Valentina Manini

There was a time I knew exactly what numbness felt like from the inside: the feeling far away from my heart and body, the anxiety that surged every time something good was within reach, the black hole that opened whenever I looked within for long enough. That personal unraveling became the engine of a 13+ years long inquiry into what makes us human, what traps us, and what sets us free.

Today, I work with people who are sharp, self-aware, and quietly exhausted by the distance between who they are in their heads and what they actually feel.
My clients are often high-functioning — professionals, executives, thinkers — who have built elaborate inner architectures to stay safe, and who find themselves wondering why all that intelligence hasn't made life feel any easier.

My work creates the conditions to genuinely meeting what's underneath.

Approach & Modalities
I am an officially certified IFS (Internal Family Systems) practitioner at Levels 1, 2, and 3 — trained directly in the model I describe as "a psychedelic without drugs." I have trained in IFS for Trauma and Addiction with Frank Anderson, a world-recognized expert in the neurobiology of dissociation and complex PTSD, and in Compassionate Inquiry with Gabor Maté, a model I find particularly powerful with highly intellectual clients who have built layers of protection around the places that most need tending.
My somatic and psychedelic-assisted practice includes Ketamine-assisted IFS (trained with Robert Grant), MDMA-assisted therapy (MAPS protocol), and PSIP — Psychedelic-Somatic Interactional Psychotherapy — in which I have completed Level 2 Certification and am currently deepening my training at the Mastery Level.
Mindfulness, informed by the teachings of Tara Brach and Jack Cornfield, weaves through all my work — as the foundation of presence, the soil in which healing takes root.

Experience
I have extensive experience working with individuals struggling with anxiety, depression, relational trauma, eating disorders, self-sabotaging patterns, procrastination, and a pervasive sense of disconnection from emotions and the body.
I have also worked extensively with executives, leaders, and entrepreneurs, bringing IFS into the organizational world.
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I work in English and Italian, and I am available both online and in-person in Zürich, Switzerland.