Mariia Mykhailichenko’s clients are often people in the middle of a big change. A first-year student in a dorm full of strangers. A graduate starting their first job. Or someone who’s just landed in a new city, maybe a new country, and can’t name a single neighbor. She works with them through educational programs and community projects. The goal sounds modest: getting to where small talk no longer feels like an exam.
One session, she has found, rarely fixes this. A person talks through their anxiety with a psychologist, goes home and is surrounded by strangers again. They are not used to starting conversations. They don’t have a place in the group yet either. A few weeks of that and they’re dodging people at school or at work, which makes everything else harder too. So Mykhailichenko nudges clients to join something: a group, a club, a volunteer project. Anywhere they can practice on people who aren’t paid to listen.
Communication, as she sees it, isn’t a talent you either have or don’t. Think of learning to drive. You need regular practice in a place where nobody’s grading you. A weekly group works, so does a workshop. That’s where people try speaking to a room, or holding their ground in an argument without raising their voice. If they flub it, nothing much happens. Flubbing it in a meeting with their manager is another story.
She’d rather catch these problems early, before someone starts turning down every invitation and slowly drops out of social life. Mentors and group meetings help here, giving people a chance to widen their circle step by step.
In 2026 she set out her approach in a practical guide for professionals, “The WEFT Method: An Integrative Model of Psychological Support,” published by Komprint in Kyiv. It is written for psychologists, psychotherapists, social educators and the heads of crisis centers.
She borrowed the name from weaving. On a loom, the long threads are stretched tight, and the weaver passes the weft over and under them, row after row, until there’s cloth. WEFT doubles as an acronym for her four stages, Witness, Establish, Fortify and Transition. First the psychologist listens and holds back judgment. Then the two agree on ground rules and goals. In the third stage the client works on their beliefs and practices communication in real situations. In the last stage they start using those skills on their own. Sessions drop to once every two or three weeks, and more of the client’s time goes to hobby clubs and volunteering.
One tool from the guide is a ladder of social tasks. Clients write down the situations they dread and put them in order, easiest at the bottom. The bottom rung might be nothing more than saying hi to the cashier and holding eye contact for a second. A few rungs up: asking a passerby how to get to the pharmacy. Higher still, taking something back to a store without saying sorry for the trouble, or inviting a coworker for coffee. Before each one, the client guesses how anxious they’ll feel, from 0 to 10. That same evening they write down how it actually went. In one example from the book, a client expected an 8 before inviting a coworker for coffee. During the conversation itself, the anxiety was lower, a 5. The coworker said yes, and they had plenty to talk about.
The guide also covers digital tools. A client can rehearse a hard conversation, for example with a boss, in a virtual simulation at home first. At the next session the psychologist goes over which responses they chose and where they got stuck.
The method includes separate programs for young people at risk of radicalization and for people who have been through evacuation. Another is aimed at those who have lived in social isolation for years.