Olga Alexandrova.

09/03/2026

04/03/2026

Why real change rarely happens in one or two sessions — and why quick “breakthroughs” in therapy or workshops can be risky

🪶Recently I published a post saying that the psyche cannot change on command — and I received quite a few messages in response:

🟢 “If the specialist is good, one or two sessions should be enough.”
🟤 “Why drag therapy on for years? A real psychologist helps quickly.”
🟢 “Long-term therapy is just a way to take more money.”

Below I explain why quick fixes in the realm of the psyche usually don’t work — and sometimes can even be harmful.

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1️⃣ The psyche is not plasticine

In one or two meetings it is possible to hear someone’s pain, outline a direction, and relieve some tension.
But changing internal conflicts that have formed over years — that cannot happen so quickly.

The psyche is complex. It is a whole system where everything is interconnected: symptoms, beliefs, reactions, defenses — all of it has its own history and does not simply disappear.

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2️⃣ Removing a symptom ≠ healing

When therapy focuses only on the request or symptom, the work often targets the symptom itself.

But a symptom is not an error.
It is the language of the psyche.

If you simply “remove” it without understanding the underlying cause, another symptom will appear — often a more destructive one.

This is not just an opinion; it is a neuropsychological pattern: the psyche does not tolerate a vacuum.

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3️⃣ Fast methods can shake things up — but they cannot hold them

In workshops, marathons, or intensive sessions there is often an emotional surge: energy, catharsis, tears, insights.

But without a stable therapeutic relationship and without a process, these experiences are not processed — and therefore do not integrate.

There is no container.
The emotions open up — and the person is left alone with them.

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4️⃣ Group dynamics or a charismatic specialist ≠ individual work

“Everyone can do it — and so can you!”
“I’ll fix it for you in one session!”

But no one truly knows a person’s defenses, history, trauma, or inner rhythm.

When something in the psyche opens too abruptly, it can become overwhelming.
Anxiety, apathy, dissociation, or the feeling of “I failed again” may appear.

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5️⃣ Inner change does not like to be rushed

Yes, we all want change.

But when real change happens, it is always gradual and integrative — within a relationship with another person, in a space where there is no need to rush or pretend that “everything is already understood.”

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👣 Sometimes an important shift can happen in a single session.
But not a complete rebuilding of one’s inner architecture.

The psyche is too wise to hand over control to someone it does not yet trust.

❕If someone promises “healing in a couple of sessions,” it is worth asking yourself why you want to believe in that promise so much.

Change is possible.
But it requires time, a reliable relationship, and respect for the mechanisms that once helped a person survive.

02/03/2026

02/03/2026

One of the most clinically significant features of addiction is its persistence over time. A person may remain in remission for years, yet encountering a certain context can suddenly reactivate craving.

🧠 This is not merely a memory. It is the reactivation of the motivational system.

With repeated use, the brain learns to associate the substance with surrounding cues:

* places
* time of day
* people
* emotional states

These cues become predictors of reward and gradually acquire motivational power of their own.

At the neural level, the process looks roughly like this:

✔️ cues activate the amygdala and hippocampus (emotional and contextual memory)
✔️ information is transmitted to the ventral striatum
✔️ the mesolimbic dopamine system initiates a “seeking” state, producing motivational arousal

🌫️ A key point: this process is implicit and rapid. The prefrontal cortex — responsible for evaluating consequences and inhibiting impulses — activates later.

🌫️ When its regulatory function is reduced (stress, fatigue, emotional overload), the balance shifts toward automatic motivation.

This is why a trigger can produce bodily tension, attentional narrowing, and behavioral readiness before a person consciously recognizes a desire to use.

Relapse is the reactivation of the motivational salience system — a system capable of maintaining hypersensitivity for decades.

02/03/2026

When we talk about addiction, it often seems as if the substance itself is the main issue. But in reality, everything begins much earlier — with how the brain assigns priorities, how it decides what matters to us at all.

The brain has a system that distributes priority. It literally assigns “weights”:

* what is worth effort
* what deserves attention
* what is worth acting for

This is called motivational salience.

It is the internal “weight” the brain assigns to a stimulus. The dopaminergic system plays a major role in this process.

🧬 Dopamine is not a “pleasure hormone,” as it is often described. It is a neurotransmitter of significance. It does not make a stimulus pleasurable — it makes it important.

Under normal conditions, this system is flexible:

* food
* connection
* safety
* novelty
* goals

Everything has its relative value.

But when the distribution of significance becomes distorted, one stimulus may receive a disproportionately high weight.

And that is where the story of addiction begins.

18/02/2026

Freud once wrote:
“We do not meet people by chance — we meet our own inner states.”

Every person who appears in your life reflects what is happening within you. Some reveal your wounds, others show your boundaries, and still others uncover your unconscious need for love.

That is why a “chance meeting” is not truly accidental — it is a signal. The universe does not bring people into our lives for entertainment; it mirrors us so that we may finally see ourselves.

If you attract someone emotionally cold, perhaps you have distanced yourself from your own feelings.
If you meet someone unavailable, it may mean that somewhere within you lives a fear of intimacy.
If you once again encounter someone who devalues you, it may be because a part of you still does not feel its own worth. People do not come into our lives to punish us — they come to show us something.
And until the lesson is learned, the pattern repeats.

One psychoanalyst said:
“Love is always a meeting of two unconscious minds.”

We do not choose with our eyes; we choose with our wounds. We are drawn to what feels familiar in pain — the same tone, the same emotional distance, the same feeling of not being enough. And until we become aware of this pattern, we will call fate what is, in reality, a repetition of trauma.

But there is another side to this.

When you begin to heal, your “chance encounters” change as well. Instead of those who destroy, people who care begin to appear. Because you stop creating relationships out of fear and start building them from wholeness. And then an “unexpected person” suddenly turns out to be someone you feel you have been waiting for all your life — you simply were not ready before.

Therefore, everyone who enters your life is not accidental.
Some come to break your old self.
Some come to teach you love.
Some come to stay.

And all of them are your reflections. Because we do not meet people by chance — we meet ourselves, disguised as others.

18/02/2026

Mark Solms is a South African neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst, widely regarded as one of the founders of neuropsychoanalysis — a field that integrates psychoanalytic theory with modern neuroscience.

🧠 What he is known for
• Bridging the ideas of Sigmund Freud with contemporary brain science.
• Research on consciousness, emotion, and motivation.
• Emphasizing that feelings and basic emotional systems are central to subjective experience.

🔬 Key ideas
• Consciousness is rooted primarily in affective (emotional) brain systems, not just higher cognition.
• Dopamine systems drive wanting, seeking, and motivation — concepts linked to incentive sensitisation theory.
• Psychoanalytic concepts such as drives and the unconscious can be mapped onto real neural processes.

📚 Notable books
• The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness
• The Brain and the Inner World (with Oliver Turnbull)