ABOUT ME

Yael C. Sivi

Psychotherapist • Coach • Author

About Yael

I’ve always been a listener.

Long before I had language for it, I was drawn to the quiet, meaningful space that opens when someone feels truly heard. Becoming a therapist came less from a single decision than from an intuitive recognition—it felt like a natural extension of how I move through the world.

My own experience as a client in psychotherapy deeply shaped the way I work. I was especially drawn to approaches that value dialogue, presence, and real-time honesty—where therapy is not something done to someone, but a living conversation that unfolds between two people. Discovering Gestalt therapy over twenty years ago was a turning point. It changed my life, inviting me into greater awareness, responsibility, and contact.

Alongside my clinical work, I’ve spent 20 years as an executive and leadership coach in organizational settings. I am the co-founder of the executive coaching firm Collaborative Coaching, where I have supported emerging leaders and senior executives to cultivate their authentic leadership voice. That work—and my book Growing Up at Work—reflect my long-standing interest in emotional maturity and human development. I have delivered keynote speeches on navigating generational differences in the workplace, collaborating consciously and with intent, cultivating emotional maturity in leaders, and on navigating “the seasons of midlife leadership transitions”. Beneath most professional challenges, I’ve found psychological and emotional questions asking for awareness. When met directly, work, leadership, and life itself can become powerful contexts for growth.

Over time, my work has come to integrate Gestalt therapy, parts-based approaches such as Internal Family Systems, existential psychotherapy, and coaching. Just as importantly, it is informed by an ongoing psycho-spiritual inquiry oriented toward presence, awareness, and wholeness. I understand spirituality not as something to teach or promote, but as an invitation to relate to experience more directly and honestly.

Clients often describe my style as warm and challenging. I listen carefully, and I also ask questions that invite clarity, responsibility, and deeper contact. I’m not interested in fixing people or soothing them back into lives that no longer fit. I’m interested in supporting people to grow emotionally and psychologically, while also waking up to a deeper sense of who they are.

At its best, this work feels like a shared journey of exploration. We slow down. We pay attention. We listen for what is asking to be known. And from that place, something meaningful begins to move.

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Some Core Values & Principles

That Guide My Work

  • A lot of our work will start with what’s happening right now and point you toward your present moment experience—not as a way to avoid your history, but because the present is where your inner world becomes visible and workable. We’ll pay attention to sensations in your body, emotions, thoughts, impulses, and the subtle ways you move toward or away from what matters. Often, the patterns that shape relationships and choices show up in real time: in how you speak, pause, brace, soften, explain, or hold back. When we slow down enough to notice these live moments with care, new options appear—more honesty, more choice, more freedom.

  • It’s normal to feel pulled in different directions. One part of you may want change while another clings to what feels familiar; one part may crave closeness while another protects you through distance. Rather than treating these inner tensions as problems to eliminate, we’ll approach them as meaningful responses that developed for a reason. With respect and patience, we’ll listen for what each part is trying to do for you, and what it might need in order to relax. Over time, the goal isn’t to pick a “winning” side—it’s to help your inner world become more connected, so you can act from a steadier center and feel more like yourself.

  • I hold a basic trust that there’s something in you that wants to grow toward wholeness—not perfection, but a more integrated, grounded, authentic way of being. Sometimes that growth looks like facing what’s been avoided; sometimes it looks like grieving what couldn’t be; sometimes it’s learning to claim your needs without apology. The pace matters. We’ll work in a way that honors your nervous system, your values, and your lived reality. My job isn’t to “fix” you, but to support the deeper intelligence in you that’s already trying to become more fully itself.Item description

  • I believe kindness is one of the most fundamental sources of support we have available to us. Many people arrive carrying an inner atmosphere of pressure, judgment, or shame. Those forces rarely create lasting change. We’ll practice meeting your experience with warmth and respect, especially the places you’ve learned to dislike or hide.

    Compassion can move us past harmful or limiting patterns by helping us understand what these patters have been protecting. Compassion allows us find a safer, more life-giving way forward: When you can relate to yourself with more gentleness, your system doesn’t have to stay armored—and real change becomes more sustainable.

  • I bring curiosity into the room—not the clinical kind that watches from a distance, but the human kind that wants to understand your experience - you - from the inside. Curiosity helps us trade quick conclusions (“What’s wrong with me?”) for better questions (“What’s happening in me, and what is it asking for?”).

    Alongside curiosity, I’ll also invite self-responsibility: noticing the choices you do have, the patterns you reinforce without meaning to, and the ways you can care for your boundaries, needs, and impact. This isn’t about blame—it’s about agency. The aim is for you to leave our work with more clarity, more self-trust, and more ability to respond to life in the way you truly intend.