The Cathedral Zhytomyr, I’m 10 years old, the mid-90s. The Soviet Union has collapsed, and my parents are buried in work. Our neighbors invite my mom to the Catholic Cathedral—or simply the kashtol. It’s a huge, bright space with an organ, singing, and best of all, free gifts afterward—tea and treats in shiny wrappers. Back in the 90s, humanitarian aid was brought in from Poland and handed out after services. Mom and I must have really liked it. We wanted to keep coming back. Living things gravitate toward light and sweets, so there we were.
Little me would stare at the "comics" of unusual creatures painted on the cathedral ceiling, the statues, and the beatific figures in the paintings. The organ played, people sang, and some guy dressed like either an astronaut or a musketeer would speak while people knelt and repeated things in sync. It mesmerized my childhood mind.
Sometimes, during Easter, my grandmother and I would go to an Orthodox church instead. It was gloomy and smelled weird. The half-darkness and smoke reminded me of a public bathhouse. That church had paintings of "guys" staring at me, too, but they looked grim, tormented, and hostile. It was also strange and striking, but in a scary, uncomfortable way.
In short, the Catholic cathedral won by a landslide, claiming a cozy spot in fulfilling both my spiritual and glucose-fructose needs. We went every Sunday. I even "sang" in the choir—meaning I just opened and closed my mouth while the choir actually sang. I believed I was singing, which flattered my ego. Those were bright days. Going to the cathedral felt like a mini-holiday.
Neocatechumenate: A mix of proto-psychotherapy and religion (with a few catches)
I was 12 or 13 when we were invited to join the Neocatechumenal Way—a movement within the Catholic Church aimed at renewing one’s faith. If you didn’t want to be just a Sunday parishioner and wanted to become a true "pro" at faith, "Neo" was the place to be (that's what we called it).
Well, I swallowed that "red pill." And let me tell you, Neo operated on maximum power across all sensory modalities. A community of 10–12 people, with the priest standing right there two meters away from you, not hidden off in the background. In Neo, I wasn't just an observer; I was inside the mystery. We prepared the services, baked liturgical bread, bought wine, and I played guitar and sang (man, the music in Neo was incredible). We were part of something unusual, something bigger than ourselves.
It felt like I was living two lives: school, volleyball practice, and friends on one hand—and Neo on the other, a path to saving my soul, a way out of the Matrix.
Years went by, and everything gradually turned automatic. The same songs, the same rituals, the same words. The honeymoon phase was over. It was time to "pay" for the free entry. The doors were open—you could leave if you wanted to. Except you couldn't. You were emotionally tied down. Back then, I didn't understand how closed communities worked.
"Why am I beating my chest and reciting: 'Through my fault, through my fault, through my most grievous fault...'?" "What does this string of words even mean?" "Why are these words coming out of my mouth, and why do I keep repeating them?"
As I approached 18, a lot of questions popped up, but I had no one to ask. Out in the real world—with friends, school, and volleyball—there was no one who could help me find answers either. But I had The Doors, Jim Morrison, and other rock 'n' roll drifters in my headphones. Those imaginary friends helped me look for my own path.
Eventually, as I neared 20, I left Neo and stepped into the unknown. If Neo was "therapy," it came with massive side effects and a huge risk of lifelong dependency. Was there an alternative back then, considering the 90s/early 2000s context and the fact that my family was, to put it mildly, not a powerhouse of psychological support? I don't know. I still don't have an answer to that, and I probably never will.
Random stuff and distance learning in psychology
I had no idea what I wanted to become. "...and I just want to stay myself" was playing in my headphones, and I couldn't care less where to study. I looked at my high school report card: solid B's and an A in history. Hmm, maybe study history? Then my eyes fell on psychology. I was "a little bit Catholic," after all, and psychology sounded like something mystical, something about the soul. Should I give it a shot?
The final decision was made when I saw that a semester of distance learning at the pedagogical university cost only 800 UAH (the cheapest faculty) and wouldn't burden my parents' budget. So, I enrolled to become a psychologist.
It suited me fine. For a couple of months, I worked with my dad at a construction site, attended exam sessions a few times a year, and spent all my plentiful free time reading Schopenhauer, Camus, Jung, Freud, Fromm, and other gentlemen of the soul. I listened to music, strummed the guitar, hung out at my neighbor’s place doing the same. I loved that aimless, drifting lifestyle. Nobody nagged me. Nobody cared about me, and I was happy about it—or at least I thought I was.
The exam sessions weren't hard; I managed to pass them somehow. The professors couldn't care less about distance students, and we couldn't care less about studying. They got their salaries, and we got our passing grades. A classic win-win. Calling it "education" would be a stretch—it was more like attending classes just to get a diploma.
Though, to be fair, I really liked Oleksandr Muzyka. He genuinely got a kick out of teaching. Even in front of us simpleton distance students, he would strut his intellectual peacock feathers and spin all kinds of psychological yarns. I adored listening to him and tried never to miss his lectures. If he wasn't a full-blown "rock star" to me, he was at least a top-tier pop star. His wife, who was also a lecturer, even gave me an A on an exam, noting the originality of my thoughts. Those little ego strokes felt nice, though, of course, I played it cool. I was desperately starving for validation, even while acting like I didn't care about grades at all. I guess I envied Muzyka because he had his own university department.
In parallel, like a local Forrest Gump, I ran through various intellectual, psychological, and esoteric rooms. There was Osho with Kundalini practices and dynamic meditation, transpersonal psychology, family constellations, Transactional Analysis, Jung, and Buddhism. But how to apply any of that to real life? I had zero clue. I was just enjoying the ride.
The high school job and meeting Gestalt
After graduating, I once again had no idea where to put myself. I went to the local education department. They told me: "School psychologist position? You're number 42 (or 142) in line. Wait your turn."
I told my parents, they mentioned it to someone else, that person called another person, and suddenly I was first in line. That was my introduction to how things actually got done in the Motherland. Ah, so that's how it works, I noted.
And just like that, I was a school psychologist. The first lesson I learned: the most important thing is to submit REPORTS. I quickly realized the role was purely formal—a box-ticking exercise so the system could claim they had one. So, I just existed there. For a year and a half, I never quite understood why a school even needed a psychologist. A fifth wheel on a wagon, as we used to call our job back then.
Yet, it was my first (and last) job in my field. I was paid 1,200 UAH a month, didn't stress out, drank tea, chatted about philosophical topics with the older female staff, consulted parents, and tried to fight for an hour or two to run something useful with exhausted teenagers. I even gave a passionate speech once. The veterans probably looked at me like a temporary, wandering freak who accidentally stumbled into a system that had been running smoothly for years. And they were right. I worked there for a little over a year, packed my bags, and left the asylum to the ladies.
Oh, wait, I almost forgot about Gestalt! During one of those gatherings of school psychologists, I met Valeriy Mykhailovych Brandes. I instantly took a liking to this sweet, fairy-tale wizard of a man. He invited me to his sessions called "Psychological Theater," which felt much closer to real practice. In August, he suggested I go to a Gestalt intensive. It was 2008. I knew nothing about Gestalt at the time.
I was completely blown away by everything that happened there. Ah, so THIS is what practice looks like. It was a genuine breath of fresh air, experimentation, drive, and novelty. That intensive completely redefined my understanding of therapy. Maybe choosing this path wasn't a mistake after all, I thought. By September, I started my 1st Level training.
Studying Gestalt and the first steps into practice
Four years of training flew by. I always looked forward to the three-day modules, soaking up everything like a sponge. By my third year, I started practicing. I joined the very first psychological center in Zhytomyr. First clients, sessions, intervisions—so much creativity and stepping into the unknown. It was exciting.
Then came the more complex clients. I was 26. Young, naive, overconfident, lacking my own therapy and supervision. Clients started hitting my narcissistic blind spots. I began to wobble and couldn't hold the space. I was too afraid, untrained, and unwilling to ask for help. I was proud; I thought I could handle it myself.
I couldn't.
Back then, I didn't even fully register what had happened. I was flying blind, and flying blind without support in psychotherapy is dangerous. I didn't know that yet. So, I stopped. I closed the Gestalt—literally—and went into IT.
The IT era
I won't dwell on IT for too long; it probably deserves its own separate post. Suffice it to say, I worked in IT for 12 years.
Before the war, I returned to individual therapy at specific points: when I got pancreatitis, during my wife’s labor, and during the first six months after my daughter was born. In 2019, after burning out, I wanted to return to practice, but I started stepping on the same old rakes and ran right back to the safety of IT. There, my "schizoid" side felt calm and in control. Something kept holding me back, constantly pulling me back toward the "man-symbol" system instead of the raw "person-to-person" encounter.
The fear of facing unpredictability and life kept winning. Job stability and a good salary kept winning. I kept retreating into code and engineering. There was structure, order, and a way to tolerate chaos—low entropy, for which I paid with emotional freezing and a loss of sensitivity.
The war and the return. Returning, again.
The war changed a lot. At the beginning of 2023, I joined my first therapy group. I cried and grieved a lot. Then I joined a second group, where I expressed a lot of anger. Then came individual therapy that lasted 1.5 years, followed by a third, year-long group.
I was the client. For the first time in my life, I truly allowed myself to be a client. I sobbed my heart out, so to speak. I raged, screamed, and grieved endlessly. I came alive, died, and came alive again.
Maybe only in these recent years did I finally move therapy out of my head and down into my lungs, heart, and gut. Maybe only during these years did I truly meet that scared, shamed, envious little boy—hungry and desperate for care and warmth, deeply sad, frightened, fragile, and defenseless. It was terrifying and agonizingly painful. But those encounters slowly began to heal me.
Maybe only then did I realize that therapy can actually heal. It took more than 15 years for me to truly see it. Damn, a whole 15 years.
What’s next?
Now, I am desperately trying to "un-grind this minced meat." To unsee what I have seen. That's hardly going to work. The urge to go back to IT is gone, but doubts about returning to therapy are still there.
Yet, I want to share my experience. To move toward where there is more life (even if it no longer comes with sweets in shiny wrappers). So, I've decided to give it another shot. To come back.
This time with experience, "scars," doubts, and a deep, honest understanding. Married life, fatherhood, and therapy have built up my empathy and support muscles. They might still be small and fragile, but they are strong enough to lean on and offer support through.
So, I invite you to therapy. I'm coming back.