Entrepreneurs are trained to ask questions: Why is this working? What is creating the result? What needs to change?
That mindset works well in business. But what happens when the same questions are applied to people — their choices, fears, feelings, and behavior? That is where the story of Ukrainian entrepreneur, researcher, and KIT Academy founder Tetiana Dunaievska begins.
For years, Tetiana worked in business, leadership, team development, and mentoring. She trained women, built teams, and watched people with similar knowledge and opportunities make very different choices. One person would act. Another would hesitate. One would think, “I can do this,” while another would understand the same idea and still feel, “I’m not ready.”
For an entrepreneur, repeated patterns are hard to ignore. Tetiana began asking a different question:
What happens emotionally before a person makes a decision?
Looking for the cause behind the result
In business, when something is not producing the expected result, you look for the cause. Tetiana began looking at human behavior in the same way. If someone keeps turning down opportunities, what happens before that choice? If a person knows a relationship is hurting them but stays, what influences that decision? If someone has talent but still doubts themselves, is more information really the answer?
Years of working with people led her to a simple observation: behavior is often the final step. Before behavior comes a decision. Before a decision comes a thought. And behind that thought may be fear, self-doubt, pain, the need for approval, or the desire to feel safe. Emotions were not the problem. They were information.
When business thinking meets psychology
That question gradually took Tetiana from leadership and education deeper into psychology, coaching, and research. Her academic work followed the same path. In 2025, her study “Pedagogical Technologies for Forming Awareness and Emotional Resilience in the Educational Process” was published in Academic Notes. Series: Pedagogical Sciences.
In 2026, Economics & Education published “Emotional–Intuitive Approaches in Coaching: Barriers and Professional Identity of Women Coaches in Academic and Corporate Contexts.” The subject had changed from business results to human emotions, but the habit of looking for patterns remained.
The idea behind ELHM
That way of thinking became part of the foundation for Tetiana’s method, “Happiness Management Through Feelings” — Emotional-Level Happiness Management (ELHM).
People usually ask: “What should I do?”
ELHM asks one step earlier: “What am I feeling right now?”
A person may say yes because they are genuinely interested — or because they are afraid to disappoint someone. They may stay in a job because it is right for them — or because fear of change is stronger than the desire to grow. The action may look similar from the outside, while the emotional starting point can be very different.
Tetiana’s goal is not to remove emotions or replace them with “positive thinking.” It is to help people understand what they feel before those feelings begin influencing important choices.
The “7 Feelings” model
One of the central parts of ELHM is the “7 Feelings” model.
It grew from a simple observation: people can often explain what happened to them but struggle to explain what they actually feel. “I’m stressed,” “I feel bad,” or “I’m confused” can hide very different experiences. The model helps people ask clearer questions: What am I feeling? How is this feeling affecting my decision? Is my reaction only about what is happening now, or is it connected to something I experienced before? For Tetiana, awareness creates more choice. A feeling may still be there, but once it is understood, a person may no longer have to react automatically.
From method to research
Tetiana did not want ELHM to remain only part of her personal practice. She wanted it to be described, studied, discussed, and professionally evaluated.
Her work on ELHM appeared at the XIII International Scientific and Practical Conference “Global Trends and Directions of Scientific Research Development” in Bilbao, Spain.
Another paper, “Technology-Induced Stress and Emotional Self-Regulation: Exploring the Potential of the ELHM Method,” was presented through the international conference “Technology as an Extension of Man: The Limits of the Possible and New Paradigms” in Paris.
In June 2026, the International Science Journal of Education & Linguistics published “Implementing the Emotional-Level Happiness Management (ELHM) Method: a coaching-based emotional regulation program for women before, during, and after divorce.”
The study focused on women going through different stages of divorce, when fear, uncertainty, self-worth, loss, and major life decisions can become closely connected.
Turning the method into a monograph
In 2026, Primedia eLaunch in Boston published Tetiana’s 123-page monograph “Emotional-Level Happiness Management (ELHM): The 7 Feelings System for Emotional Regulation and Personal Transformation.” The monograph brings together the structure of ELHM, the “7 Feelings” model, KIT Diagnostics, the “5+5” support program, and practice cases. The method also went through professional review and intellectual property protection.
As her academic role expanded, Tetiana also began reviewing research for scientific journals, including Current Psychology (Springer Nature), Coaching (Taylor & Francis/Routledge), and the AISI Journal of Sensory Integration and Child Development.
The business mindset never really left
Tetiana did not simply leave entrepreneurship and move into psychology. She brought the entrepreneur’s habit of looking for causes, patterns, and systems with her. In business, she looked at what creates a result. In psychology, she became interested in what shapes a decision. In ELHM, she focuses on the feelings and emotional states that may influence both.
Today, Tetiana (https://orcid.org/0009-0000-0303-8678) continues developing ELHM and KIT Academy in the United States. And the question that began years ago in business remains at the center of her work:
What if we could understand our choices better by first understanding the feelings that come before them?
For an entrepreneur, it may simply be another way of finding the real cause behind the result.
