PERSONAL BACKGROUND

I grew up in the former Soviet Union in an environment that shaped me to become highly independent, high-achieving, and emotionally self-reliant from a young age.

Like many people who experienced stress and instability early in life, I learned how to perform, succeed, and keep going.

And for a long time, it worked.

I excelled academically, immigrated to the United States in 2002, and built a successful corporate career working at companies like Ernst & Young in New York City and later at Google.

From the outside, my life looked successful.
But internally, I was struggling.

Despite all the achievement, I felt disconnected from myself, chronically stressed, and deeply unhappy. In my mid-twenties, I experienced severe depression.

That became the beginning of a very different journey.

Therapy helped me start understanding myself on a deeper level, but over time I realized that insight alone wasn’t enough. I needed to heal not just mentally, but emotionally, physically, and spiritually as well.

In 2011, I attended Burning Man, which became a major turning point in my life. It opened the door to deeper healing, self-awareness, spirituality, and eventually psychedelic work.

What I discovered through my own healing journey is that many high-functioning people are carrying unresolved emotional pain and nervous system dysregulation without even realizing it. They may look successful externally while internally living in survival mode.

Today, my work is devoted to helping people reconnect with themselves, heal underlying emotional patterns, and experience more presence, peace, connection, and aliveness in their everyday lives.

IRYNA ARONOV, LMFT