HORÓ Psychotherapy - Aleksandra Staneva, PhD

06/11/2025

Another Mother-centered film! I am thrilled to see it!

04/11/2025

Shadow work is not glamorous. It’s not neat. It’s not fancy or pleasant or cute. It’s not instagram-worthy and it’s never ending. Can’t put a pin on it. Or a nice ribbon of completion.

It’s tiring. It’s sticky. Uncomfortable. Shame-inducing. Nauseating. It is also INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT sacred soulwork.

What is Shadow Work
Shadow work is the sacred art of walking into the dark with a candle in hand. It is the journey to the places inside us we have banished or forgotten. The Shadow holds what we have been told not to be: our grief, our rage, our hunger, our wild knowing. When we meet these hidden parts with tenderness instead of fear, we recover the lost pieces of our soul and remember the fullness of who we are.

⸻

Why it Matters

1. It restores power
What we deny does not disappear. It waits beneath the surface and pulls the strings from the dark. Meeting the Shadow frees the life force trapped in fear and shame and returns it to our hands as creativity and strength.

2. It brings wholeness
To love only the light is to live half a life. When we welcome the dark, we become complete. The soul longs to be seen in its entirety, not edited to please or perform. Wholeness is born when we can say yes to all that we are.

3. It deepens love and truth
Unseen Shadow makes us judge, project, and repeat old wounds. Seen Shadow softens us. It humbles and awakens us. It allows us to meet others and life itself with greater compassion, honesty, and depth.

“ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SHADOW” is a Women Circle I will hold on February 23rd at

10 spots only

📧 horoforwomen@gmail.com

04/11/2025

This is what’s currently happening (and for a bit - not happening 💤) at HORÓ in the next few months.

04/11/2025

ENCOUNTERS WITH THE SHADOW: the GOLD inside the DARK
Monday, February 23rd, 2026
5.30–7.30pm
at HORÓ Psychotherapy, Annerley
Cost: $199 | Only 10 spots

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HERE SHE IS, cloaked in mystery and power. The Dark Goddess, the keeper of the underworld within.

She does not whisper sweet words of comfort. She calls you deeper. She asks you to look where you have not dared to look before.
SHE IS REJECTED AND PUSHED OUTSIDE OF OUR CONSCIOUSNESS 🌖

This is an evening of descent and awakening, where we meet the Dark Goddess as the sacred guide into our own Shadow. The parts we hide, deny, or judge are the very places where our life force, creativity, and truth are buried.
Together we will enter sacred circle and
• Meet and embody your Dark Goddess archetype
• Encounter what has been repressed or feared
• Reclaim your power, vitality, and creative fire - and all her secret gifts

This will be a deeply embodied experience of shadow work through Archetypal exploration, Invocation, and inner process. You will be guided safely into the terrain where transformation begins.

As always, spaces are very limited to keep our circle intimate and safe.

⸻

🖤🤎Come dressed in BLACK and/or GOLD, the colors of the Dark Goddess 🤎🖤

Booking details
📧 horoforwomen@gmail.com

Strictly limited to 10 participants.
For more information: horoforwomen@gmail.com
More about Aleksandra: www.aleksandrastaneva.com
Artwork by Sarah Bogh

03/11/2025

You don’t have to “bring something” to therapy.
So many of us feel pressure to arrive prepared, with a dream, a crisis, or something meaningful to unpack.
But therapy isn’t a performance.

The moments when you feel blank, tired, or “have nothing to bring” are often the most honest. They reveal the part of you that learned long ago: I must produce to deserve attention.

In truth, you don’t need to bring anything.
You are the material.
Your silence, fatigue, numbness, confusion all of it belongs.

When we let ourselves arrive empty, something deeper can begin to speak.

Sometimes the most transformative sessions start with: “I don’t know what to talk about today.”

Just show up.

Warmly,
Aleksandra 🤍

27/10/2025

Lately I have been immersed in an advanced depth psychology studies on Jungian Shadow work, the deep, disciplined kind that asks us to face what we would rather not see. As part of this work, I watched the Netflix series ’Monster: The Ed Gein Story’ as a case study through a Jungian lens.

Reflections on Shadow work through the series Monster: the Ed Gein story

19/10/2025

Abre la puerta! Open the door!🚪
On seeking safety in sameness

We rarely think of sameness as dangerous. Familiar routines, predictable relationships, the quiet repetition of what we already know. These things feel like safety. They ask nothing new of us. They keep us steady. They keep the heart carefully guarded.

But what feels safe is not always what gives life.

Sameness often becomes a hidden defence, a shield we do not realise we are carrying. We repeat emotional patterns that once protected us, even when they now confine us.

We stay with what is familiar, even when it no longer nourishes us.
We choose people who awaken the same ache, because the ache is known.
We shrink our needs to avoid disappointment.
We hold tightly to control and call it strength.
We mistake stillness for peace when it is really a fear of feeling.

Sameness whispers to the nervous system: you survived this before, you will survive it again. But survival is not the same as living. Emotional repetition is rarely harmless. We return to what we know to avoid what feels unbearable: the grief of what never was, the tenderness of longing, the risk of being truly seen.

To step out of sameness is not easy. It requires courage to enter the unknown. To feel again. To let the frozen places thaw. Our defences were formed for a reason. They once saved us. They helped us endure. But what once protected us may now be what keeps us small.

Real safety does not come from repetition. It comes from connection, honesty, and the willingness to meet life as it is. It grows slowly, through presence. It requires us to risk something new.

Sameness may feel safe, but it is a room without windows. Growth asks us to open a door we have kept closed for too long. And somewhere beyond that door is the quiet beginning of freedom.

Are you ready to open the door?

Yours in curiosity,
Aleksandra

19/10/2025

"Traumatized children need the Other even more than normal children, albeit with a characteristic ambiguity because the primary need for a securing Other was not fulfilled. This is why abused children often hide the abuse from the external world usually they are very much aware of the consequences of discovery, consequences that always come down to separation. This is precisely what is unbearable for them, because they have never lived through normal separation and still need the Other. This explains the frequently paradoxical bond between the child and the abuser, which appears yery strange from outside and often leads to accusations of complicity in the child."
—Paul Verhaeghe, On Being Normal and Other Disorders: A Manual for Clinical Psychodiagnostics

Art by Lucian Freud

Reflection with Two Children (Self-Portrait)

15/10/2025

When the N***s came to power, a writer began collecting people’s dreams and uncovered the effects the regime had on the collective unconscious. https://www.newyorker.com/books/second-read/how-dreams-change-under-authoritarianism?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=dhfacebook&utm_content=app.dashsocial.com%2Fnewyorkermag%2Flibrary%2Fmedia%2F593157555

15/10/2025

Right now, the world doesn’t make space for the feminine.

Stillness feels like laziness, feeling feels like weakness, and intuition feels like a luxury we can’t afford. Society rewards speed, control, and doing, while our wild, tender, creative self is pushed aside, silenced, or ignored.

But she is still there. She holds our grief, our rage, our joy. She carries vision, courage, and deep knowing. She reminds us we can feel and act, dream and protect, grieve and create, all at once. Our Feminine. The inner Soulful expression of life itself.

In this year’s Red Goddess Women’s Circle, we gather to meet her, to honour her, and to practise living in alignment with her energy. We reclaim what the world tries to dismiss.

If you are ready to stop shrinking, stop hiding, and start walking with her, this is your invitation.

22 Dec 2025
5-7.30pm
Annerley, Brisbane QLD

📧 horoforwomen@gmail.com

11/10/2025

It’s Parental Alienation Awareness week here in Australia.
Do you know what PA is?

Is parental alienation valid, or a psychological manipulation of a child by one parent to undermine the targeted parent.