How I work

Think of a personal trainer

A personal trainer is not the same as a physiotherapist. You do not have to be injured or ill to want someone beside you who helps you move. You just want to get stronger, live more consciously, and have someone looking along with you.

Alyktos works the same way, but for your inner world. You do not need a diagnosis to want to grow. Coaching at Alyktos is the personal trainer for psychological flexibility: the ability to stay present, also when it gets difficult, and to keep choosing what matters to you.

What is ACT?

ACT stands for Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, developed by the American psychologist Steven C. Hayes and by now supported by thousands of studies. But do not let the name put you off. In practice it is not a rigid method but a collection of what works: exercises, metaphors and insights that help you relate differently to difficult thoughts and feelings. Not by getting rid of them, but by giving them a different place.

You are the one who does it. I walk alongside.

ACT as a coat rack, not a final stop

ACT is the foundation, not the prison. Does intense exercise work for you? Meditation, getting out into nature, breath work? Then we look into it. ACT gives us a lens for judging what suits you, instead of a fixed programme you have to sit through.

How do you know whether something suits you?

There is plenty to try these days. Breath work, cold water, meditation, sport, getting out into nature. A lot of it works, for someone. The question is whether it works for you.

That is harder than it sounds. You go somewhere with an expectation, and that expectation colours what you feel afterwards. If the person leading it says you should feel calmer, you soon feel calmer. Or you think you do, and only weeks later you notice that nothing stuck.

What ACT gives you is a way to tell those two apart. Not what you expected or what you were told, but what you notice yourself. That is something you take with you, also to places that have nothing to do with me.

What a conversation looks like

We do not start with a fixed agenda, but with your situation. What is going on, what are you running into, what do you want to look at? From there we work with conversation and exercises. Some we do together, others you take with you into your week. Because that is where the real work happens: in your ordinary life, not in the conversation.

What you bring, what I bring

You bring: openness to try things, and the willingness to look at yourself honestly. That is all. You do not have to be ready for anything.

I bring: proven ACT methods, exercises that fit you, and the calm of someone who knows from the inside how it feels to be stuck. No judgement, no wagging finger, no just-be-positive.