We present to your attention Svetlana Menshchikova is the Deputy Director of the Department of Social Design
and Crisis Intervention at the NGO International Women’s Union.
Svetlana Menshchikova came to psychology from a completely different professional reality. Before psychology, she had two professions — a regional scientist and an economist, neither of which had anything to do with feelings. But long before graduation, people came to her with their stories — friends, colleagues, unfamiliar fellow travelers on trains and the subway. They opened up and said things they usually keep to themselves. Her own life forced her to figure out what to do with it.
When my son was two years old, Svetlana got divorced. Almost immediately, a difficult period began in the parental family — it took so much effort that there was no time left for myself. His career stood still, his income did not grow, and his body began to fail: disease after disease for no apparent reason, and then a chronic disease appeared. One day she burst into tears and realized that she couldn’t do this anymore.
That’s how her journey into therapy began, first as a client, then as a specialist. Svetlana went through this herself before starting to apply it in her work with others. Today, she works in an integrative approach, and there are several areas of study behind this: Gestalt therapy; work with trauma and addictions; psychosomatics; art therapy. Separately, there are systemic family and business arrangements, as well as training for a mindfulness instructor. She is currently completing a master’s degree in clinical psychology in Healthcare. She has five years of practice and more than a thousand people who have gone through her work.
Svetlana publishes in print media, leads the game “Lila” as an accredited presenter at the International Yoga Festival, and regularly holds group and art therapy meetings.
Who comes to Svetlana
Most often, these are women who look good from the outside, but inside they are torn with themselves. The requests are different in wording, but similar in essence: to regain self-esteem and self-worth after a divorce; to stop holding on to relationships that it’s time to let go; to understand what you really want; to cope with the fear of letting someone close; to stop trying on other people’s standards of beauty and sufficiency; to face your own emptiness, insufficiency and powerlessness. Most often, a person has been pulling too much on himself for a long time and one day noticed that there was no support inside for a long time.
Couples also come — usually when the conversation with each other is almost not working out or after cheating. Parents of teenagers who lose contact with their children come, and teenagers themselves who are tired of the transition age and physical symptoms characteristic of this period.
The older generation also comes — especially after Svetlana’s lectures at the Moscow Longevity — with requests for “scary and disturbing,” with psychosomatics, with a feeling of an empty nest, with emptiness and loneliness.
Entrepreneurs and freelancers almost always come with the query “where is my money?” and meet at a session with a “comfortable girl” with low self-esteem and suppressed aggression. Of course, not only with such requests, but behind any request about money, there is almost always a job that is not about money.
What happens in the session
Svetlana works in an integrative approach, and all the work boils down to one thing: the human condition and what he himself is not aware of. What is being sought is not a symptom, but the root — a recurring scenario that leads to the same pain over and over again. Then the most difficult thing is not to discuss it from the outside, but to live it. To give place to rage, powerlessness, emptiness, loneliness, anger, hatred that have been locked up for years. It is after living that liberation comes — not because the problem has disappeared, but because the person ceases to hold it in the balance alone.
In addition to consultations, Svetlana runs the women’s private club “Living” and therapeutic groups, where she helps women to come out of an internal gap into wholeness and see themselves not only with their own eyes, but also with the eyes of other people.
A body that is silent
Separately, Svetlana works with women who are faced with infertility, pregnancy losses, unsuccessful IVF attempts or a long path to motherhood. The psyche and the body cannot be considered separately here: unlived grief, suppressed anger, fear of not making it, and chronic anxiety keep the body in suspense, no matter what the medical support. Svetlana helps to face what has been accumulating for years — guilt, envy, despair, loneliness — and return the feeling that you can be at one with your own body, and not in a struggle. At such consultations, a genogram is compiled to see how the scenarios of motherhood were transmitted in the family, and other features of the family system are considered.
A person needs support not only in an obvious crisis, but at any point along the way: in divorce, in fatigue on the way to motherhood and after it, in search of himself. The job of a psychologist is not to decide for a person, but to help them find something inside that they can stand up for themselves.
Svetlana tells her story not for sympathy, but to make it clear where what she does comes from.: she has traveled this path not in theory, but from her own experience and knows how to accompany others along it, knows how to withstand the emotions of another person and stay close.
She is convinced that “a woman is a woman’s home,” and every woman deserves to be happy. Her task as a psychologist is to be around and support a woman in any condition.
For those who feel an inner disconnect with who they are and what they want to be, who have encountered loneliness and emptiness, have lost their meaning and are looking for support — this article is for you. Svetlana is nearby if necessary.
Welcome to the team, Svetlana!
We are pleased to welcome Svetlana Menshchikova to the Regional NGO International Union of Women as Deputy Director of the Department of Social Engineering and Crisis Intervention.
Her professional path, deep understanding of women’s psychology and sincere desire to help is exactly what makes our team stronger. We are confident that her experience and human sensitivity will open up new opportunities to support women and implement socially significant Union projects.
Svetlana, welcome! Together, to new heights and good deeds.
Contacts for communication
- Моб.: +7 905 537-00-70 (смс, звонки)
- Тг @menshikovass
- «Channel “Psychologist in the big city»https://t.me/menshikovas_psy
- Vk https://vk.ru/menshikovas_psy