Milica Krstić
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Milica Krstić · Psychologist · Forbes 30 Under 30

Become ResilientUnder Pressure

Milica helps leaders trade harshness, with themselves and everyone around them, for real compassion: the kind that holds high performance and humanity at the same time. Grounded in nervous system research, not willpower, so the career you built stops costing you your health.

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Trusted by founders and leaders at SynBioBeta, Cloudflare, and teams across Europe

6+ yrsWorking with clients
EN · SRLanguages
GlobalOnline & in person
1.5M+Monthly content reach
AuthorIt's Not a Big Deal
SpeakerMISK · WCP Vienna

Why strictness fails and empathy wins

Most high performers were taught that pressure demands harshness, toward themselves first. Milica’s work rests on the opposite premise: empathy is not the enemy of standards, it is what makes them sustainable. Leaders who trade self-criticism for self-regulation make clearer decisions, recover faster, and build teams that do not quietly burn out.

Milica Krstić speaking on stage

About

Clinical depth, performance language

Milica Krstić is a psychologist, practitioner of integrative body psychotherapy, and entrepreneur with over six years of experience working with high performers. Her work sits at the intersection of nervous system physiology, emotion, and performance, because the two were never actually separate: how a person feels is part of how they think, decide, and lead. Milica is a HeartMath certified practitioner and a Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe lister.

Milica founded the multilingual mental health initiative Safe Space, co-founded SoulFit with Dr. Maria Gren, and is building FeelSafeHub for organizations. She is also the author of It’s Not a Big Deal.

Milica is based in Bratislava and lives between Bratislava, Vienna, Lisbon, and Belgrade. She works with clients in person and online, depending on what each client needs.

  • EducationBA in Psychology, Singidunum University · MA in Digital Marketing and Social Media, University of Sheffield
  • TrainingFour years of EABP-accredited integrative body psychotherapy, IPD Zagreb · HeartMath Certified Practitioner · Practitioner of Systemic Constellations (Hellinger method)
  • RecognitionForbes 30 Under 30 Europe 2023, Social Impact · Specijalno priznanje za Ženu Zmaja 2023
  • AuthorIt’s Not a Big Deal, available on Amazon
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The story

What changed everything

For more than six years, Milica has worked with people whose lives looked successful from the outside and felt unsustainable from the inside. What she kept finding was never a lack of discipline. It was an excess of harshness, and harshness always sends its bill: to health, to relationships, to the quality of every decision.

Her work exists to change that equation, replacing strictness with empathy and self-criticism with self-regulation, so performance stops running on fear. That idea shaped everything she has built: Safe Space, the book It’s Not a Big Deal, SoulFit, FeelSafeHub, and the international practice she leads today.

Milica Krstić with the Forbes 30/50 honorees, Abu Dhabi
She has a very caring but firm approach, and keeps you accountable for your goals.
Vic Akosile · Head of AI Transformation & People Strategy, Cloudflare

The approach

The approach

The work sits at the intersection of nervous system physiology and performance: how the body holds pressure, how the mind makes decisions under load, and how both recover. It draws on integrative body psychotherapy, HeartMath heart-rate-variability training for nervous system regulation, and Systemic Constellations for the patterns sitting underneath a person’s decisions.

Sessions are practical as well as reflective: real decisions, real physiology, real calendar. Most clients notice the first meaningful shifts around the three-month mark, which is why the work is structured in seasons rather than single sessions, an approach clients’ own results and testimonials bear out.

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This work does not involve clinical diagnosis or the treatment of mental health conditions. While trained as a psychologist and integrative body psychotherapist, within this practice the work stays strictly in a performance and wellbeing capacity: no clinical diagnosis, no treatment, no medical care. Tools from psychology and body-based therapy are applied to performance and business contexts, not practiced as medicine or psychotherapy.

Clients are responsible for disclosing, honestly and in full, any existing health condition, diagnosis, or relevant medical history. Working without full disclosure is at the client’s own risk.

If you are experiencing a medical or mental health emergency, please contact a licensed healthcare provider or emergency services in your country.

The framework

Pillars of Milica’s work

Every method below treats emotion as data, not a distraction, the body registers pressure long before the mind names it, and research consistently shows that regulating it, rather than overriding it, is what actually protects performance.

Nervous system regulation

HeartMath heart-rate-variability training, building the physiological capacity to stay clear and steady under real pressure.

Integrative body psychotherapy

Four years of EABP-accredited training linking the body’s signals to the decisions and patterns playing out in someone’s work.

Systemic Constellations

Surfacing the underlying dynamics, in a family, a team, or an organization, that keep repeating until they are seen.

Performance research

Grounded in current research in performance psychology and nervous system science, applied to real decisions and real calendars.

The science behind the work

47%

of waking hours are spent thinking about something other than what is happening right now, and a wandering mind consistently predicts a less happy one.

Killingsworth & Gilbert, Science, Harvard, 2010
US$1 trillion

is lost every year worldwide to depression and anxiety through reduced productivity. Prevention is not soft, it is the business case.

World Health Organization
HRV

Higher heart-rate variability, the capacity Milica trains through HeartMath, is linked to better executive function and self-regulation under stress.

Thayer et al., Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews

The science of performance

Engagements

Three ways of working

01

Entrepreneurs and leaders

Weekly sessions, in continuity, over three months, individual and online. The focus is on how you actually function under pressure: faster and clearer decision-making, learning to listen to the body instead of overriding it, and catching stress before it quietly becomes a serious health problem. Both prevention and crisis work.

02

Companies and teams

Group work, live or online depending on what the company needs, delivered through workshops, educational trainings, and webinars, including sessions built specifically for leadership and top management.

03

Custom wellbeing strategy

A sustainable wellbeing strategy built and tested around one institution, company, or team’s exact needs. Typically six to twelve months, sometimes longer depending on complexity.

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Projects

What Milica is building

Milica Krstić in Vienna with Dr. Maria Gren

Schools · Co-founded with Dr. Maria Gren

SoulFit

An emotional-literacy programme that teaches young people the language of their emotions as a real school subject, not a one-day workshop: an eight-book curriculum, one for every school year, approved by Austria’s Directorate of Education and endorsed by the World Council for Psychotherapy. The idea began when Milica met Dr. Maria Gren at the World Congress for Psychotherapy in Vienna’s Rathaus, July 2025.

Pilot · Vienna · September 2026 Learn more
Milica Krstić, founder of Safe Space

Foundational

Safe Space

Siguran Prostor is an online platform where psychotherapists provide free sessions to people who cannot afford psychotherapy. Milica founded and ran it from 2022 to 2025, with a simple mandate: make real psychotherapy accessible, reduce anxiety, depression, and suicide, and help lift the stigma around asking for help.

2022 to 2025 Learn more

Organizations

FeelSafeHub

A five-minute daily protocol that helps whole teams catch stress early, before it becomes burnout, absence, or a resignation letter. Built by Milica after years of watching how much earlier real support could have arrived, if anyone had been looking for the small signs instead of waiting for the big ones. Currently in beta with real companies.

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Speaking

On the global stage

Milica speaks internationally on performance, resilience, and the human side of high-stakes work, from keynote forums in Riyadh and Vienna to the summits shaping business and leadership worldwide. Available to book as a speaker for conferences and events.

MISK Global Forum

Riyadh, KSA · 2023
On stage at the MISK Global Forum, Riyadh, in the session From Clutter to Clarity
On stage at the MISK Global Forum, Riyadh, in the session From Clutter to Clarity
Speaking on preventing mental health issues at work, MISK Global Forum
Speaking on preventing mental health issues at work, MISK Global Forum

World Congress for Psychotherapy

Vienna, Austria · July 2025
Presenting Lessons from Safe Space at the World Congress for Psychotherapy, Vienna
Presenting Lessons from Safe Space at the World Congress for Psychotherapy, Vienna

The impact of AI on mental health

Belgrade
In conversation on the impact of AI on our mental health, Belgrade
In conversation on the impact of AI on our mental health, Belgrade
Speaking on AI and mental health, Belgrade
Speaking on AI and mental health, Belgrade

Forbes 30/50 Summit

Abu Dhabi · 2024 & 2025
With Randall Lane, Chief Content Officer and Editor of Forbes, at the Louvre Abu Dhabi
With Randall Lane, Chief Content Officer and Editor of Forbes, at the Louvre Abu Dhabi
At the Forbes 30/50 Summit, Abu Dhabi
At the Forbes 30/50 Summit, Abu Dhabi
With the Forbes 30/50 honorees
With the Forbes 30/50 honorees

World Economic Forum

Davos · 2025 & 2026
At the World Economic Forum, Davos
At the World Economic Forum, Davos
Female Quotient Lounge, Davos
Female Quotient Lounge, Davos

1 Billion Followers Summit

Dubai · January 2026
Speaking at the 1 Billion Followers Summit, Dubai
Speaking at the 1 Billion Followers Summit, Dubai
1 Billion Followers Summit, Dubai
1 Billion Followers Summit, Dubai

Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit Africa

Botswana · 2023
Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit Africa, main stage
Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit Africa, main stage
Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit Africa, Botswana
Forbes 30 Under 30 Summit Africa, Botswana

Safe Space · Conference

Koraci ka sigurnijem Balkanu

The first free mental health conference in the Balkans, which Milica founded and organized through her nonprofit Safe Space. Held at Regent Porto Montenegro in Tivat on 22 February 2025, it brought together eighty people to make mental health care open, public, and free across the region.

FirstFree mental health conference in the Balkans
80Guests in attendance
22 Feb 2025Regent Porto Montenegro, Tivat
Milica opening the conference in Tivat
Milica opening the conference in Tivat
On stage at Koraci ka sigurnijem Balkanu
On stage at Koraci ka sigurnijem Balkanu
Eighty guests at Regent Porto Montenegro
Eighty guests at Regent Porto Montenegro
In conversation during the programme
In conversation during the programme
The audience in Tivat
The audience in Tivat
Closing the conference
Closing the conference

Testimonials

In their own words

Present and emphatic. Those are the words that describe Milica the best. She helped me create a healthier relationship with myself and to connect with my family on a deeper level. She listened closely and filled in the gaps with useful insight exactly where I needed it. I highly recommend her.
JCJohn CumbersFounder & CEO, SynBioBeta
Milica is a wonderful coach and therapist, highly qualified with many certifications. She has a very caring but firm approach and keeps you accountable for your goals. As a coach myself, it was warming to know there are people like Milica helping others become their best selves. I can't recommend her enough.
VAVic AkosileHead of AI Transformation & People Strategy, Cloudflare
Through one-to-one coaching, Milica gives you both the space and the tools to untangle and truly reflect on your thoughts, desires and goals, and the confidence to put them into practice. I couldn't recommend her more.
SCSharon CallcutSustainable Business Consultant & Executive Coach
Milica is a wonderful professional, deeply knowledgeable in behavioural psychology, wellbeing, and understanding emotions. Patient, empathetic, and helpful, she brings an extraordinary work ethic and real passion to all that she does.
IKIvana KovacevicPrivate Educator & Founder, Heart of Learning
Milica's sessions helped me tremendously, not only in recognizing my emotions but in working with the difficult ones. She is calm, patient and understanding. Over three months I built a real connection and came to understand myself better than ever before.
AAAdaleta AvdicFounder, adaatude
Insightful, patient and compassionate. If you're debating whether to work with Milica, just do it. She was transformational to my mindset, and more than a year on, I still use her methods daily. I cannot thank her enough.
SBSarah Ellen BrownGraphic Designer & Art Director

Before you book

Questions worth asking

Is everything confidential?

Everything is confidential. An NDA is optional for individual clients, and standard for companies and teams.

Do you work with my whole leadership team, or just me?

Both. Individually with leaders, one to one, or with the wider team through workshops and group sessions, including sessions built specifically for top management.

What happens on the intro call?

The call lasts thirty minutes. It opens with a short questionnaire, then covers how the work is structured, what it involves, and whether it is the right fit to work together. The call is free.

Can this work alongside my existing therapist or coach?

Yes. It can support and complement work already underway.

Do you work in Serbian, or only English?

Milica works in English and the languages of the former Yugoslavia.

How is this different from executive coaching?

Most executive coaching stays cognitive: goals, mindset, accountability. This work adds the layer coaching usually skips, the nervous system itself. Under real pressure, the body reacts before the mind has a chance to reframe anything, so training only the thinking rarely holds when the pressure is highest. This work trains both: the psychological patterns behind decisions, and the physiological capacity, through tools like HeartMath heart-rate-variability training, to stay regulated while under load. The result is not insight alone, it is a nervous system that does not collapse the moment the stakes get real.

Do you offer one-off sessions, or only the three-month track?

It is not possible to book a single session. The minimum is a three-month package, twelve sessions.

What if my team needs something ongoing, not just a workshop?

It is possible to create a custom solution for your team that does not exist in the standard offer, built around what your team actually needs.

What if I need to reschedule or pause a session?

Sessions can be rescheduled with at least twenty-four hours’ notice. All twelve sessions must be completed within four months, the three-month engagement plus one month of flexibility for both sides, to account for life and unpredictable circumstances. Sessions not used within that window cannot be carried forward. Long-term returning clients may agree to different terms, set individually.

Is this covered by health insurance?

This work is not covered by health insurance.

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Contact

If something resonates

Milica is open to new collaborations and conversations, with leaders, companies, and institutions.

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