Eugene Berezin, MA

How I got here

I have had more than one career. I worked in technology and business before training in psychology, and I moved to the United States from Russia in 2013 — which meant rebuilding a professional life from scratch, in a second language, in my thirties.

Then I went through my own divorce. I had a life that checked every box: the career, the family reunions, the mutual friends, the daily routine. The grief I had expected. The identity collapse I had not, and it was the worst part by a distance.

I mention it because it is the reason a large part of my practice looks the way it does. I am not working from a textbook description of what that is like.

The clinical background

Over a decade across mental health settings — psychotherapist, youth counsellor, case manager, social work professional. That work is unglamorous and it teaches things a weekend certification does not: how to sit with someone who is not getting better, how to tell the difference between a person who needs encouragement and one who needs to be believed, and how to notice when what presents as one problem is standing on top of another.

My training runs through clinical hypnotherapy, motivational interviewing, Internal Family Systems, CBT and ACT. In practice that combination means I am unlikely to simply read suggestions at you. People who have spent years managing someone else's crisis have a protective part that is deeply suspicious of being told to relax — and it is right to be. Getting it on side is most of the job.

Credentials, plainly

• Registered Hypnotherapist, Washington State Department of Health, licence #HYPN.HP.70073119
• Master of Arts in Psychology, Moscow State Pedagogical University
• 10+ years in mental health as therapist, counsellor, case manager and social work professional
• Trained in clinical hypnotherapy, motivational interviewing, Internal Family Systems, CBT and ACT
• Languages: English and Russian

What I am not: a physician. I do not diagnose medical conditions, prescribe, or advise on medication.

How I work with difference

I see people from a wide range of cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds, and I work from cultural humility rather than a checklist — non-pathologising, and without asking anyone to educate me on their own life before we can start.

I built this practice as an openly gay clinician. If you have ever had to manage a clinician's discomfort while trying to describe your own situation, you will know what that costs and how badly it distorts the hour. You will not be doing that here.