Lucia Sarmiento Verano

In this episode of the #TherapistsConnect podcast, Dr Peter Blundell (@Twitter handle @drpeterblundell) interviews Lucia Sarmiento Verano (Twitter handle @SarmientoVerano). Lucia comes from a Sociology and Political Science background. She has always been interested in how people are affected by the environment and why they behave the way they do.  She has a postgraduate Diploma in Humanistic Psychotherapeutic Counselling from the Metanoia Institute in London, and she is currently continuing her studies as a trainee Humanistic Psychotherapist.

Lucia says "As a Humanistic practitioner my work rests on the belief that every person is valuable, and has the potential to achieve growth and healing with the help of a safe and supportive environment. With this in mind, I strive to provide this holding space for my clients to grow within the therapeutic relationship, always respecting their perspectives in order to help them discover their own answers". 

https://www.luciasarmientoverano.com/about-me/

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Transcript

Peter Blundell: 0:00

Hello and welcome to this episode of the Therapists Connect podcast. For this series we're doing things slightly differently and we've got a variety of different types of podcast episodes, which we'll be releasing over the forthcoming weeks. However, this episode is one of our traditional episodes, where one therapist interviews another about their life and work in the therapy community.

Opening: 0:24

Welcome to the Therapists Connect podcast, a podcast for therapists by therapists.

Peter Blundell: 0:33

Hello, my name is Dr. Peter Blundell and today for the Therapists Connect podcast, I'm interviewing Lucia Saramiento Verano, who is a humanistic psychotherapeutic counsellor who lives and works in Oxford, and is also part of the Radical Therapists Network. Hello.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 0:49

Hello. How are you?

Peter Blundell: 0:51

I'm good. Thank you. How are you? It's lovely to meet you.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 0:54

Yes, nice to meet you finally.

Peter Blundell: 0:56

Yeah. Good. That's good to hear. It's really nice to meet you. You know when you feel like you know someone because you interact with them and think oh, we've never actually spoken before?

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 1:08

Yeah, I realised that today. I feel like I know you but I really don't.

Peter Blundell: 1:15

You do now.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 1:16

Yeah.

Peter Blundell: 1:19

Okay, so this is going to be a joy for me, because I'm going to find out, I get to ask you lots of questions and find out a little bit more about you. I've read a little bit and I've seen obviously your tweets and things like that, but what I don't know is kind of what drew you to being a therapist in the first place. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 1:44

I consider this journey to be really, really long, because I consider the beginning of my journey when I began therapy about 12/13 years ago because I was in a very bad place. I had depression quite severely and I started seeing someone because I was alone in Europe and I felt like had no other choice but to try and feel a bit better. It was really intense and intensive. I had group therapy and individual twice a week and I didn't really imagine that I would end up being a therapist myself, but I guess I could have predicted it a little bit because I enjoyed it so much. I mean, it was really hard but the the safety of the space, the relationship that one gets to have in the therapeutic space, to me feel very special and very needed. Then I decided I wanted to become a therapist when I went through several years of group therapy and I could experience that relationships with other people that wasn't just the therapist and it was absolutely magical. It completely rewired me to want to live again and you know want to connect with people again. So that's when I decided it and I started my training four years ago now.

Peter Blundell: 3:21

So it sounds like in both of those examples, the personal therapy and the group therapy, that it was all about those healing relationships and that bond with other people that was so powerful.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 3:32

Yeah, yeah. spaces to feel safe and be able to explore things. We don't feel like we can in other places, yeah.

Peter Blundell: 3:43

That safe space to kind of see ourselves really. So that led you to starting your therapist training, which you said was four years ago now. Can you tell us a little bit about that because, I know you've trained as a counsellor, but then you've kind of moved on to do some other training now as well, haven't you?

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 4:04

Yeah. So I trained as a humanistic counsellor. My training was a mix between transactional analysis, gestalt and person centered, and I qualified a year ago now, exactly, and then I continued on training to become a psychotherapist and I am due to qualify next year, which is the same modalities just a bit longer.

Peter Blundell: 4:33

Yeah. A bit more in depth. Yeah. So how have you found your training then in both of those examples? How's that been?

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 4:43

It's been a journey. It's been hard in different ways. First of all, the amount of self exploration that we needed to go through, I wasn't really expecting that. I guess I had an idea about that but one does not really know what to expect until, you know, I'm in there. The hardest part for me was doing that in a big group, in a group of people that I hadn't met beforem and then as I went on with my training, and especially after I qualified, and I started practicing, and I started reading, how other people practice and you know, talking a lot more with people that have been qualified for a long time, and getting into anti oppressive practice, I started questioning a lot of the theories and the ways to practice that were being taught. So that was, that's been really hard for me in this past year, year and a half, to have to continue training, but then having to, in a parallel movement, develop my own way of thinking, which doesn't necessarily correspond to the mainstream training.

Peter Blundell: 6:06

Yes,

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 6:07

It's been a challenge.

Peter Blundell: 6:09

I imagine it is, there was a couple of things that stood out to me there when you were talking. One was when you were talking about doing your personal development, but in a big in a big group. I remember when I did my training, we had 26 people in our group with, 2 facilitators. I just had flashbacks then when you were talking and remembering being in such kind of big groups with not knowing people very well and that requirement to kind of explore yourself. It's quite, it's quite intense and I see students kind of go through that. We don't have groups that big on our course at John Moores University but then the other bit that you were talking about there in terms of learning about an approach and a modality or multiple approaches, but then also trying to have a critical, eye and lens over that, and I think all courses should be open to that and to be having those those conversations, but I can understand how sometimes that might for student that might be quite jarring, sometimes not always feeling able to challenge maybe some of the things that are being taught.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 7:18

Yeah, it is difficult, especially because we're being we're still being, not judged but we need to qualify, and for that we might come across trainers or markers that will not take it very well if we criticise some of the thingsr or we show that we don't agree fully. So we need to be careful with that.

Peter Blundell: 7:46

Yeah, and that's a really difficult thing to navigate, isn't it? I mean, personally, I always feel like I would mark students higher if they are critically engaging with a topic and kind of looking at it from different perspectives but I appreciate that it's a personal thing, isn't it and other people might approach it in that way. That's really difficult as a student. I appreciate that you go through that journey on social media, don't you? So you talk a lot about anti oppressive practice and power dynamics and things like that on social media, so I suppose you have some form of outlet for it if you can't do it all on the courses that you are doing.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 8:31

Yeah, exactly. I am eternally grateful for social media.

Peter Blundell: 8:36

Twitter all the way. So given that kind of difficult path, I suppose that you're traveling at the moment, how would you describe your therapeutic approach? Have you come to a position with it at the moment of where how you would describe it?

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 9:00

I think it's in works. I'm still going to evolve and change but coming from the basics that I learned in my training, which are Rogerian mostly, I kind of am trying to develop what I call an anti oppressive approach, which is acutely aware of power dynamics between client and therapist but also in the client's life, and different ways in which the person might be maybe feeling silenced or oppressed, and also naming all those dynamics. So we don't run the risk of individualising issues or blaming the client for things that might be outside of their control because I do strongly believe, and I think that's what's missing in a lot of trainings, that social contexts and social structure have a real big impact on a person's emotional well being and it's important to name that in therapy, even if we can't fix it within therapy.

Peter Blundell: 10:21

There's something about there, and I think, actually, we've had this conversation on social media on a similar type of topic, making those things that are happening, or implied, actually very explicit, naming them and acknowledging that they actually exist. I think when you were talking before about that idea of individualising, every problem almost through therapy, we can reinforce some of those structures by kind of saying the onus is on you, the client to sort that out, when actually, there's a lot of issues and structures that the client won't necessarily have power or control to change.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 10:59

Exactly and what I've been hearing a lot is people feeling either guilty, or they're like, there's something wrong with them, because they're feeling that way, because they're feeling low, or they're feeling hopeless about the situation when.... Well, I've heard this phrase, and I'm sure I'm not going to do it justice, but it's something like, we can't feel well, in a society that's ill, you know, if the social structure is ill.

Peter Blundell: 11:29

Yeah, absolutely and I think, again, we have had this conversation on social media I think around sometimes community organisations, and people who are working in other kind of spheres outside of therapy, sometimes have a greater awareness around some of those issues than therapists necessarily. I mean, I don't know about all different types of training but I know that there are lots of trainings that are limited that don't even look at that kind of perspective, during their training. So I think it's really important that we talk about it. I also really appreciate the awareness raising that you try and do on social media around some of those discussions and some of those issues.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 12:15

Thank you. It's nice to know it's appreciated.

Peter Blundell: 12:18

It is, it is absolutely.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 12:21

Sometimes I think I'm like the angry little therapist, because of raising these issues.

Peter Blundell: 12:27

I think, for me, it's one of those things on social media where there is a lot of opinions thrown around but I think sometimes you might not see people maybe commenting

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 12:33

Okay. Thank you. or liking but I think that they're out there, and it gives people thought to take away and reflect. So I think there might be work being done that isn't always seen on social media ecause I know sometimes it can eel like tweeting out to a kind f an empty void. Nobody eplies. It reminds me of l rge personal development g oups where you speak and nothi g comes back, you know, but I think people are people a e listening and taking notes. o don't stop.

Peter Blundell: 13:17

Moving a little bit away from kind of what we were talking about then, but, if there was any kind of people thinking about entering training, as a therapist, is there any advice that you would give to them around entering either the profession or entering therapy training?

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 13:39

There's probably loads of advice I could give because it's really a very obscure path. We don't know much. I mean, at least I didn't know much about therapy and the different modalities and options for training before entering training. So maybe I would have done a lot more research than I did before and during training about the modalities, for example, and what they really are like, and what what's the philosophy behind them and if they go with my values, etc, and also about different training organidations. For example, I did not know what the difference between BACP accredited training and UKCP accredited training was until I started and that might cater to different needs for different careers. So that's really important. The other thing, maybe I would have wanted to know a lot more about my training institution's, way of doing things, and how it compares to others, to see if that corresponds to what I'm expecting from an institution or if I'm going to be feel welcome and safe in there. Yeah, I think that's some really good advice and I think, I know when I entered my own training, that almost maybe the perception from the outside is you do a qualification and you become a counsellor or a psychotherapist, but actually the routes to get there so varied, you know, and there are so many different types of approach and organisation that you can join. So, I think doing some research and trying to have a good understanding about that, that's a really good idea, actually. I would probably the best way of doing that is talking to qualified counsellors.

Peter Blundell: 15:37

Yes, that's hopefully how some of these podcasts help people, actually having a listen about some of the routes that people people took in their training because without that I think it's quite difficult to navigate., I think, so yeaa. I'd agree with that. What are kind of the rewards and the challenges that you've had so far over the course of your career as a therapist?

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 16:07

Over the course of my still very short career?

Peter Blundell: 16:10

Yeah.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 16:12

Well, one of the first challenges was actually setting up in private practice, because I don't know about other trainings, but I didn't have any guidance on that. So I had to look for workshops, which were very good, actually the ones I attended, and different bits of information here and there. It's quite hard to find really precise information about taxes, for example, or insurances and different options, etc. So that was a lot of work at the beginning. And I'm still learning. Then, I suppose, I'm not alone when I say when I just qualified, I still didn't know what I wanted to specialise in or what client type I prefer. Because a lot of people say, well, I've heard people say, we can be generalists. You know, people work like that but I'm not sure about that. I mean, I don't say I don't think we should choose something but I think it's natural that we all have different interests, depending on our own experiences as human beings. Yeah. So I think it would be, it would have been a good idea to know more about that before starting my own private practice. And the rewards? Well, just a job. I'm not jaded yet. No, I really, really enjoy working with clients. It's extremely rewarding and I think I mentioned right earlier that the part I enjoy the most about this work is actually seeing people find their voice, when their feelings or their experiences has been minimised, or denied and then, after a while in therapy, they start being more and more sure about how they feel and how they think and not doubting themselves. That's really, really good to see. Its lovely isn't it and it's that acknowledgement that it's always been there but it's just getting an opportunity to be expressed or owned a little bit more. Yeah, I think that is a wonderful part of being a therapist. What do you think, is the biggest challenge that we face as a profession from your point of view? I think we're very, very tied to tradition. I think we're still trying to build on the very first foundations of psychotherapy more than 50 years ago and, yes, we need to learn where we come from, and the theories underlying our work, but we could have gone so much further now. In my experience of training, we're still kind of focusing a lot on how they used to do things. Which, for example, if we take Rogers' person centred approach, it's a great way of working with people to you know, hold what they what they need to bring, to help them feel safe, and to explore their experience but we can't be using that theory as a solution for every therapeutic issue, especially if we start working with dynamics of power and oppression or we start working with, you know, the social context, because I think I recently tweeted that the Rogerian approach has also always been used by racist people in actively racist ways. So it's not a solution. I think we should be thinking much further ahead now.

Peter Blundell: 20:48

And I think we've had this conversation on social media about all of those therapeutic approaches, the history of them, and who wrote them all need examining through a critical lens and if we don't do that, then we were falling short of considering where we could go with counselling and psychotherapy for the future.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 21:15

Yeah, and I feel there's a lot of fragility in the profession around examining the problematic foundations of it. There's a lot of fragility around the idea of doing harm, potentially, as therapists. A lot of people cannot accept that. So it becomes really difficult to say things like a lot of Jung's theories were racist. So there are people who will attack others for saying that and that's what I mean by we're still too attached to tradition, I guess.

Peter Blundell: 21:58

It's interesting, isn't it? Because for me, I feel like a lot of that discussion, it's conversation, you know, it's reflecting on those ideas. It's challenging each other to think about things in a different way. Because if we can't even have those conversations safely with each other, then how are we ever going to change or change our views or influence each other in different ways?

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 22:24

Yeah. Yeah. I would say that's the biggest problem with our profession right now

Peter Blundell: 22:29

Yeah. This might kind of follow on from this a little bit, actually, this next question. So you've recently announced on social media, and you're an assistant disrupter for Race Reflections, which I love. I love that name of that of that kind of role, I suppose But could you tell people who a e listening who may not know bout Race Reflections and what his kind of role involves with hem?

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 23:04

Yeah, so Race Reflections is very recent company and startup. The founder is Guillaine Kinouani. Look her up if you don't know her. She is a psychologist and an expert on critical race, critical psychology, and she focuses on race and racism. So the idea of this company is that we offer memberships to individuals and to companies as well for anti racist development, and for learning about all the dynamics behind oppression and racism, and we don't only offer material about on it in the form of articles, and talks and seminars, but also, we're trying to offer spaces for group reflection and for support as well. So we always have events running, monthly group discussions, anti racism groups, support groups and different types of talks and materials for members. So, yeah, that's Race Reflections.

Peter Blundell: 24:22

Yeah.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 24:23

And my, right, role within it... I was gonna forget that. So I recently started working as an assistant disrupter, as you said and for me, my role entails delivering some of the training, producing some of the training and also doing research to develop more training and more products for us and also different bits and bobs because it's a small company. So we all kind of are multitasking. We do business development and communication with customers.

Peter Blundell: 25:05

Fantastic. So it really I mean, it's quite innovative and there is lots going on. I'm on the mailing list at the moment. So I see kind of the different events and things like that that are happening, which is, absolutely fantastic. Now, just as well as your training, and your work with Race Reflections, you're also a member of the Radical Therapists Network. I don't know why I'm not sure where you find time to do all of these things

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 25:34

I'm not sure either. I am at the moment working almost seven days a week.

Peter Blundell: 25:40

Yeah.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 25:41

But it's all so fascinating and yeah, and needed. So..

Peter Blundell: 25:47

Yeah,

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 25:47

I'm happy with that for now. So the Radical Therapists Network, was formed, it was founded last year, at the beginning of the first lockdown and it's a space for counsellors and psychotherapists to educate ourselves, to support ourselves through, we have different support groups as well. We have regular meetings, we have peer support, supervision, sorry and we also organise events like talks and workshops and seminars, for therapists, around subjects of oppression. So either working with gender, working with sexual orientation, or working with marginalised groups, racism, or other kinds of oppression and it's all to help us develop an anti oppressive practice in our work. So it is all done voluntarily. Yeah, we're all working voluntarily axnd at the moment, I think the membership is closed, but it's going to open again in the future. The time we regroup, and we reorganise some things. But it's an extremely exciting project and I really hope more people join us because there's loads of incredibly experienced, knowledgeable therapists in the network that are willing to share their knowledge with other members and support each other in this anti oppressive journey, which is a hard journey because we need to question so many of the things we've learned about ourselves and the world and we can feel really vulnerable, in this journey. So having a community to do it is really good.

Peter Blundell: 27:54

That's fantastic and your passion comes through when you're talking about that. But I also saw a video from different members from the Radical Therapists Network at the conference for the Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility and I think everyone's passion kind of came through on that video talking about why they joined that network and kind of what it meant to them. So it sounds like it's going from strength to strength from what I can see, which is, which is really good to see.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 28:24

Yeah, thank you. I think everyone's working really hard for it. Yeah. And it's a really lovely community.

Peter Blundell: 28:33

It seems that and I know that a lot of the members are kind of very passionate and advocating for it on social media as well. Yeah. So I'm coming to the end of my questions but my last question is, what have you got planned next? I feel like I don't want to ask you that question because you've got so much on already, I'm thinking surely there can't be more things that you want that you want to do soon?

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 29:01

Well, yes, there is actually. So well, other than my wor at Race Reflections I am working on new products, new courses, I believe is going to be especially geared towards like therapy. So that would be really interesting. With the Radical Therapists Network, I'm working on a workshop that I'll be co-facilitating with Sage Stephanou around "being white and other", it is called. It is for people that are white or white passing and come from either mixed heritage or colonized cultures. So it's going to be an eight session exploration of our experience of oppression and of white privilege in order to become better anti racists. In the future future, after I finished, well I have to finish my dissertation for next year and pass my viva and after I do that, I hope to continue into a PhD to study the dynamics, the psychosocial dynamics of racial mixing in Latin America under the colonia..l I don't have my wording just yet,but under the colonial coloniality of power. Yeah, I suppose. Yeah.

Peter Blundell: 30:45

Yeah. Well, that sounds absolutely fantastic and I knew when I asked the question that you'd have other other plans and ambitions because you just seem so passionate and motivated in your work. So it sounds really, really exciting. I wish you the best of luck with it and thank you for all the work that you do in terms of raising the profile of anti oppressive practice, particularly on social media, because I think it is really important and I think it's really important that we're trying to always have that conversation and raise awareness around those issues. So thank you so much. It's been lovely to meet you and chat to you properly.

Lucia Sarmiento Verano: 31:25

Yes, thank you so much, Peter, its has been lovely.

Peter Blundell: 31:28

No problem.

closing: 31:30

Thank you for listening to the therapist Connect podcast. Go To www. therapists-connect.com. For more discussions and debates,