Olesia Varvarska

Level one trainer at KIGiP. Leads the training and therapy group on working with children and adolescents

Professional activity

• Certified gestalt therapist

• Child psychotherapist

• Family psychotherapist

• Trainer of level one in gestalt therapy

• Leader of the training and therapy programme «Working with children, adolescents and families»

Issues I work with:

• difficulties in relationships between men and women, and between parents and children;

• inner conflicts;

• crises;

• loneliness;

• depression;

• psychosomatic symptoms;

• heightened anxiety;

• low self-esteem;

• living through loss, the death of someone close, separation;

• the search for resources.

Olesia on gestalt

«Psychology is my great and long-standing love, going back to my school years. I always felt it was my calling, though I did not immediately dare to follow my heart and make it my profession. It is my second degree — but everything happens at the time that suits it best.

I have always been interested in people. We are all very different, unlike each other in our inner worlds and our life stories, and yet very alike in our striving for happiness.

I believe that every person has the right to be happy simply by being born, but that sometimes something gets in the way.

I also believe that each of us has enough inner resources and strength to cope with any difficulty on our path. And my work today is precisely to help those who need it see and find those resources — as I was once helped myself.

I turned to psychology during a crisis in my own life. By then I was already the mother of a small daughter and son, close in age, and despite my enormous love for my children that stage of life turned out to be very hard for me.

There were more questions than answers, more tiredness than resources, more problems than solutions. I had to think seriously about my life and look for ways to cope. I very much wanted to find a way out. And it was found.

So my children became my guiding thread. Through psychotherapy I found, and still find in difficult moments, reliable ground, support and resource. And now I help others do the same. Today I am happy to be where I am, as I am, and to do what I love with all my heart.

Psychotherapy for me is a journey. Perhaps one of the most absorbing and important journeys you can make in this life. A journey into yourself. Getting to know yourself, the depth of your inner whirlpools and the height of your inner peaks. Looking for answers to the questions of who you are, what kind of person you are, how you are made, how you live your life, how you make choices, how you build relationships, whether you are happy and what keeps you from feeling happy.

On this journey, accompanied by a psychotherapist as an experienced guide, you will certainly come to understand yourself better. You will be able to become more sensitive and attentive — first of all to yourself, to your feelings and needs, and then to others. You will become more aware and more whole, understanding more about yourself, feeling yourself, accepting yourself in all your different states.

I sincerely believe, and know from my own experience, that psychotherapy helps to find ways of easing human suffering and of healing the soul with care.

I love and choose gestalt therapy for its liveliness and sincerity, for its wholeness and depth.

For the way it gently and carefully helps you come to know yourself and make sense of your own experience.

For the chance to see more clearly how you live, how and what you choose, how you engage with the world.

For the possibility of gaining new experience right here and now, which you can then build into your life.

For the way it revives you, restores wholeness and contact with yourself, your body and your feelings.

For more sincere, closer and deeper relationships with people.

For giving you back your freedom — freedom from suffering, freedom to be yourself and freedom to live.

For the way gestalt therapy helps you find your path to the life you long for.

People often come to a psychologist for a «magic pill» that will quickly solve everything. I am afraid I have no such pill to take away your pain. But I do have enough knowledge and experience, sincere interest in you, the wish to support you in finding what will help you in particular, and the ability to listen and hear, to see and notice. My clients and colleagues describe me as a sensitive, attentive, warm, caring and supportive psychotherapist. I will be truly glad if we meet.»

Education:

• M. P. Drahomanov National Pedagogical University. Psychologist.

• «Introduction to gestalt therapy / gestalt counselling» (level one). Kyiv Institute of Gestalt and Psychodrama. Trainer: Olena Zozulia.

• «Gestalt therapy / gestalt counselling» (level two). Kyiv Institute of Gestalt and Psychodrama. Trainers: Nataliia Turbovets, Olena Marynushkina, Serhii Haidai, Serhii Sazonov.

• International long-term GATLA programme (level three), «Continuing education in gestalt therapy and training in work with groups». Kyiv Institute of Gestalt and Psychodrama. Trainers: Jay Levin, Robert Resnick, Anna Tanalska, Nifont Dolhopolov, Olha Dolhopolova, Oleksandr Yeremeiev.

Specialisation: «Working with children and adolescents in the Violet Oaklander model». Trainer: Vira Zakharchenko.

«Systemic family therapy». Interregional Institute of Gestalt Therapy and Art. Trainers: Zlatoslava Zankovska, Olha Stepanova.

«Foundations of psychological work with developmental trauma in the body-oriented gestalt approach». Kyiv Institute of Gestalt and Psychodrama. Trainer: Olena Abramova-Kistaieva.

«The practice of psychological help: the eco-facilitative approach». Trainer: Nataliia Makarchuk.