Participants:A. - Anfisa Gavrilina, Candidate of Medical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department of Health Psychology of St. Petersburg State Institute of Psychology and Social Development, consulting practice since 1994. Yu. - Yulia Bogacheva, psychologist, certified Gestalt practitioner, director of the Psychological Studio “Orientis”, consulting practice since 2001. Yu. What is the essence of psychotherapy for you? A. The essence of therapy is the meeting of two people. It is important what the therapist is like in this meeting and it is important not only his intellectual knowledge, but the whole person. Yu. I remember our conversations with you about how psychotherapy can be different depending on how the therapist perceives it. For some it is a craft, for others it is a meeting of two people, for others it is a meeting, relatively speaking, between a consumer and a service provider. Well, the latter is close to the craft. Yu. Yes, close, but slightly different - what is the emphasis. Either I’m selling myself, says “salesman,” or I’m doing something, says “artisan.” For me the accents are different.A. Yes, perhaps.Yu. And if we talk about the meeting, I notice, depending on what kind of session I come to, a connection with what it will be like. I remember when I worked through a childhood feeling of hatred towards loved ones in my personal therapy, clients began to bring their aggression more often and bolder.A. There's that old joke - why do clients come to me with my problems? And where the therapist lacks processing, ambiguity arises. At the beginning of my career, when I didn’t really understand what I was doing, people regularly asked me questions - what do you do? And every time I tried to answer something and it was difficult for me. Over time, I realized what I was doing as a therapist and since then they stopped asking me this question. Yu. And if about a meeting, it is important for me to prepare myself before the meeting, in the sense that I don’t know who will come to me today. Don’t get stuck in the past experience, although keep it in mind, maybe he has already changed and what he will come today can be a discovery for both him and me. And scanning myself also helps me tune in - what I think, what I feel how I feel in my body. And the base is bodily sensations. This is not about the fact that I work with all clients through the body, I just talk to many. But the presence of me in the body and awareness of sensations, feelings and what comes to mind - thoughts, images is necessary for the meeting.A. Well, yes, that’s the only way a meeting can happen - if there is someone to meet. And if there is no awareness, then there is no one to meet. Yu. In ordinary life, I can “move away” somewhere. But in therapy I see it as my responsibility to be more aware and in this sense to be a support for the client.A. This is an important thing; the same thing happens to me. I had a job with a girl whom we knew before and she said that when we start working, you can see how I switch to a different mode and it’s noticeable.Yu. You start working and you become different? A. Yes. This is just about awareness. In normal life I might not think much about it. Some adjustment is taking place.Yu. Yes. This is the first thing that is important to me - self-awareness. And the second is a certain attitude towards the client. I am looking for a place within myself where I can meet him from a non-judgmental position. And this does not mean that I forbid myself assessments - they can arise from my knowledge of clinical psychology, for example. But I don’t bring them into my work. I believe that a person is not “sick”, but this is his way of life, he has adapted this way and if he now wants to change something, then it is not a question of saying “what happened is bad.” It’s a question of looking at how you live and how you can do it differently. I’ve just said a lot - in addition to my attitude towards the client, I also thought about what I was doing. Does something resonate with you? A. Yes, from time to time people want an assessment, ask what my diagnosis is... more often than not, I don’t see much point in this. It is clear that if a person has psychosis, then this matters and psychiatric help is necessary. But that rarely happens. And for most people, a diagnosis is a thing that haslittle use. Nothing follows from it. And the problem that people come with is that once upon a time it was necessary as a way to adapt to life. And somehow this method remained unchanged, but no longer corresponded to the current situation. Calling him “bad” or putting a clinical label on him is not an option; this will most likely create even bigger problems. I remember stories about people who read books and try to “stick” some grades on themselves, but this does not help at all. Yu. Yes, I had a client who came with big eyes and said that she had an Oedipus complex. Well, I started asking what this meant for her and what she meant.A. This way, you can remember the grandmother who filed a complaint against the doctor who did not follow the examination plan according to the list - he did not examine the prostate gland. Yu. Another thing that’s interesting to me is that you have a metaphor, a person comes to you, you work, who are you, who is he? A. Sometimes there is a metaphor, it arises in long-term work and with different people in different ways. The client learns a new way of being and I often learn with them. I watch how they live, it’s interesting... Or I have to learn something with them that I couldn’t do before.Yu. What is this for example? A. Well, for example, clear balance and careful intervention. One of the clients, with a little more intervention on my part, immediately got scared and closed down, and it was a very fine line between me disappearing altogether and overdosing on my activity. And she taught me this very well: to “ground yourself,” sit up straight, be, but not try to interfere, just be. And I am grateful to her, and I told her about it. She was really surprised.Yu. Yes, I notice that I am different with each client. And sometimes intuitively, and sometimes by asking him, I determine my level of presence, in what places we can be together. I remember one client - we had a moment of spiritual intimacy, and after that she began to be indignant, “I don’t need your close relationship, why do I need this,” although she obviously felt good about the meeting, her eyes moistened and she talked about joy... then we talked for a long time about why it is so dangerous to be in a close relationship. These moments, when intimacy arises in therapy, are often turning points - something happens between us and the person is already different and I am different. And our relationship in therapy changes, and something in his life often changes after that.A. For me, therapy is development, art, creativity...Yu. Joint.A. Yes, you never come up with something like this to yourself. People are very wonderful.Yu. This is exactly what makes me happy in my profession - the opportunity to be surprised and discover something new every time. Never boringA. What doesn't happen is that it's boring. Whatever happens - fun or sad or scary, but never boring.Yu. Well, very rarely. And this is also an indicator - I wonder what’s going on, that I’m bored with you.A. Yes. “Doctor, no one loves me, I have no friends at all, and maybe at least you, the disgusting bald old man, can help me.” A person who causes boredom - I wonder how he does it.Yu. I’m thinking about what was most important for me during my years of training as a psychotherapist. Basically I studied and continue to study Presence. And for me, this is most of all presence in the body - embodied and aware of my thoughts and feelings. And it seems to me that this is the main thing that characterizes me as a therapist: the level of Presence, the opportunity to Be, honesty with myself and the client in this. And I identify this for myself as the main thing in therapy. I recently argued with a colleague who for some reason perceives Presence as sitting, being silent and accepting. A. Oooh...Yu. And for me this is not about that at all. For me it is Being as it is. With what he has. He got a sugar-colored picture. A. Frozen so...Yu. We had an argument about what he said: Presence alone is not enough.A. If it is truly Presence, it is not just sitting and being silent. This and your reactions are important. Without this Presence there cannot be. The main thing that distinguishes a therapist from a client is that the therapist can.