About me

What I work with

I work with the ways people relate to themselves and others, cope with stress, crisis, and traumatic experience, and build a life with more stability, clarity, and aliveness. I also work with neurodivergent clients. I teach and provide supervision for specialists.

Here you will find texts, practices, and areas of work that support change from the inside, through attentive work with inner processes. You will also find my training materials and courses for specialists.

People most often come to me when they want to:

• leave destructive or toxic relationships and better understand who they feel good with, and what kind of contact truly suits them;
• stop living on autopilot and begin building life more consciously, in a direction they have chosen;
• learn to enjoy simple things even during crisis and uncertainty;
• restore strength and energy, and make this a sustainable part of everyday life;
• build warm, alive, supportive relationships and find people they feel at home with;
• move through crisis without turning against themselves;
• work through traumatic experiences and bring painful stories from the past to a different kind of completion;
• receive support as neurodivergent adults, especially when previous therapy did not fully take their individual nervous system differences into account.

These are not motivational messages or abstract psychology. This is practical therapeutic work aimed at improving quality of life.

Professional experience

I am a practicing psychologist. I have been working with clients since 2005, in private practice since 2007.

Professional background

Practical work experience since 2005. Experience working with clients in private practice since 2007.

I am an accredited Gestalt therapist and supervisor, a certified body-oriented therapist in Bodynamics, and a certified NLP practitioner. I studied Bodynamics directly with the founders of the method and teachers from the Danish Institute of Bodynamics and the Life Quality Institute. I am a member of The Embody Lab community and the Association of Bodynamic Psychology. My basic education is in psychology. I am the author of scientific articles and professional publications, and I have presented at international conferences as an expert. I conduct training programs for colleagues, teach my own courses and projects, and provide licensed ICDL Institute (USA) training. I also hold a registered patent certificate for my method of psychological support for children.

My central theme is quality of life in the most practical sense: not through external attributes, but through changes in perspective, habits, perception, and sustainable movement forward.

I regularly work under supervision and have extensive personal therapy experience, which began in 2007 and continues to this day. For me, this is part of professional responsibility: for the quality, depth, and integrity of my work.

My approach

I work not only with pain and trauma. My focus is broader: not only to “fix the crisis” or reduce pain, but to reshape life so it becomes more sustainable and genuinely better.

This means working with habitual patterns of thinking and living, with sensitivity to yourself and your emotions, and with the inner processes that either support life or quietly drain it.

This work is about allowing more joy, rest, warmth, and freedom into life; building self-worth and inner support; and not only getting through a crisis, but rebuilding a way of life that does not keep returning you to the same scenarios.

• not about “thinking only positively”;
• not about persuasion and motivation;
• about strengthening an adult, mature, and resilient self.

Working with neurodivergent clients

With neurodivergent clients, we do not always begin with emotion diaries or a direct analysis of feelings. Often we need to start deeper: with the person’s current state and the individual ways their nervous system functions. From there, we build work around self-regulation, the ability to cope with stress, flexibility, and adaptability. This work sits at the intersection of psychology, psychotherapy, neurology, and developmental psychology. At the beginning, I often draw on DIRFloortime principles and tools, as well as sensory integration approaches. As self-regulation becomes stronger, more traditional therapeutic work becomes more available. This area is one of the central directions of my research and training work.

I also teach and train colleagues in the DIRFloortime approach, mainly in work with children with developmental differences, and I am a certified provider of this training through ICDL Institute (USA). I raised a child with neurodifferences and a complex combined diagnosis, so I know this field not only professionally, but also as a parent.

You can also read more about my work as a certified DIR/Floortime expert and teacher on a separate page.

In plain words

I love life, and I am sincerely interested in how a person works: the psyche, the body, and thinking. I love studying and combining different areas of knowledge; I read far beyond psychology. I love nature and good food, especially Georgian food.

I have lived through serious crises and major losses myself, so I know this path from the inside. I was able to rebuild my life in a better form. That is why I work carefully: at your pace, and at the depth that is possible and bearable for you now.

I am deeply convinced that even in the most difficult circumstances, a person still has a choice: to be on their own side or against themselves. These small choices make up a whole life. And after this kind of work, life can truly begin to change: sustainably and deeply.

If this approach resonates with you, let’s get acquainted.

All contacts

You can write to me directly in messengers or by email:

• Telegram: @psyalenaakulova
• WhatsApp: +995 591 447 962
• IMO: +995 591 447 962 (convenient for users from the Russian Federation)
• Email: psy@alenaakulova.com