Melbourne CBD

This Hart therapist is a Family and Couples Therapist, (Clinical Social Worker) with over 25 years’ experience working across diverse sectors such as mental health, specialist child and family relationship services, family law settings and private practice.

This Hart therapist’s practice combines experience and knowledge with care and compassion. She provides a strong client centred approach, working collaboratively with couples to identify priorities, support wellbeing and work towards positive change. She believes it is important that couples gain hope, relief and a way forward right from the first session.

In her work with couples, she offers valuable tools to reduce stress and build communication confidence and competence. She also offers the opportunity to connect current relationship patterns with past life experiences, with the aim of assisting clients to gain new perspectives and greater insight and empathy for themselves and each other.

She assists a wide variety of individuals and couples from diverse cultural backgrounds and couples from LGBTIQ+ communities.

She has extensive experience working with individuals and couples who may be struggling with anxiety, depression, anger, past or current trauma and abuse, grief and loss, relationships difficulties across the life cycle, parenting struggles, separation and divorce and other life transitions. She also offers step family formation and transition work; recovery from experiences of family violence/ trauma and assistance to take responsibility for harmful behaviours in relationships.

She has a commitment to gain regular feedback from her clients, in order to create a safe and effective therapeutic relationship. She uses this feedback to inform her work, and is able to employ a combination of evidenced based relationship therapies, such as Emotion Focused Couples Therapy, Gottman and interpersonal neurobiological methods. She is also able to employ Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), systemic and narrative therapies.

This Hart therapist is an experienced, empathic, and compassionate therapist. He has extensive training in Emotion Focused Therapy, and Trauma-informed practice. He has experience working with couples and individuals whose lives were affected by trauma and relationship issues.

He offers counselling for culturally and linguistically diverse people. He communicates in 4 different languages including Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu, English

This Hart therapist believes that adverse events not only affect people’s behavior but also have negative effects on their personal growth and their relationships. He believes that humans have an enormous capacity to heal, grow, and love which can be unlocked through the therapeutic process.

This Hart Psychologist supports his clients by empathising and creating a warm and safe environment with a non-judgemental approach. He helps clients gain insight into their relationship and emotional communication patterns, and in working around all the hidden mechanisms which prevent clients from living a more fulfilled life. He fosters his clients’ necessities and goals, tailoring his method to their needs.

He works with couples in the areas of building trust, navigating divorce, couple and family reunification, same-sex relationship difficulties, infidelity, sexual disorders/issues and violence. He also conducts individual sessions in the following areas: abuse, eating disorders, gender identity stress, anxiety, depression, bullying, drug and alcohol addiction, panic attacks, grief, loss and traumas.

He is aware of the importance of healthy communication and the role emotions play in relationships. Without effective communication tools and the ability to clearly express emotions, couples and families often face a vast array of difficulties.

This Hart therapist trained in Italy to become a psychotherapist. After his degree in Clinical Psychology, he completed a post graduate degree in Family Psychotherapy. He has more than 10 years of practice in working with clients experiencing a variety of mental and relational health issues.

He is currently pursuing a PhD in Telehealth/Digital Health at the University of Melbourne. He has been involved in academia for more than 10 years publishing also several works.

He loves to diversify his interests in a variety of mental health issues and relationship conditions in order to support his clients in every stage of their lives. He has gained extensive experience in public and private sectors and helps his clients to recover from different mental and relationship issues by harmonising theoretical and clinical understanding.

He supports couples facing a range of emotional and relationship issues such as communication breakdowns, sexual disorders, loss of trust, parenting styles and extended family issues.

He has intensively trained to treat individuals, couples and families. He has had the opportunity to attend The Family and Relationship Therapy Centre which is led by some of the European pioneers of the Systemic Family approach. He stays up-to-date with the ongoing European therapy methodologies, bringing science and new models to his practice.

Furthermore, he has also completed a post graduate degree in Clinical Sexology.  This allows him to competently work with individuals and couples through a wide range of sexual issues.

He can also deliver therapy sessions in Italian language.

This Hart therapist is a person-centred and emotion-focused therapist, informed by an awareness of family-systems theories, attachment theory, mindfulness, polyvagal theory and the nervous system, trauma, Internal Family Systems therapy, social justice and intersectionality.

Our Hart therapist enjoys working with couples at all stages in their relationship, including those navigating communication problems, family of origin issues, sexual issues, betrayals, grief, polyamorous situations, parenting issues and blended families. She is able to work with couples seeking to separate well or to navigate co-parenting after separation. She is an LGBTQIA+ ally.

As a therapist working with a family group, she seeks to make space for everyone’s perspective and to create the conditions that enable you to hear each other in ways that can be difficult outside the therapy room. The focus is on the qualities and dynamics of the relationships.

As a Family Therapy trained practitioner, she considers your relationships and your relational context when working with you as an individual. She works with people seeking personal growth and change, on issues including depression and anxiety, stress, identity, sexuality, relationship problems, navigating life-stage changes, finding purpose, grief and loss.

Her approach is informed by an awareness of our physicality and our spirituality and may draw upon elements of breath-work, visualisation and mindfulness. She believes that personal change is a multifaceted process and involves the dynamic interplay of the different dimensions of our selves.

This Hart therapist has a warm, empathic, and non-judgmental therapy approach, which she uses to create a safe and supportive space for you heal your relationship. She feels honoured when her clients share their sensitive and vulnerable parts of themselves as they work towards healing their relationships.

With her authentic, curious, and gentle challenging style, she encourages healing, relationship repair, and growth.

Please note, Marlena has an average wait time of 4-6 weeks for new clients. Please contact us for availability.

This Hart therapist finds great pleasure in working with couples. Her personal and professional journey of healing and growth has shown her how essential healthy relationships are to our happiness and wellbeing. She believes that we all get a bit stacked at times and require support. She recognises that relationships are complex and can bring both joy and hurt; and that it is through relationships that we heal, grow, and live satisfying lives.

With over 20 years of experience working with individuals, couples and families, she has the expertise to help you heal, and has trained and worked with a range of evidence-based therapeutic modalities.

Attuning to your concerns and needs, she will choose approaches suited to you, whether you are an individual or a couple. She will assist you to connect to your own resources such as curiosity, compassion, courage and more, in order to understand and heal your struggling parts and your relationship; to become your own caring, present and loving therapist and to experience more rewarding relationships and a happier life.

In addition to helping individuals and couples resolve relationship issues, she has worked intensively with issues of trauma, depression, anxiety, various addictive behaviours, including problematic gambling, eating disorders, grief and loss, mental health, abuse, self esteem, stigma, and parenting difficulties.

She is bilingual and can counsel in both English and Polish.

She is a registered Medicare Provider.