A workshop where your life becomes your masterpiece
I’m Eteri Bakunina, a psychoanalyst and coach. I help you understand what really drives your decisions, step out of patterns that have been repeating for years, and build your life the way you want it.
About me
Since childhood I have been one of those people who notice more than others choose to show: I hear what goes unsaid, pick up on shifts of mood, and see connections between events that seem random. Professional training taught me to separate my own feelings from those of the person in front of me, and that is when sensitivity became a working tool. It helps me hear what lies behind the words and understand what is really happening to a person.
For more than twenty years I have been helping people find a way out where they had been going in circles for years, and make decisions that change their lives. This work rests on training I received from leading specialists in Jungian analysis and coaching in Russia and Austria.
I have always been drawn to the question of why the same scenarios keep coming back in a person’s life, and how they can take charge of it again. Every person’s answer is different, so I don’t pick a method out of a textbook. I look for that answer together with the person.
There are no ready-made recipes or lectures in my work. It is a living process: step by step a person comes to understand themselves better, tells their own wishes apart from the expectations of parents and those around them, regains control over their own life and puts it in order. I call my practice the Workshop.
To me, everyone who comes here is the author of their own life. My task is to know the tools and to offer the one that is needed right now.
If this sounds like you
People come to me when the same scenarios keep repeating in relationships, at work, with money, however hard they try to fix them. When life runs on instructions and other people’s expectations, and their own wishes can no longer be heard behind them. When there is energy and there are plans, but what matters most keeps being put off, and it feels as if life is passing by.
Often these are highly sensitive people. They tire quickly of crowds and noise, take other people’s feelings as their own, struggle to hold boundaries, criticise themselves a lot and are afraid of seeming too emotional, too demanding or too visible.
People also come at turning points, when their old bearings stop working: after moving to another country, when changing their line of work, after a relationship ends. Founders and executives come for a place where they can calmly think through decisions that their business and their people depend on.
From the reflection to the source
When we don’t like something in the mirror, our hand reaches for the glass to wipe it off or fix it. But the picture doesn’t change, because the problem is not in the mirror but in the person looking into it. Life works the same way: as long as we try to fix circumstances, everything repeats, because the cause lies within. The work begins with a different question: not “how do I fix this?” but “why does this keep happening to me?”
From there the path has three steps. First we learn to see: to notice recurring scenarios and voices from the past that sound like our own. Then we meet what has been hidden for years: sensitivity that was called weakness, wishes that were called excessive, forbidden anger and a dream put aside. Once a person acknowledges this in themselves, it stops draining their strength and starts working for them. Finally, what a person wants consciously stops arguing with what drives them unconsciously. The energy that went into inner struggle, doubt and trying to earn approval is set free, and the person begins to choose for themselves.
Jungian analysis makes it possible to work with images, symbols and dreams, and through them to reach the causes that recurring scenarios grow from. But for me, understanding the causes is only half the job. From coaching I took goal setting: from the very start we agree on where we are heading and check against it along the way. Understanding has to become a decision, and a decision has to become action.
That is why the work here does not go on forever. You can come for a single meeting to see where it all begins, or you can go the whole way, but every path has a goal and an end. We choose the format together at the first meeting.
Sometimes change begins after the first few meetings, sometimes it takes longer; it depends on the task. Either way, I take on what depends on me: a clear plan, honest feedback and steady movement towards the goal we set together.
Frequently asked questions
What is a consultation like?
A consultation lasts 90 minutes, sometimes longer, online or in person. There is no fixed script: each time I start from the person, from what they came with and what is happening to them right now. One meeting may go into untangling a specific situation, another into understanding where something that has repeated for years comes from, a third into a decision that has long been put off. One thing stays constant: we keep in mind the goal we started the work for.
What formats of work are there?
You can come for a single consultation to sort out a specific situation and see where it grows from. You can work over a series of meetings when you need not one conversation but a noticeable shift. Or you can go a long way if you want to change how your life is arranged as a whole. Which format fits usually becomes clear at the first meeting, and it can be changed as the work goes on.
Besides individual work, I hold seminars on various topics from time to time, and anyone can take part. I post announcements on my Telegram channel.
Do you train specialists?
Yes. I teach my own method, highly sensitive counselling. In it, the counsellor’s sensitivity becomes a working tool, and I teach how to use it consciously: to pick up precisely what is happening to a person without losing yourself. The training is for those who already work with people or are only planning to.
Do you work with couples and families?
I work only individually, even when the difficulty concerns a couple or a family. A lot can change when you start with yourself: when one person changes, so does the way relationships around them take shape. If both partners want to come, I work with each of them separately.
Do you work with children and teenagers?
No, I work only with adults, aged 18 and over.
Where can I learn about your approach before we meet?
In my blog I write about what people come to me with and how I see it. I post short notes and seminar announcements on my Telegram channel.
Enter the Workshop
Leave a request: I will reply within one to two business days, and we will arrange our first meeting.