Daria Shubina
Psychologist
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About me
Hello! I'm Daria and this page is about my services as a psychologist.
I'll start by saying that I don't have a typical psychologist background. I studied physics for many years, however after doing a PhD in nuclear physics I realized that the part I liked the most there was doing more pragmatic tasks, like developing software for data analysis. I taught myself the basics of software development and started working as a software engineer. I've been in the software industry for the past 13 years, most of these years I've worked as a backend engineer, and also a few years as an engineering manager and director.
During the past 6 years I've been doing a degree in psychology in my free time in parallel with a full-time job in tech. Now that I have officially graduated, I'm starting this new project, where I want to combine my knowledge of the tech sector and psychology.
What I offer
I do psychological counselling, which is mostly oriented to the people in the tech industry and in STEM fields more broadly, because this is where I think I can offer something unique. I work with a range of different topics, which I'll list below, because I think that sometimes it's not obvious that one can actually talk to a psychology professional about these topics.
Directly work-related topics
- Things one can discuss with an engineering manager, like career path, what software-engineer growth means, whether one should try becoming an engineering manager, whether one should go back to being an IC (individual contributor), etc.
- Things one doesn't always feel safe discussing with one's manager: burnout, feeling of golden handcuffs (not liking one's job, but not being able to leave because one won't find a similarly high paying job), not feeling the job is meaningful anymore, questioning one's work identity, etc.
Non work-related topics
- Any psychological wellbeing topics. This can be anything: from a vague feeling that something isn't right and just wanting someone to discuss it with - to specific topics, be it relationships problems, existential crises, or anything else.
- Identifying clinical problems. I'm not qualified to treat people who have or might have a clinical diagnosis, for example a major depressive episode or an eating disorder. I'm trained in diagnosing clinical disorders and within my degree I chose the clinical specialization, so I am trained in main treatment approaches, but this training is insufficient to work with clinical topics in Spain, where an additional Master's degree in clinical psychology is required. I'll be able to identify and refer you if you might have a clinical problem.
- Cross-cultural topics: moving to another country and immigration, using a non-native language or being multi-lingual. I think this is one of the topics where I'm also uniquely positioned, because I myself lived in multiple countries, went through the integration into another culture, speak multiple languages and so on. Often these topics produce feelings and general sensations that are difficult to pin-point and difficult to share with people who didn't go through it.
- Neurodivergence. The tech sector has a higher percentage of people who have (often subclinical) autism or ADHD. Some traits are praised, while others stigmatized. Talking about the experience of being neurodivergent can be valuable.
- Giftedness. Many gifted people experience isolation and social-integration difficulties, but our society often doesn't recognize these problems because being gifted is considered akin to winning a lottery, so a person might not feel like they have a right to complain.
My motivation
The main motivator for me is the desire to help people. Over the course of my life I've always been fascinated by the idea that talking to someone can actually help you. It doesn't help some people at all, it moderately helps many others, and it changes the lives of some others too. Sometimes it's quite difficult to find the right psychology practitioner. At times I wished someone with that kind of background that I now have existed, so I just want to be that someone for others.
My approach
The idea is to start with the person and see what they need and choose a specific framework from there. You might want to just talk to someone because there are just too many thoughts that you don't want to burden your closest ones with. Or you might have concrete problems you need to discuss. A framework or specific plan will emerge once I meet and understand you. The idea is to see you as a person, not a specific problem, and to be there for this person.
It might be hard to actually seek help if you're a high-achieving and self-sufficient person, as many people in tech are, who are used to solving their own problems. So, I'm not offering any expert verdicts or magic recipes that would solve your problems: it will be a flat-hierarchy conversation, where we can think together about whatever you bring.
Contact me at contact@dariashubina.com to ask for an appointment or if you have any questions.