Psychology. Hiking. Mental disorders. Children. Stolen heart… Wait, what?! Ok, let me explain.

Who am I?

Hello, everyone! My name is Valeria Simeonova. I am a psychologist. Simple as that.

What about my academic background?

I have a master degree in Clinical Psychology and I have been trained in Cognitive Behavior Therapy. Recently I am interested in Systemic Approach in working with families and groups. Why is that? Well, long story short – work with children stole my heart. For more details – continue reading.

What about my professional background?

Well, I was still a student when I spent some years working in a Daycare Center for people with mental disorders. Then I spent some more years working in a school with underprivileged children age 5 to 18. Based on my experience back then I started working with children because I wanted to work for prevention of mental disorders. I loved and cared very much for my patients but most of them were schizophrenic and their personalities were highly damaged by the disease. It seemed much more worthy to work with young individuals for developing and adopting adaptive coping skills in an attempt to prevent a disorder.
Working with children was the most difficult and the most inspiring experience in my life! I wanted so badly to help them become the best version of themselves. Unfortunately, I didn’t see the whole picture clearly yet. It turned out to be much more complicated than just planning trainings and consultations. There were so many sides taking part in a problem – teachers, friends, family. So if I wanted to influence children I had to influence all other sides of the system first. So I spent the last two years profiling and selecting teachers for the toughest schools and training them skills.

What about me personally?

Well, put in short, I am married, I have recently become a mom and moved town. I love traveling, hiking and camping. Besides writing, I love reading (what a surprise!). Oh! I love good food (and good wine, of course!)

Why writing here?

Writing here serves three purposes.
First, it makes me feel inspired and passionate about something.
Second, it’s another way of helping families to bring up happy and healthy individuals.
Third, I firmly believe that science is supposed to make our lives easier. Science is for people. Unfortunately, there are so many “psychological” books and articles, which have nothing to do with psychology. And there is so much psychological research which has nothing to do with people – its findings are very difficult to understand if you don’t have any academic background in psychology. So what I am trying to do is to “match” science and people. Or put in other words – to make psychology easy-to-read, easy-to-understand and easy-to-apply in everyday life.

So, that’s it. That’s “me” in 450 words.