Becoming a psychologist was a dream I held from the age of about 3. I didn't know what a psychologist was at that time, but I've always had the desire to help people and make sure that everybody was happy.

 

I was born in Warsaw, the capital city of Poland, during times of scarcity and civil war. I had a rough start, with my mother being in labor for 3 whole days and me almost dying. I was a strong, healthy baby, though, that wound up in the incubator with a life threating bacterial disease a few days after birth. Thankfully my mother took me out of that hospital and did everything to keep me alive. Needless to say, I survived.
 

I was also a highly sensitive child. I was bullied at school, but also stood up for others that were targeted. I found it difficult to cope with the hard, unfair world I was growing up in. Also, the illness and its treatment had weakened my immune system and I was sick a lot: a few days at school, 3 weeks recovering at home. That's how I remember it. I almost don't recall being in kindergarten or in class at all.

My first years were filled with stomach aches, broken bones (probably due to the use of large amounts of antibiotics when I was a baby), visits to the pediatrician and the dentist. When I was about 6 years old I almost died from food poisoning. I don't know if this had anything to do with my susceptibility to disease, but it most certainly had everything to do with eating berries that probably were contaminated by the Chernobyl disaster, which had happened a year before (in 1986). I remember it well: I was sitting in bed, looking up at my mom and telling her "mama I'm dying". Then everything turned black. I was rushed to the hospital and not a moment too soon as my mother later told me.

My mom worked hard and was away often. She worked for a company that traded with China and was sometimes abroad for up to a month, leaving me in the care of my grandmother. Which was great on one hand, but also very challenging since my grandma suffered from severe, undiagnosed psychiatric disorders. My father wasn't really around. He and my mom fought a lot and got divorced when I was about 5 years old.

 

It took me years to recover from what I came to call the "tyranny" and feelings of rejection. So now, when people tell me they are battling "ghosts from the past, difficult circumstances and trauma's due to their upbringing", I think I can, to some extent, relate to them.

 

Additionally, I was tormented by headaches. Each and every day from the age of 5 till about 20. I suffered through everything I did. Reading was a big hobby of mine, but I couldn't do that without feeling some kind of strain, thumping, fogginess or nagging feeling in my head. At age 19 my headaches evolved to a migraine. 

From age 12 til 30 I had chronic pain in my spine after I had fallen flat on my back from a swing. In the meantime, I was also familiar with Candida overgrowth which was discovered at age 15 and taught me the importance of nutrition for vitality and health. Before I was diagnosed with the Candida Syndrome, I had been chronically fatigued. There was nothing physically wrong with me, so the doctor had told me that I should come to terms with the situation and learn to live with it. My mother did not accept that and found her way to the office of a natural doctor. The diet and (awful) pills I got, helped me gain my energy back. Even now, when I start feeling “inexplicably” tired, I know I have to watch my diet. 

 

When I was 8 years old my mother married a man from Holland who became my stepfather. The transition from Poland to Holland was hard, especially for my mother. Basically, she couldn't take care of herself and me as well as before. My survival instinct kicked in and I transformed myself from a shy, anxious child to a brave young woman. What I didn't realize then is that it would take me years of hard work to recover from all these "adjustments" I had put myself through. (If you're interested in the full story, I'll get into it in more detail in my upcoming book. You can also order my largely biographical book of poems here.)

 

I was a serious, overly responsible and mature child. I thought it was my job to make my mother happy and take care of everyone around me. As a result, I suffered from dysthymic disorder (a sort of mild chronic depression), binge eating disorder and panic attacks. My body was tired from all the pain and I was frustrated and unhappy. Throughout my life, I experienced different struggles, ongoing stress, emotional abuse and mental disorders. I've been up close and personal with heartbreak, dysfunctional family affairs, suicide attempts and drinking problems of loved ones, passing of family and friends, breaking off contact with family members, not setting boundaries and trying to please everyone but myself. I was constantly analyzing why I did what I did, who I was and how I'd become that way. I could pinpoint each painful remark that had scarred me and I blamed everything and everyone for my distress.  

 

Then, after talking to a good friend of mine about my struggles (for the 100th time) she asked me how much more time and energy I was going to spend on the past. I realized she had a point and I made a choice. I decided then and there that it was enough. I was fed up with being fed up and always feeling "not quite like myself". That was a turning point in my life. I decided to be optimistic, happy and enjoy my life. Obviously, that took a lot of work on myself and my relationships. I rediscovered my inner child, healed what needed to be healed and finally let myself experience playfulness, creativity, and curiosity. Now, years later, I can honestly say that I'm genuinely happy. Every hurdle, each painful decision brought me to where I am today. I absolutely love my life and everything about it. I'm grateful for my experiences and I'm excited to find out what the future holds for me! And I'm passionate about helping people to get excited about their lives.

 

Obviously, I cannot stress enough, that my experiences, their impact on me and my life and what I did to cope with them are something completely personal and cannot be objectively qualified. I don't believe we can ever TRULY understand what other people are going through, even if we've had similar experiences. And that's exactly what my Programs are all about: learning from your own experiences, overcoming obstacles and fears, trying to understand the feedback your life is giving you and figuring out how to break the chains of your past to make conscious choices and create a better future for yourself. Here's an example of how you can unravel what's going wrong in your life and turn it around to get yourself on the right path:

 

2009 was another defining year for me. After a year of ending my relationship of almost 4 years and searching myself in all the wrong places, starting and ending new love affairs, moving 5 times in one year, renovating my new home, working full time and coping with family issues...something just snapped in me. What followed was exhaustion, high blood pressure, and a full blown burn-out. It took me some time to recover from all this stress. Yet again I had learned an important lesson: to listen to my heart and body! I decided to follow my long-held dream of having my own practice. End 2010 "Wellness in Mind" was born, which helped me recover from the chains of my past and has allowed me to grow as a person and caregiver.

 

After working as a psychologist for several years, training myself in different areas (NLP, Hypnosis, EFT, EMDR, etc) and through my own personal development, I found out, that coaching and giving people practical guidelines suits me better than working as a conventional psychologist. I love to motivate people and show the possibilities and opportunities that life is full of, especially when they feel stuck. I also have a strong belief that people aren't really broken. They just need love, attention, and careful guidance to be able to thrive. And I'm no softy either. I like to confront people, give them a loving kick in the ass, hold them accountable for their (in)actions and be their personal cheerleader. I have faith in my clients, their talents, and possibilities. I'm fully committed to their success. I have only one condition for working with me: my clients have to be willing and able to really commit to their own well-being. It's hard work after all and it's not in my power to do that kind of work for them.

 

I now call myself a holistic wellness coach. I believe that human beings don't need to be "fixed". They can heal, which means reconnect to their essence by stripping themselves from expectations/rules/habits that don't serve them anymore and are not aligned with their inner truth and be "whole" again. It's accomplished through careful examination of every part of their life and by nourishing their physical body, emotions, mind AND soul.

 

Throughout my life I had already learned the importance of nutrition, taking good care of my body, the impact of (suppressed) emotions and, of course, the mind as a keystone for wellness. How vital it is to also practice spirituality, is a relatively new concept for me. Although spiritual ideas were fairly common in my life, I never thought of myself as "spiritual".

 

You see, I was raised with religious and spiritual ideas like "everything happens for a reason", with paranormal phenomena, reading cards and hand palms, numerology, etc. It's part of my Polish culture. But I suppressed my spiritual gifts, emotions, and sensitivity in order to protect myself and be able to do the work I loved. Because I was afraid I'd get overwhelmed by the negative emotions of my clients and succumb to feelings of powerlessness regarding family issues, I shielded myself by rationalizing everything, "fleeing into my head" and shutting down my emotions completely.  

 

This resulted in depression and "losing myself". Although I've always had a strong sense of right and wrong, identity and a powerful connection to my intuition, over the years, while trying to shield myself from negative emotions and coping with consecutive stressful events, I lost the ability to communicate with my "gut feeling". In other words, in order to really be able to claim that I'm a holistic coach, one part of my own "wholeness" was missing. Until...

 

My husband and I always wanted to start a family. In 2014, after trying for 3 years, we finally got pregnant. Unfortunately, we lost the baby at 8 weeks. It was an experience I really thought I couldn't recover from. All my life I was able to learn from the things that happened. I could understand them and be grateful for the lessons. This lesson I didn't understand. It was just too hard. This event left me broken and wholeheartedly angry. I knew someday the lesson I had to learn from this experience would become clear to me, but the first year after the miscarriage I was caught up in resentment and bitterness. Now, almost 2 years later, I can see why I had to go through such an ordeal. I can even feel deeply humbled and grateful because my unborn child completely changed the path I was on. She (I think it was a girl) showed me I was not being true to myself and she led the way to the missing link in my life: spirituality.

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This experience thus led me to my spiritual awakening and helps me to guide others through their transformational discoveries and their process of loss. My husband and I were able to come to terms with what happened.

Since I started my own Spiritual growth I learned to open up and use my intuitive gifts and I learned several modalities to help people get the much needed guidance from their own spirit guides and inner wisdom.