Dr. Élena Bagourdi is a clinical psychologist, therapist, author, and speaker working at the intersection of human attachment, trauma, and artificial intimacy.​

For over twenty years, she has observed how people shift across relationships — becoming different versions of themselves with partners, parents, colleagues, and increasingly within digital environments. Her work explores how these new “mirrors” — algorithms, digital platforms, parasocial systems, and AI companions — are reshaping not only how we regulate emotion, but how we experience identity, belonging, and connection itself.​

Grounded in trauma-informed, somatic, and attachment-based approaches, Dr. Élena offers a clinical and cultural lens on digital compulsion, synthetic attachment, and what she describes as the Digital Split — the growing divide between our online and offline relational selves. Rather than framing these patterns as simple “addiction,” she understands them as adaptive responses within a rapidly shifting relational landscape.

 ​She works with individuals, couples, adolescents, and families — helping them restore the capacity for depth, mutuality, and authentic human connection. With parents, she focuses on helping them raise AI-native children with clarity and confidence, strengthening the parent–child relationship as the foundation for developing internal regulation.

 ​Across her clinical work, writing, and speaking, her work returns to one central question:
What can technology soothe or regulate, what does it quietly replace, and what can only be offered by another human being? ​

Outside the therapy room, Dr. Élena is a mother, an avid traveler, and a dedicated Krav Maga practitioner. These roles continue to shape her understanding of embodiment, resilience, and the lived challenge of staying connected — both to oneself and to others — in an increasingly digital world.