Dr Theresa Lenta Psychologist

Theresa’s qualifications are a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology with Honours, a Masters in Counselling Psychology, a PhD in Psychology and a Masters of Education. Theresa came to psychology after a career as a special needs teacher, with expertise in hearing impaired and gifted and talented learning, having worked as a head of department in a school for the D/deaf and as a lecturer in both psychology and education. As a psychologist, Theresa’s key areas of interest and expertise include relationships and couples therapy, coping, self-esteem, depression and mood difficulties, anxiety, grief and loss, trauma, and navigating life transitions, difficulty and change. Theresa also works with more severe clinical conditions and disorders. Her approach in therapy is based on the individual, couple or family’s need with an open and collaborative approach guiding her work. In her couples and relationships work, Theresa has a keen understanding of the many challenges that couples and families can face, and particularly enjoys helping couples to improve their relationships, deepen their connection, and contend with the pressures impacting upon them. In her child and family work, Theresa has offered support to children, adolescents, parents and care-givers for a variety of challenges related to development and adjustment. This includes but is not limited to understanding and working with learning disability, physical disability, self-esteem and behavioural and communication problems. Theresa works from both a Systemic and Attachment based perspective to understand the multiple influences on the individual and the family. Theresa enjoys working with clients who have experienced childhood trauma to help them process these experiences and to help prevent cycles of trauma from occurring. In individual therapy, Theresa enjoys working with clients on a range of challenges faced and is able to use different approaches to suit individual client needs. Her approach favours helping clients to gain insight into the ways in which they perceive themselves and others, and understand the ways in which they engage with their environment. This is achieved by highlighting repetitive behaviour cycles that are often enacted without awareness. This insight is understood to facilitate growth and change in the client by collaboratively discovering new ways of being. This type of work often includes examining early life experiences and the unconscious processes that govern behaviour. Theresa is happy to work with clients in short and long term therapy. Theresa has presented papers at conferences and has been invited to speak at staff training sessions at schools on various topics related to education and psychology. Her research for her Master’s in education was based on understanding the social-emotional responses of special needs learners in a mainstream school setting. Her psychology Honour’s research was based on the efficacy of informed consent in HIV vaccine trials and her psychology Master’s and PhD research was based on the promotion of holistic wellbeing in a school for the D/deaf. Her post-doctoral research was based on the holistic development of D/deaf and hard-of-hearing learners using a Bilingual-Bicultural model of education. Theresa loves her work and is a very dedicated, warm and engaging therapist, with a keen sense of the privilege and responsibility that her role involves. She enjoys accompanying her clients on their path through difficulty, and grounds her work in an attuned and genuine understanding of her clients and their needs.She is fully registered with the Psychology Board of Australia.