Valentyna Neikova-Mokhova

Lead trainer at KIGiP

Professional activity:

• Senior trainer and supervisor at the Kyiv Institute of Gestalt and Psychodrama

• Trauma therapist, specialist in the psychotherapy of trauma and crisis states. Author and trainer of programmes in crisis psychology and psychotraumatology

• Head of the Association of Gestalt Trainers of Ukraine (AGTU)

• Board member of the Association of Gestalt Trainers of Ukraine (AGTU)

• Full member of the Ukrainian Association of Specialists in Overcoming the Consequences of Traumatic Events

Working today as a trauma therapist and a specialist in the psychotherapy of trauma and crisis states, Valentyna Neikova-Mokhova devotes much of her time to reducing the consequences of traumatic events in Ukraine, working with participants of the fighting and with everyone affected by the war.

Valentyna about herself: «My interest in awareness began back in the 1990s. What has always come first for me is seeing to what extent I take part in creating my own life, how I live through this or that moment of it, and in what way I carry out my most important project — the making of a life.

It is precisely this way of being that brought me into the world of psychology and psychotherapy. This is my path, where I keep growing, developing and changing while keeping my own essence. I like to go on through life at my own rhythm and my own pace, choosing consciously, at every moment, the direction of my way.

It matters greatly to me to be aware of how I interact with my inner and outer world, and that is exactly what «being alive» means for me. That is why one of my key trainings in psychotherapy became the gestalt approach.

And, as Jay Levin says — a legend of contemporary gestalt, who at his time strongly shaped my formation as a gestalt therapist and whom I count among my main teachers in this method — «I like noticing obvious processes and helping to make them obvious for others».»

Basic higher education: I. I. Mechnikov Odesa State University, full higher education in Psychology, qualification «Psychologist, lecturer in psychology». Diploma no. SK 30340269

Additional specialised training:

• Moscow Institute of Gestalt and Psychodrama, qualification «Gestalt therapist»

• Moscow Institute of Gestalt and Psychodrama and Gestalt Associates Training Los Angeles (GATLA): professional continuing education programme in gestalt therapy, level three. Training programme for group leaders

• European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT). Training programme for trainers: trauma-focused gestalt therapy

• Italian Gestalt Institute. Continuing education programme: psychopathology in gestalt therapy

• Institute of Health Psychology and Akershus University Hospital, Norway: continuing education in supervision

• Ukrainian Union of Psychotherapists (UUP): programme «Propaedeutics of psychiatry»

• Ukrainian Institute of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and the Oxford Centre for Cognitive Therapy: professional training programme in cognitive behavioural therapy

• Ukrainian Institute of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy: training programme for trainers in trauma-focused psychotherapy, with the right to teach TF-CBT programmes

• Schema therapy: specialised training in working with borderline and other personality disorders, schema therapy with couples, with children and adolescents, and in groups

• Schema therapy: specialised training in working with complex PTSD

• Schema therapy: therapy of sexual disorders. Elizabeth Lacy

• Narrative Exposure Therapy (NET): specialised training in helping people who have lived through traumatic experience. Trauma-oriented psychological interventions for survivors of torture: the method of early intervention, the method of narrative exposure therapy

• Austrian EMDR Institute. Training programme: EMDR and trauma therapy, specialisation in working with simple and complex forms of PTSD

• Trauma therapy: Instinctual Trauma Response method, training seminar (ITR). Working with survivors of violence: individual and interdisciplinary approaches. Psychological help for victims of torture and their families

• EFT: emotionally focused therapy. Training programme in work with couples and families (basic and advanced levels)

• European Association for Gestalt Therapy (EAGT): training seminar on work with couples and families in the gestalt approach. Dr Dieter Bongers

• Eight-step programme of work with loss for adults, children and adolescents. Knut Andersson

• Training programme: somatic trauma therapy by the method of Peter Levine

• Training programme in the diagnosis of dissociative disorders. Suzette Boon

• Deep Brain Reorienting (DBR): healing from emotional shock, attachment injury and other traumatic experience. Frank Corrigan

• 2013 to the present — member of the professional supervision group with Jay Levin (GATLA)

• Since 2016 — member of the professional group with P. Philippson, Manchester Gestalt Centre