IEVA BARŠAUSKAITE THERAPY
Psychotherapy and counseling can be a way to support yourself in a difficult time. Dialogue between you and the therapist (me) is at the core of what we do in a therapy session. We open up a space that is confidential, respectful and with boundaries, to explore what you are going through. We do the exploration by talking as well as by sensing. As we talk and engage our mind, our bodies talk too, the voice starts to tremble, we may feel a tingling in the stomach, a knot in the throat, a numbness. All of these sensations are relevant and are part of the process that you are going through. We give space and meaning to these experiences.
The role of the therapist (me) is to support you in this exploration. Sometimes that will look like inquiring, normalizing, giving context, validating. Other times it will be confronting, uncomfortable, awkward, slow.
I particularly enjoy working with people who are:
- going through transitions in life, such as stepping into (young) adulthood, changing a career, going through burnout or a relationship crisis;
- (highly) sensitive. I see sensitivity as a gift and it takes extra support to live sensitively in our overwhelming world;
- in a spiritual crisis, such as loss of meaning of life and/or belonging, having identity questions.
types of services
Individual therapy & counseling
As a therapist I am grounded in humanistic and Gestalt therapy tradition. The goal of our sessions is to raise awareness of your experiences and process, to give meaning to what is going on and nurture acceptance and compassion to where you are right now.
I work in-person in Amsterdam and online. Sessions are weekly or bi-weekly.
Individual therapy can be short or long term. Depending on your situation, we can decide to do a short trajectory of 5-10 sessions. This usually applies if you want to explore a singular situation, gain more awareness in a specific period of your life, or have financial constraints. If you are up for a longer process, we start a therapy journey together that can last anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. A long-term process allows for time to explore the complexities and interconnections between different issues, past-present-future, work on attachment wounds. We always have an open conversation about your needs and how to proceed. You can stop sessions at any time.
Gestalt group therapy
Together with a colleague Mili Marjanovic, I run group therapy sessions focused on transgenerational trauma. Group therapy offers a different experience from individual sessions. The most obvious difference is that you will impact and be impacted by more than one person. This can offer expanded awareness of who you are in this world with others and more opportunity to practice different ways of interacting in real time. Group setting can be confronting, but it can also bring a lot of support and a sense of belonging in a group.
The previous group started in October 2024. This is a closed therapy group that lasts 10 months.
We are looking for participants for the next group which begins in Fall 2025. Please reach out if you are interested to join.
Workshops: Exploring contact through identities
Together with 2 colleagues - Mili Marjanović and Yulia Bondar - I co-facilitate a workshop exploring how in our polarized society we can practice making contact through differences. Some questions that anchor this work: How can I stay in a dialogue when we disagree? When is dialogue not possible? How does the environment and context I am in influence my own identity? What happens when I hear you and you hear me?
We also co-authored a paper on which we built our workshops. You can find it in the British Gestalt Journal:
Baršauskaitė, I., Bondar, Y., & Marjanović, M. (2023). Gestalt trialogue experiment: giving voices to shame. British Gestalt Journal, 32(2), 54-60.
Upcoming
Please reach out if you are interested to join this workshop in the future.
Past workshops
5/10/2024 NVAGT Gestalt Congress, Antwerp, Belgium.
16/3/2024 De Roos, Amsterdam.
5/1/2024 De Ruimte, Amsterdam. In collaboration with Rinske Engländer and Nederlandse Stiching Gestalt (NSG).
21/9/2023 EAGT Congress, Madrid. Presented the workshop as part of the congress program.
Workshop space.
Mili, Yulia and me in Madrid, 2023.