Trained.
Lived.
Both.
The certifications tell you what I studied. The lived experience tells you why I mean it.
Part One
Formal training
& certifications.
Every certification below is active unless marked otherwise. I list these because I truly love the process of studying and deepening my understanding; each one represents a door I needed to open to better serve my work.
Hypnotherapy
Clinical Hypnotherapy
Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist · Trauma-Informed Training
Clinical hypnotherapy certification with a trauma-informed framework — not stage hypnosis, not regression work for its own sake, but precise, consent-based work with the subconscious. This training covers parts-based work, habit change, somatic anchoring, and working with clients who've experienced trauma, shame, and identity disruption.
Subconscious Repatterning ✦ Parts-Based Work ✦ Trauma-Informed ✦ Somatic Anchoring ✦ Habit & Belief Change
Hypnotherapy · Specialty
Hypnosis for
Anxiety & Fears
Specialist Certification · Anxiety, Phobias & Nervous System Work
A focused certification in using hypnotherapy specifically for anxiety, fear responses, and phobias — including the kind of deep, body-level fear that comes from high-control religious environments, trauma, or years of survival mode. This training goes beyond relaxation techniques into the nervous system mechanics of how fear is stored and how it can be safely released.
Anxiety & Fear Work ✦ Nervous System Regulation ✦ Phobia Release ✦ Survival Mode Patterns ✦ EFT / Tapping
Coaching
Pleasure Psychology & Intimacy
Coaching
Certified Practitioner · Consent-Based, Non-Pathologizing Framework
Training in sexuality and shame recovery — grounded in a consent-based, non-pathologizing approach. This is the certification that allows me to hold space for body trust, intimacy on your own terms, sexual shame rooted in religion or culture, and LGBTQ+ identity work without flinching or moralizing. The body is wise. This training taught me to trust that.
Sexual Shame Recovery ✦ Body Trust ✦ LGBTQ+ Affirming ✦ Religious Residue ✦
Kink-Aware ✦ Sex-Positive
Personal Styling
School of Image —
Ekaterina Malyarova
Certified Image Consultant · Personal Wardrobe Styling
Professional training in image consulting and personal wardrobe styling through Ekaterina Malyarova's School of Image — one of the leading image education programs in the Russian-speaking world. This is the foundation of my work as a personal stylist: color theory, body architecture, wardrobe building, and most importantly, the psychology of how we dress and what it communicates — to others and to ourselves.
Image Consulting ✦ Wardrobe Building ✦ Color Theory ✦ Personal Shopping ✦ Style Psychology
Currently Studying
Bachelor of Science — Psychology
Western Governors University (WGU) · In Progress
Currently completing a B.S. in Psychology at Western Governors University — deepening the academic and scientific foundation underneath everything I do intuitively and experientially. This program strengthens my understanding of cognitive behavioral frameworks, developmental psychology, and the neuroscience of behavior change. It's the formal language for what I've been living and practicing for years.
In Progress WGU · Psychology
Cognitive Psychology ✦ Developmental Psychology ✦ Neuroscience of Behavior Research Methods ✦ Abnormal Psychology
Part Two
What the certificates
don't cover.
The training tells you what I know. This section tells you what I've lived — and why it matters for the work we do together. I don't share this to perform vulnerability. I share it because my clients deserve to know who they're working with.
Immigration · Identity
Growing up between worlds
Born in a small town in Eastern Russia to a pastor father. Sensitive, intuitive, never quite fitting the mold. I immigrated to the US as a teenager with no community, no language, no safety net. That early experience of being between worlds — too Russian to be American, too American to go back — is part of why I understand identity in transition the way I do. Not theoretically. In the body.
Survival · Healing
Learning to trust myself again
I spent years surviving things I didn't talk about — assault, a toxic and eventually dangerous marriage, a faith system that taught me parts of myself were wrong. The inner work I do with clients isn't borrowed from a textbook. It's what I built to find my own way back. I know what it's like to be disconnected from your body, your voice, and your instincts — and I know what it takes to get back.
Identity · Coming Out
The slow work of reclaiming who I am
Coming out as bisexual wasn't one dramatic moment. It was a long, tender unlearning — of internalized homophobia so deep I hadn't named it, of a church that had taught me that part of me was wrong, of years of performing straightness and goodness and belonging. I work with LGBTQ+ clients because I have walked that exact road. The shame, the secrecy, the grief of leaving, and the relief of finally being honest.
Embodiment · Body Image
Making peace with how I look
I spent years at war with my appearance — my pale skin, my red hair, the way I stood out as an immigrant. Styling others was partly a way of giving to them what I hadn't yet found for myself. Learning to inhabit my own body with acceptance — not performance, not performance of acceptance — was part of the same healing as everything else. That's why style, for me, is never just about clothes.
Leaving Religion · Rebuilding
The grief of leaving a faith
Leaving the church I grew up in wasn't just a belief change — it was losing community, identity, and a framework for understanding the world. It came with fear baked in: fear of darkness, of demons, of what might happen outside the church's protection. Dismantling that fear piece by piece — and finding that the darkness had no power over me — is work I now do alongside clients who are walking the same road.
Why both
training & experience matter.
There are practitioners with impressive credentials and no felt sense of what their clients are going through. And there are people with profound lived experience and no training to hold it safely.
I've worked hard to be both. The certifications give me tools, language, and ethical frameworks. The lived experience gives me the thing no training can fully teach: I know what it feels like to be in the room I'm asking my clients to enter.
That combination — rigorous training and genuine embodied understanding — is what I bring to every session.