Interview with Lucia Rott

I: Hello! Thank you for agreeing to do this interview. Could you introduce yourself and your educational and professional background?

L: My name is Lucia. I have studied Sociology and Environmental Studies at Masaryk University in Brno. I have been a therapist since, before the pandemic, around 2019. When I first started working with clients, it was online. I have been going on since then. I am in a 5-year training program. Training is called Post-modern Psychotherapy and I am in my fourth year right now. I am a mom, I have a son. 

I: Oh, you look really young. I wouldn’t have guessed.

L: Yeah, I get that sometimes, which can be a blessing and a curse. [laughs] I have lost a few clients who thought I was too young for them but it’s alright, everyone has a right to their opinions. So, I am a mom, I am a psychotherapist. I used to work in the business world as well. I worked in HR, first in one IT start-up in Prague and then in New York and San Francisco. Then I worked in an online business, as an HR director. But I always knew that was not my calling. Psychotherapy is what I do now and what I feel best at.

I: First I want to start by asking what post-modern therapy is.

L: I know, it is quite a weird word. It combines a few approaches: Narrative therapy, systemic therapy, and solution-focused brief therapy. It is like an umbrella term for these three, which are quite new. 

I: So, what made you feel drawn to this approach?

L: It appealed to one of my personal values: Freedom. I have huge respect for my clients and their lives, what they are dealing with, and that they decided to ask for help by coming to therapy. I want to give them the freedom to choose what they want to talk about. Although sometimes I can also be leading them, guiding them to some questions which may spark some emotions, all under our mutually agreed terms. I am not someone who would be strict on giving homework. However, sometimes when we come up with something together, I might suggest it but I don’t ever ask them whether they did their homework. So, it appeals to my values. I value their freedom and agency towards their own lives. Also, I am not the expert on their lives. I don’t want to be the one deciding what they should be doing. We also talk about values a lot in narrative psychotherapy. For example, about deciding whether there are some values you inherited from your family, societal or cultural background and how they serve you in your life. Whether you want to keep them or change them. This is something that appeals to me as well. I also like to be useful to my clients. In solution-focused brief therapy, the main word is “brief” and I wouldn’t want to keep my clients in therapy for years. Yes, sometimes it can happen, I don’t mind it. But I’d like my approach to be useful to my clients and our therapy sessions to be the most effective they can be at the time we’re having them. So, the effectiveness of my sessions with my clients is important to me as well.

I: It is really great that you follow an approach that aligns with your personal values.

L: Yes. And the systemic approach is something that also speaks to me because we are not living here just by ourselves, as sole individuals. We live in systems, be it family systems, institutional systems, cultural systems. The context of our lives is important and it is something that shapes our lives. It is important to take it in as a whole. Something may be the person’s fault, sure, but how do their surroundings contribute to its development? Trying to gain different points of view involving the systems you are living in as well. Systemic therapy also believes that if you change something in the system, the system must change as well. I also believe that if I, for example, change my approach towards some situations, it might also change other people involved in those situations. Their reactions, their emotions towards it. 

I: That sounds interesting. After all, we are all about the connections we make with each other, so that doesn’t sound impossible. To move on to another question, what aspects of being a therapist do you find the most fulfilling?

L: I love watching how sometimes things change unnoticeably. The changes sometimes may be so minimal that you can hardly notice them. But if you look at it as a whole, after a couple of sessions, a lot of sessions sometimes, you see a profound change. And I love seeing that my clients’ quality of life is getting better, they are happier, they are more fulfilled with their lives. Most of all, they are happier with themselves and how they live their lives. I am so grateful that I can do that, I can help them in this journey of theirs.

I: That must be really fulfilling indeed. How do you tailor your approach to meet the unique needs and goals of the individuals?

L: For example, when I see someone who is really quick in their thinking, I don’t mind the speed. But if there is someone who needs some time to think about things, I don’t mind being quiet and giving them the space and time to think it through. So, for example, the tempo of our sessions is different. I also don’t want to be making decisions for my clients, as I have said before. I also don’t judge. I feel like everybody has a right to live their own life as they want and I am here just to help them realize what they want and how they want it. So I try to create such an environment that they can tell me whatever they want. Every therapist tries to do that, whether there is something I do uniquely, I don’t know. I try to be very transparent myself also, for example about why I am asking some questions. Because I believe that also creates an environment of safety and that I am not trying to get them to some place where they should be telling me something or that I am trying to push them into some place.

I: What are some common misconceptions about psychotherapy that you have encountered and how do you address them?

L: I think there are some common misconceptions that people are hearing, like, you are crazy when you ask for help. But I don’t think my clients come with those misconceptions. I think the general public sometimes thinks that. Sometimes, my clients come in unsure about whether therapy will help them. So, they will come in and try it and see whether it is something for them. Which is also alright with me. I have encountered this just a handful of times but people think that I should be giving them advice and I am always trying to tell them that I won’t be the one bearing the consequences of their decisions so I am not in the position to tell them what they should do. Maybe that can be disappointing for some. Either way, I think that psychotherapy can bring them a new point of view that they haven’t thought of before. I ask them what will happen if I give them the answer for them. When they think it through, we can walk from there.

I: What can a client expect from their first session of psychotherapy?

L: They can expect that I can offer them coffee or tea or water. [laughs] When we tap in, I’ll ask them if they have some questions, whether this is the first time they are visiting a therapist. I want to tell them some framework of how we are going to work, how much time we have, how we work and we agree on our cooperation basically. In the first session, we have a couple of minutes of this type of talk so that everything is cleared out in the beginning. Sometimes I ask them what was the last straw that pushed them towards booking a session with me. Because I don’t want to jump into it. I get that talking about your most intimate and inner feelings with someone you just met, even though it is a therapist, is a little bit awkward. So I don’t like to jump in immediately if the client is not proactive in it. I try to go about it a little slowly. Then, we are talking about it, we are mapping out the topics of what we’re going to be talking about. We would say, in our jargon, “contracting” what we will be working on.

I: Okay. Another question I have is, how do you believe that your education in Sociology and Environmental Studies has affected your approach to psychotherapy?

L: I don’t know for sure yet. Maybe if I look at myself in 50 years, I can tell you then. I think that sociology helped me understand that society shapes us, sometimes even more than we would like to admit. It helped me see that there are these kinds of factors that shape our thinking about ourselves and our lives as well. But I wouldn’t necessarily say that it affects my everyday thinking about psychotherapy. Environmental studies part is something that speaks to my personal values. Environmental studies is still social studies but more in terms of how we affect the environment, how it affects us back, and also about environmental protection. We had topics like environmental psychology, so I understood a little bit about environmental grief. It is when people are distressed because of the state of our environment and planet, which is something that we can control but also can’t control at the same time. It says more about me as a person but doesn’t have a profound effect on my approach to psychotherapy.

I: This makes sense. For you, what does it mean for a person to be their authentic self?

L: In the therapy room, that you can be as crazy as you want and you will not be judged by me. In the rest of the world, it might mean that they can be more free in expressing themselves and their needs. That they can draw boundaries more easily because they know themselves better and what their needs are and they are not afraid to ask for them. It basically means accepting themselves as they are, which sounds like a total cliche, I understand that. It might be in a way that they previously couldn’t because of societal, familial, cultural background. And now they are able to express it.

I: That sounds great. How do you guide your clients to find the courage to be who they want to be?

L: I think that expressing themselves freely here and not being judged by it might be a good start. But sometimes it is not as easy, it is just digging out what they really want. I think digging into layers of “what I should be, what I should do, who I really am, what my values are, how I want to live my life” is hard. I think we might start here. How do I do it? By talking about it, asking about it. Sometimes by asking questions that they have never been asked, and that might be different for everyone.

I: How do you approach the establishment of a strong therapeutic bond with your clients and why is this relationship important for the therapy process?

L: It is important because if you have this safe environment where you can express whatever, whatever really, and not be judged by it, you experience what it feels like to express yourself freely and be accepted freely without consequences. Which is like the first step to being able to do it in the outside world. The judgment comes easily but now that you have experienced what it’s like to be yourself, you want to do it more and you can find ways to deal with the criticism once you’ve experienced what it’s like to be accepted.

I: Have you been through your own therapy process?

L: Yes, I have been to therapy. Not only while doing my training in psychotherapy, but also while doing my coaching training, and also for my own mental health. It is not something I do regularly. I undergo therapy in my training as well, but when I need it in my personal life I ask for it. Also for my work, I am working under supervision, which is kind of like therapy for a therapist in some way, but it is not the same. There is a lot of self-work I do besides being in psychotherapy training.

I: That’s great. The last question is, what would you say to individuals who want to come to therapy but are unsure about taking that step?

L: Asking for help is hard. Especially if you have been raised in an environment where asking for help isn’t seen as a strong thing but rather as a failure. If you feel like you would benefit from psychotherapy and this is the only thing holding you back, I get it, I’ve been there. But asking for help is not a sign of weakness. I’d say it’s a sign of courage. But I also get that it is a hard step to overcome so I have the utmost respect for my clients who have done so and who are asking for help every time they sit here with me.

I: Thank you so much for answering the questions.