With a deep understanding of how survival patterns shape our sense of safety, trust, and connection, Viktoriia guides the therapeutic journey, integrating trauma-informed therapy, anti-oppressive therapy and neurodiversity affirmative therapy principles to help individuals navigate relationship issues and process their most difficult experiences in a direct and compassionate way.
Viktoriia holds experience in helping immigrants, refugees, people leaving abuse, and survivors of early childhood abuse. She also works in support of caregivers, people undergoing gender-affirming care, sex workers and marginalized populations.
Viktoriia offers therapy in Russian language and English language.
With over 7 years of international work experience in both private and community-based settings, Viktoriia emphasizes cultural humility by recognizing the limits of her own experiences and valuing the diverse identities and backgrounds of her clients. She is dedicated to anti-oppressive therapy, understanding how systemic oppression and generational traumas can impact mental health.
Viktoriia proudly offers neurodiversity affirmative therapy, 2SLGBTQIA+, Polyamory/ENM affirmative, kink-informed, and sex-positive therapy.
She also upholds a professional Code of Ethics, ensuring the privacy and confidentiality of each session.
Viktoriia strives to stay on top of the best practice research and advances her professional development accordingly. She holds an integrative approach to therapy, carefully adjusting to each client’s unique needs and goals based on her education in Somatic and Attachment Focused EMDR, Individual and Couples Schema therapy, Somatic Experiencing, Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). Additionally, she addresses relationship issues via Gottman method.
Viktoriia is a native Russian speaker living in Canada since 2014, and she is honored to offer fluent services in both Russian and English languages. Currently, she continues to study Ukrainian and Polish languages with an intermediate understanding of both.
Viktoriia encourages her clients to express the important parts of themselves in their native languages as part of her culturally-sensitive practice.
Anxiety can manifest in various ways, including excessive worry, panic attacks, and phobias, as well as physical symptoms like a racing heart, difficulty sleeping, and restlessness. These distressing symptoms often lead individuals to avoid situations that their brain associates with anxiety triggers, such as crowded spaces, potential health issues, or reminders of past traumatic events.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) are the leading choice of therapeutic treatment for most anxiety-related symptoms. They offer precise protocols that support progress and build up your confidence in sitting with distress.
Depression can manifest as a persistent sadness, loss of interest in activities, fatigue, and feelings of worthlessness. It might also fluctuate into a high energy, 'mania' state, or even coincide with your menstrual period. Often, depression communicates through self-criticism and shame, and at times, its pressure can feel so overwhelming that thoughts of ending existence may arise. You are not alone and you matter.
Engaging in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Schema therapy and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) can provide support for those experiencing these feelings. However, we also encourage reaching out by texting or calling 9-8-8 at any point, 24/7, if it becomes too much before or in-between the sessions.
"I am not good enough", "I am a failure" are such profoundly human and vulnerable states that we sometimes sit with. Engaging in Schema therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) can help address these feelings, especially when they persist and overcloud every interaction and meaning-making in our life. Those states make it difficult to say "no" and, at some point, to even recognize what we have "morphed" into. Trauma-informed therapy helps looking at those experiences in a comprehensive way, attuning for each individual's attachment style and schemas that trigger the worst pain.
There are many places where you may feel "stuck" in your relationships, such as Communication Breakdown, Life Transitions, Issues with Infidelity, Trust, and Intimacy. You know that you chose that person, yet it can be challenging to find common ground and a sense of safety with each other anymore.
Viktoriia offers various formats for exploring relationship issues therapy, including individual sessions, couples therapy, and polyamory therapy. She can facilitate ethical non-monogamy, "more than 2" exploration, and make sure each person's needs and boundaries are seen during it. Longer sessions (90 min+) may be required.
Life can be incredibly unfair, often taking those we love from us at the most unexpected times, and under particularly awful circumstances. In these moments, it may be challenging to find your footing, especially when others expect you to 'move on.' This is where anti-oppressive grief therapy can play a vital role, allowing us to hold space for your unique story and feelings. Let's sit together and honor what comes up.
Trauma can stem from various sources: being present during an event, witnessing it, or even hearing about it. It might arise from a singular traumatic experience or from chronic abuse and neglect, whether experienced in childhood or recently. Trauma impacts how our nervous system responds to perceived risks, often triggering a state of ongoing 'alarm mode' that affects our sense of safety, our capacity to relax, our interpretation of events, and our responses in situations of threat.
In this context, trauma-informed therapy and neurodiversity affirmative care are crucial to be able to find just the right way to process and find resolution to those experiences. Both Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) and Schema therapy have been shown to bring effective results with long-term research. For particularly complex cases, Somatic Experiencing therapy comes helpful as a body-based resource in support of trauma processing.
You may have heard of or even been diagnosed with a 'personality disorder' (Borderline, Avoidant, Narcissistic, etc.): that label is used to standardize clusters of presentations that medical professionals observe in their practice. More often than not, there was something in the past that informed your body and mind to adapt and survive within that 'cluster.'
With trauma-informed Schema therapy and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), we can explore how these patterns developed, often in response to attachment issues in the past, and how they might not feel as helpful in the present. Those patterns make perfect sense when you can chose to use them, rather than feeling like the reactivity sweeps you off your feet.