When life poses a challenge
And the solution lies within us
Sometimes we need a space to reflect, understand ourselves and others, and see where our life guides us.
In psychotherapy and coaching, I help you to connect with your inner world intentionally and to return with clarity and wisdom.
My hints and support will accompany you beyond your past pains towards joyful and resourceful presence.
Why therapy or coaching?
We refer to therapy and coaching when we cannot find the way ourselves. When we hit the limit and cannot keep up with our everyday chores, stay active, have a positive outlook, and focus on our long-term goals.
We might feel stuck with our lives. We are good people, good professionals, partners, colleagues. We devote all our time to our obligations and commitments, but everyone demands more! We barely have time for our interests and pleasures, if any at all.
We might feel too stressed, too anxious, too angry, too sad, too disorganized. We might struggle to stay efficient and focused.
We might get sick often even though our lifestyle is healthy.
We might worry about our parents, partners, ex-partners, colleagues. We might ruminate about their issues as well as about how they see us, how they once have hurt us, and whether they approve of our actions.
We might realize that our burden is too heavy and that we want to let it go. We feel ready to revise our beliefs and expectations, we want to sort out our past grievings and fears.
Anything might be scary without love and kindness, and therapy is terrifying without them, too.
Before facing our issues, we learn to be kind.
therapy and coaching train you to be kind to yourself
Practicing self-care lets us:
- Understand what is really important. We learn to respect our core values, our talents, and motives to reconnect with our energy and passion.
- Learn to attune to body signals. We respect our needs in rest and reflection, which protect our health.
- Remember dreams and long-term plans and start cherishing them to regain cheer and optimism.
- Understand anger, sadness, fear, and disgust, to pave the way for feeling pleasure, warmth, joy, and love.
- Evaluate norms and needs in interactions with others. When we discover our boundaries, we build healthy and balanced relationships based on trust, respect, and care.
I invite you to start being kind to yourself and to devote your time to the right self-care.
Self-care comprises much more than a healthy lifestyle. Self-care means connecting to your authentic needs, physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, interpersonal.
Mind that self-care is different from egoism. While egoism assumes ignoring the needs of the other, self-care assumes focusing on our own needs. Taking care of ourselves does not mean we are set to ignore others. It just means we do not ignore ourselves in the first place.
When we are kind to ourselves, we dare to dive into deep connections with others, to feel attraction, connection, friendship, love, inspiration, awe, and gratitude.
“Self-compassion is simply giving the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to others.”
A professional can help
I help to build self-care in two domains, private and professional, in Individual therapy sessions and Career coaching.
In individual therapy we work with topics which affect well-being and efficiency in personal and interpersonal contexts. In individual career coaching we work with themes which affect functioning at work.
Please choose the option which suits your needs best at this moment, read the information and get in touch.
Questions and answers
Will I feel better after a couple of therapy sessions?
Usually stable changes are seen after 10-15 sessions. Many people start to pay attention to the signals of their organisms, interpret them correctly, and take actions which agree with their current needs. These changes eventually let people take a better care of themselves, feel happier and more self-secure.
The duration of the individual trajectory depends on character, complexity of the personal story, and commitment. The three main factors prolong therapy trajectory:
– Low emotional granularity, when it is hard to name your feelings and describe them verbally.
– High emotion reactivity, when emotions quickly become too intense and intolerable.
– Attachment disfunction in the relationship with the main caregivers (for example abandonment, rejection, neglect, abuse, and others.)
– Multiple traumas.
- Low emotional granularity, a condition which makes it hard to name feelings.
- High emotional reactivity, when emotions quickly become too intense and intolerable.
- Attachment disfunction, that is troubled relationship with the main caregivers (for example abandonment, rejection, neglect, abuse, and others)
- Multiple traumas
Can I have an appointment with therapist urgently?
Usually I can offer a timeslot somewhere between two weeks to two months after your initial referral. For the urgent support in crisis, please consult the following resources:
How do I know if I am making progress?
Usually, either during the session or at the end of the session you feel that you gained insight, clarity, or experienced an emotional transformation. This is a felt sense, which people easily recognize within themselves.
What if I am too scared to start therapy?
It is OK to feel scared or overwhelmed in contact with someone whom you meet for the first time. Most of the time, we carry certain expectations about our interactions with others and negative expectations will certainly create resistance and fear.
Remember though that therapy is all about self-care and revising such negative expectations is also a part of being kind towards yourself.
If you need more support, you can come to the practice together with your partner or your parent. They will need to wait outside or in the waiting room while we are working and then can pick you up after the session.
Can I bring my partner to therapy?
If your primary complaint is the quality of your relationship, you can start couple therapy. In couple therapy sessions we work with both partners.
Do you work with children?
No, I only work with adults from 18 years old and older.
How long does the session last?
One session lasts 50 minutes.
Will my payment be reimbursed?
CM and Helan pay 10 euro per session back. CM has a limit of 24 sessions per life and Helan has a limit of 12 sessions per year.
About me
Hi, I am Alexandra, integrative psychotherapist in Leuven. I work in English, Russian, and Dutch.
I help people to restore their contact with their being, feelings and productivity.
More specifically, I help setting healthy boundaries, revising maladaptive beliefs, taking responsibility for personal safety and comfort, healing from old pains such as trauma, loss, or lack of nurturing love and care.
I work as integrative psychotherapist and use techniques from different approaches of therapy. If some intervention does not fit, no worries, we have a list to choose from: theoretical depth of Psychoanalysis, playfulness and boldness of Gestalt, kindness of Client-centered therapy, wisdom of Focusing and Process work, freedom and fun of Psychodrama, elegance of EMDR, structure of Schema- and Emotion-Focused therapies.
© 2024 Alexandra Jaricova. All right reserved.
BE0765.335.443