Peter Schenkel

M.Sc.-Psychologist, in further training as a psychological psychotherapist (with a focus on behavior therapy).

My Vita
Born and raised until the age of 8 in Kazakhstan, I came to Germany together with my family in 1998. After several moves, we were able to settle in the Karlsruhe district. After graduating from school in Ettlingen, I studied psychology in Landau and, after completing my master's degree in 2018, began further training as a psychological psychotherapist in the same year, which I am currently still in.

My interest in psychology stemmed from many different factors and questions that kept bothering me from time to time. From more banal concerns like "How does memory actually work?" to more complex topics like "Why do people sometimes feel like actors?" and "How do some people manage to make a solid impression even in the most difficult situations, while others become depressed under seemingly relaxed conditions?".

Relatively quickly, I was determined to go in the clinical psychology direction to become a therapist. In the course of the last 11 years I was allowed to get to know many different areas of work, including child and adolescent psychiatry, care of adolescents with a refugee background, inpatient work with adults, especially in the field of addiction, and outpatient therapy with clinical pictures ranging from anxiety disorders and depression to obsessive-compulsive disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder.

As a student of behavior therapy, I have found myself especially in the two areas of Schema Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and I often have good experiences with them to this day. The main goals for me are to support my counterpart in (1) putting aside the fight against one's own feelings and learning to accept them benevolently, (2) learning to distance oneself from one's own thoughts and not to blindly believe all the stories one's head tells one, and finally (3) putting the focus back on what is important to one and taking concrete actions that go in that direction.

In my free time I like to do some weight training, go for a walk, play cards with friends and devote myself to drawing.