Elena Vinogradova PhD, LPC

We begin with body signals and an attentive, caring dialogue to learn what the alarm points to—suppressed inner aggression/energy, doubts about your capabilities, or traces of personal or collective trauma. With grounding practices and an Inner Parent stance, we steady the system and transform pressure into directed power and clear choices—restoring confidence, flexible calm, and a felt sense of inner strength.

Depression: I work gently and precisely. We track body sensations to find where the low mood begins—tension, numbness, collapse—and what it’s protecting. We engage the Inner Parent to replace harshness with caring guidance. In a co-experiencing stance, I’m with you as we meet the weight together. Inner pressure becomes information and resource, helping you sense the suppressed force and flow inside, and translate it into small, doable actions aligned with your values.

I help adults rebuild a kinder inner stance. My approach blends somatic awareness and client-centered therapy. We identify harsh self-talk, meet it with the “Inner Parent,” and practice nurturing responses that support safety, agency, and worth. Step by step, attitude shifts toward unconditional positive regard—seeing your value not as earned, but given. Tools include body cues, CBT reframes, and simple daily experiments to anchor self-respect.

I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor in Illinois with 25+ years of clinical practice across Russia and the U.S. I studied Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing and integrate it with Bioenergetic Analysis, Integral Somatic Psychology, and person-centered work to treat trauma through the body. I regard body sensations as a primary source of meaning—essential for understanding symptoms and a direct pathway to healing.

I studied with F. E. Vasilyuk, whose branch centers co-experiencing. Co-Experiencing Therapy helps clients in the work of experiencing, making meaning, and preserving life’s integrity, especially at critical moments. Its core is a non-directive exploration of the client’s inner world, supported by the therapist’s empathic co-experiencing, which deepens contact with feelings: entering the client’s subjective world and living through states together.

I trained extensively in Carl Rogers’ Person-Centered Therapy, and it’s the backbone of my work. I practice empathic attunement, congruence, and unconditional positive regard because this approach is both deeply caring and reliably effective—and it models what clients can internalize: offering themselves the same respect and compassion. This foundation integrates naturally with my somatic and experiential methods.