates. Family life was hard for my parents, sadly, myself and my sister felt it from time to time, when we were kids.
Such a psychological picture meant that conflicts were unavoidable. Certainly, it was destructive for me. This is where the psychological problems that I brought to my therapist originate from. Complex of shame and guilt, low self-esteem, difficulty in having faith in myself, alexithymia as an inability to differentiate and be aware of feelings. Too much stress (distress) negatively affected my cognitive function and educational activity. My capacity for personal relationship and achievement suffered from it noticeably.
I developed a strong rescuer complex by observing and sometimes participating in conflicts. Seeing how my childhood world was being torn apart I strived as hard as I could to solve my parents' problems, to save my world. I tried to be a negotiator, translator or mediator in the adult relationships of my parents. A child rescuer.
I finished school (2005), colledge (2008) and three year courses of English language (2008) in Vinnitsa. There are three clearly recognizable periods in my life from eighteen to thirty one. First one lasted four years and the other two lasted five years each. I’ll walk you through them down the line and briefly describe the fourth period which has just begun last year.
The first period - from eighteen to twenty one
It seems that at around eighteen years old I reached a new level of self-awareness. I started seeking vitally important knowledge. As famous gestalt-therapist Claudio Naranjo said, I became a seeker and a seeker becomes a finder, eventually. Apparently, I realized that I wouldn’t rescue anybody. By that time I had self-esteem problems. Besides the rescuer complex, I also had a strong complex of guilt and shame. Generally, I felt emotionally repressed, repressed anger in particular. I experienced chronic stress, regular physical pain in different parts of my body, in my lower back, headache, and ache in my eyes. Stress negatively affected my thinking and behavior.
It was hard to study and communicate with people at the university, at work and socially. I felt really bad and was mentally in a bad place. Nobody saw that in my immediate surroundings. I had no idea what I felt and what kind of feelings there are, generally speaking, or how to build relationships. Popular advice - “just be yourself” almost made me panic, as I really did not know who I was. The structure of my personality was damaged in some important areas and necessary basic personal qualities were blocked or unopened in me. Such were the consequences of traumatic experiences in my life.
I moved to Kyiv and joined a university (2008), my field of study was international economics. At the same time I worked full-time and, what’s most important, I did a lot of self-education. I badly needed to find some answers as to how to improve my mental and physical health. I felt so unwell physically and emotionally that I had to say no, with great sadness, to my much desired trip to the USA, for a summer. I thought I wouldn’t handle it, I was barely coping with my life in Ukraine.
I put all my efforts into my studies, no, not at the university. That, as it turned out, did not have real substance in it, except for the English language. I read many books, articles, listened to many lectures and seminars on history, philosophy, religious subjects, sociology, economics, psychology and other subjects. I discovered certain people who provided free education for the general public, by their own initiative. For four years of hard work on self-education I realized that I should focus on studying psychology.
The most important person in my life at that time was Vlidimir Mihaylovich Zaznobin. He will forever stay the dearest teacher and mentor of mine. He passed in 2018. He and his group did tremendous work so that young people like me, but not only, could receive solid knowledge about the world and humanity. Knowledge that allows one to find their own constructive, creative and individual path in life.
So, during these four years I did the following. For three years I studied at the university full-time, but for the fourth and the last year I changed the form of studying to distant learning, in order to make room for psychology, as I lost interest and gave up on economics. Simultaneously, I worked full-time in such a position that had only two-three hours of actual work out of an eight hour shift. So I could do my learning for the rest of the time at work.
The second period - from twenty two to twenty six
A girl that I knew recommended me to check out gestalt-therapy, that I had never heard of before. So, I read a few books about it and I was impressed with it. At twenty one I joined a five year training program for gestalt-therapists. I was done with economics and decided to do gestalt-therapy instead. My life as a student continued for the next six years. After that I started my private practice, I’ll get to it later. From the second attempt I got to good trainers. Vladimir Filipenko from Minsk, Anna Bychkova from Kyiv and Kiryl Khlomov from Moscow.
The training program takes five years and a half. It includes the following:
- the main group that works for the whole time. It gethers for three day modules every 45 days;
- specialized groups, where specific topics in psychotherapy are learnt (each such group works for a year or a year and a half and includes 6-8 three day modules every month);
- work with peers in a group of three (roles: a therapist, a client and an observer) for two years and a half every two weeks for three hours with an invited supervisor for every fourth meeting;
- individual psychotherapy one year minimum, every week;
- group therapy one year, most common format once every two weeks for three hours;
- annual conferences;
- and summer schools, gestalt intensives, 11 days, an event where students receive therapy, practice to provide therapy and learn to receive supervision on their work.
While I was receiving psychotherapeutic training in the gestalt community I also received my second degree in psychology, which took two years and a half.
So, this time period, from 2011 till the end of 2016, I was committed to psychotherapeutic training, my own personal therapy and receiving a psychological degree. In order to finance all these educational and therapeutic projects I worked full-time till the beginning of my practice, in the financial industry, mainly.
Three years after the beginning of my training I started working with people for free or for a symbolic amount of money to receive experience. These were 2014-2016 years.
Three years after I started my therapy I met my future wife. We’ve been together for nine years. Relationship with Olya made me more kind, empathetic, caring and secure. I managed to tilt my anxious-avoidant attachment pattern into the trust and security direction.
The relationship has had a really positive impact on my self-confidence and the feeling of security. Olya decided to become a therapist, also.
These were really contrasting five plus years of my life. Work in the office was mainly monotonous and boring, I was sleepy there oftentimes, it felt like time drags forever. On the contrary, life in educational and therapeutic projects as well as in personal relationships was vibrant, fulfilling, hard, interesting, exciting and painful sometimes. I am really glad that I met all those great people who helped me build my professional identity, although this path is really difficult at times.
The third period - from twenty seven to thirty one
At twenty seven in 2017 I started developing my private practice, as my main professional activity. I continued learning with roughly two times less projects compared to the previous six years. My focus changed to receiving supervision on my work, instead of personal therapy.
I was not able to find a viable solution to work as a psychologist in a psychological center or a clinic for acquiring more work experience. The next best solution was to start a private practice. I gave myself enough time to adapt to this kind of work. I worked with the amount of people my professional capacity allowed me to. And it grew slowly every year.
All therapists build their practice with those personal and social qualities and resources that are available to them. I conducted my practice in Kyiv, in an office. I worked with people individually, mainly. For the whole time I have had about half of English speakers in my practice (both native speakers and not) and the other half has been Russian and Ukrainian speakers. I also led psychotherapeutic groups. The group members consisted of two categories. People who wanted therapy for personal growth and students from training programs who also had a professional interest.
I took pride in my ability to provide therapy and counseling in English for international guests in Kyiv. I managed to do it due to, obviously, the knowledge of language and my genuine interest in Western culture. I was also proud of conducting therapy groups. Both these activities gave me an extra feeling of joy and reward from my work.
Besides receiving supervision on my work with clients, this period of my life is also characterized by my participation in our professional community life on a collegial, horizontal level. I was curious to get to know what other therapists are like and how they work, what people the professional part of our community consists of. To satisfy my interest I took part in a four year project “Advanced training program for gestalt-therapists - Mastering of gestalt-therapy and supervision” and consequently visited multiple gestalt intensives in the role of a supervisor. I think I fully satisfied my curiosity and formed a more realistic view of people.
Life went on, there was progress in my work, I was acquiring valuable experience, rounding up sharp edges of my personality, built planes, created new connections. Then the war started in Ukraine and it caught me completely off guard. 2022 is a black page in my life and the lives of tens of millions of ukrainians. I didn't think that people would go to war of such a massive scale here, in this part of the world. I did not think that the Russian government is stupid and degraded that much. I didn’t think our situation was that bad. I thought I understood the reality better. A severe multiple crisis started in my life. The bigger part of my energy last year went into processing and coping with all of that. My practice shrinked three times for at least half a year and in a while it grew again. This crisis launched a serious reevaluation of my views and values in my consciousness.
The fourth period - from thirty two till now
I am in the first year of the fourth life period, it has just begun. In contrast to negative events connected to the war, which as it seemed filled almost all of the space in my life, there were positive things as well. Two days after my birthday our daughter was born. Myself and my wife became parents. We called her Alice, like the name of the main heroine in Lewis Carroll's “Alice In The Wonderland”. This little human being is absolutely fantastic!
Last four or five years I listened to podcasts from time to time on the topic of psychedelic use in psychotherapy and trauma treatment. The guests and sometimes the host of these podcasts were credible scientists and researchers with proper positions in official structures. They were not somebody from the street. This is very important to me in this topic. My curiosity won and I organized such an experience for myself in 2022.
I consumed a portion of psilocybin mushrooms and received a psychedelic experience. It lasted for three-four hours and then it started to fade away. In this changed state of consciousness I could think, feel and sense everything multiple times stronger than usual and the perception of myself and the world was very different than usual. I guess, this substance helps to better integrate life experience, if one has the energy for such mental work. I think the most valuable thing I took out of it, is the improved ability for empathy. Generally speaking, it was a positive experience for me and currently I do not feel I want to repeat it.
This is where I am going to stop my autobiography for now. I tried to open up and tell you about myself a bit. I hope I managed to do it. Thank you for your attention and interest in me!
March 2023
