In recent years a wave of depression and anxiety disorders has swept the world — and especially those countries used to thinking of themselves as prosperous. Technologies that simplify daily life, accessible medicine, everyday comfort — seemingly, everything is there.

Yet paradoxically, emotional instability is growing. Especially among teenagers and young people. In some countries this is already taking on the marks of a genuine epidemic, one that even developed healthcare systems cannot cope with.

This looks absurd only at first glance. For it is progress itself that has become the environment in which the human psyche so often turns out to be overloaded. An excess of information, constant comparison, the acceleration of rhythms, the loss of the body in a hyper-rational world — all this creates conditions in which breaking down becomes more likely than healing.

And this is where depression enters the stage. Not as a simple “error”, but as a deep — perhaps evolutionary — signal. As the system’s attempt to pull us out of an overheated process and force us to stop. To review. To recalibrate.

One of the key features of depressive states is so-called rumination, the looping of thoughts. We usually perceive it as something harmful, something to “fight” or “distract ourselves” from.

But research shows: deep reflection on difficult subjects can be the first step towards resolving them. The point is not to avoid thoughts — but to learn to direct them into a constructive channel.

Contact with oneself, an understanding of one’s state, of one’s own point on the map of life — this is the very foundation that can offer support in difficult times. It is a way of avoiding depersonalisation, exhaustion, loss of meaning. Because when I know where I am, where I am heading and what matters to me — a bearing appears. And an inner support.

If you would like to learn how to build this contact with yourself, how to find your own rhythm, how to be in contact with other people and with the world — we invite you to the first-level training in gestalt therapy.

This is a year-long foundation programme suitable both for those who wish to work as psychotherapists in the future and for those who simply want to know themselves better, to learn to notice and accept their experiences, and to master practical tools they can apply in everyday life.

🔹 Group starts — 12 April 2025

🔹 Format — online

🔹 Training — nine two-day modules, held on weekends once a month

Group leaders: Nadiia Rekhtina and Andrii Pashkivskyi

👉 You can read about the programme, its topics and the terms of participation at this link.

This may be the first step towards a different level of understanding yourself. And, perhaps, towards genuine recovery.