Welcome to the personal website of the psychiatrist-psychotherapist Vasileios Georgalakis.

This website has largely to do with my personal development as a psychiatrist and as a psychotherapist. The aim of this ongoing evolution is the relief of people who suffer from mental illnesses.

I believe that mental health is what is most important to a person. As a psychiatrist, my goal is to address problems associated with the entire spectrum of psychiatric disorders. So, it will be given medication where and when necessary with a view to modify or correct pathological behaviors, thoughts, feelings.

Also, there is  psychoeducation  for understanding and better adaptation to the conditions of the disease.

Along with the medication, my personal belief in the strength and abilities of man made me deal with psychotherapy. I have always believed in each person’s inner strength , to the power to overcome everything that happens to us, sometimes alone, sometimes with the guidance of a specialist. My psychotherapeutic journey begins with the specialty of Psychiatry. As a trainee, beyond the pharmaceutical treatment of disorders I started to have interest in Psychotherapy. I remember patients who had unpleasant feelings about serious problems in their lives, and were negative in the administration of medication, and I had to give them help to understand the cause of their problems for them to find solutions to their internal conflicts and to derive satisfaction from life, work and relationships, to give them mental relief and help them change their “wrongs” of life. People were asking me to heal their psychological pain, help them change their way of thinking in order to be able to manage their problems.

        I was never a fanatic supporter of only one treatment. I always thought that the human being is unique and that treatment should adapt to man, not man to treatment.

So, I started to train in cognitive psychotherapy, a method  which pays attention in  quick and clear behavioral change. Cognitive therapy offers a relatively quick treatment aiming at behavioral change through some techniques.

Using cognitive therapy, I began to understand that it didn’t arrive in great depth and was largely unaware of the thoughts and feelings of the people. So I started searching for a method that gave me the ability of recognizing the unwanted thoughts and bad feelings so I could alter them with pleasant thoughts and feelings. So I started to train in cognitive psychotherapy, which offers amazing results. With this approach, I helped my patients to realize how distorted their thoughts were and I led them to reasonable alternative solutions. 

However, although I was seeing significant results in some of my patients, there were some who suffered from specific symptoms, such as anxiety, depression, panic attacks and did not meet in cognitive psychotherapy. So, I began to understand that behavioral and cognitive psychotherapy are excellent treatments, but cannot be applied to all people.

So, I started searching ways of treatment for the most challenging patients, for those suffering from a personality disorder or general characteristically problems, for those who have failed to find a solution to their problems by trying many psychotherapeutic methods. So, I started my information and now my education in Jeffrey Young’s schema therapy in America.

A significant boost in treatment was my instinct which led me unexpectedly there. Schema therapy is a combination of the best elements of various treatments in a single treatment which I think is much more effective than any individual technique. So, schema therapy includes elements from psychoanalysis, Gestalt therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, interpersonal and family psychotherapy. I was never a fanatic supporter of a single treatment. I always thought that every human being is unique and that treatment should adapt to man, not man to treatment. I was always interested in a patient to get well in any way, either with medication or psychotherapy, or a combination of both.

With Schema therapy I managed to help people who believed they couldn’t change their selves, their way of thinking, their way of acting, people who had spent a difficult childhood, experiencing bad situations.

Considering that all problems stem from the context of a difficult childhood, Schema therapy gives me the opportunity to help my patients achieve inner awareness and understanding of themselves, discovering the little child in them, which may have lived a difficult childhood, may have become object of ill-treatment, may have been abandoned or be emotionally deprived or constantly criticized and humiliated. 

One of the most important elements of the Schema therapy is getting to know the frightened, grousing, insecure, lonely, sad child inside us and to embrace it, saying sweet reassuring words and to support it. (reparenting)

Also, lately I apply  mindfulness (empathy-awareness) and  healing meditation along with  Schema therapy but also  cognitive psychotherapy which gives a more spiritual dimension to those who wish, offering tranquillity and faster improvement in many daily problems for those who seek for it.

In conclusion, I would like to mention that my capacity  as a psychiatrist and psychotherapist gives me the ability to offer multiple treatment solutions to a patient, such as medication, psychotherapy, healing meditation, mindfulness and of course the combination of the above, aiming to the fastest solution of a patient’s problems.

My personal evolution continues as a human, as a scientist and as a psychotherapist as my only goal to help people.