About Nik
Nearly 20 years as a psychologist.
A lifetime spent trying to understand people.
I’ve always been interested in what shapes us – how we become who we are, why we respond as we do, and how people adapt, struggle, connect and change.
That curiosity eventually became my profession. But it started long before psychology.
WHO IS NIK
A life lived across different worlds
I was born in the former Soviet Union and spent much of my childhood in Siberia. At 16, I migrated to Israel, where I finished school and completed combat military service. In my mid-twenties, I moved again, this time to Australia.
Living across different countries, cultures and social systems meant repeatedly having to understand new people, new rules and new ways of seeing the world. Later came different jobs and careers, security work, skydiving photography, relationships, parenthood and more than a few changes of direction.
Through all of it, one curiosity remained remarkably consistent: what makes people who they are?
Why do we respond so differently to similar experiences? What helps us adapt? What keeps us stuck? Why do relationships bring out both the best and the most difficult parts of us? And what drives people not simply to recover from difficult experiences, but sometimes to grow through them?
Those questions eventually led me to psychology.
“
There is a world of difference between being lost among the trees and seeing the forest from above. Sometimes understanding is what allows us to see the path that was there all along.
Nikita (Nik) Kotlarov
Psychologist
The search became study
01/
Bachelor of Behavioural Science
04/
Master of Clinical Psychology
02/
Bachelor of Arts – Criminology & Criminal Justice
05/
Nearly 20 years practising in Brisbane
03/
Bachelor of Psychological Science (Honours)
06/
Advanced clinical training
Contextual behavioural science
Understanding people in context
Contextual behavioural science, ACT and functional approaches shaped how I understand behaviour and change. What we think, feel and do makes more sense when understood in the context of our history, circumstances, relationships and what matters to us.
Emotion Focused Therapy
Transforming patterns between and within us
EFT profoundly influenced how I understand relationships – particularly attachment, emotional connection and the patterns people can become caught in. The aim is not to decide who is right, but to understand what is happening between people and create opportunities for connection and repair.
Performance & adversity
Performing under pressure. Growing from adversity.
My interest in human performance began long before psychology and continued through my research into performance under pressure. Combined with work in trauma and adversity, it informs how I think about resilience, adaptation, recovery and the possibility of growth through difficult experience.