Coach & Mentor
About Me
Marie Therese is a wife and mother of​​ two and shines as a beacon of hope in the coaching and development world. She expertly consults with mental health and wellness professionals and business leaders, empowering them to weave together all aspects of life for a balanced and purposeful existence.
Her remarkable journey began in the face of adversity growing up amidst domestic violence and her mother’s codependent relationship with her father, who battled a psychiatric illness. The residual impact of her mother’s words, “My only way out of this marriage is through death,” informed her work on the power of our thinking and fuelled her resilience. ​
Following her mother’s death, at nineteen, Marie Therese embarked on a profound journey of self-discovery and her relationship with herself through psychoanalysis. She discovered her inner strength, learned to trust herself, and cultivated self-respect, inspiring others to respect her. By confronting her demons, she transformed her life.
Marie Therese believes that the foundation of all relationships is our relationship with ourselves. Deep love and respect for ourselves lay the foundation for attracting loving, harmonious relationships that nourish our souls. By embracing our worth, we unlock the power to form meaningful connections. She is a coach and mentor who specialises in relationship dynamics and building confidence in her clients. She enables them to overcome their conditioning and unconscious (you don’t know, what you don’t know) beliefs about themselves, allowing them to actualise their fullest potential. In her previous senior management and coaching roles, she facilitated the creation and implementation of new initiatives designed to identify and develop key competencies in individual team members, allowing them to reach their maximum potential.
Marie Therese is the creator and host of the YouTube podcast, Food for Therapy, which combines her training and specialties with her passion for food, hosting and culture. She is a trained psychotherapist and counsellor with over 25 years of experience in training, mentoring, coaching and development. She combines her specialities of coaching and training with her spiritual knowledge to provide a unique experience of mentoring and coaching her clients. Therese sees each client as an individual; a whole - a sum of many parts, those being a mind, body, soul and spirit. As such, her focus on mentoring combines all these attributes.
Education
Marie Therese received her post-graduate diploma in psychotherapy and counseling from Jansen Newman Institute (Sydney, Australia), with training in family, existential, narrative, and psychodynamic and group therapies, combined with her dissertation on grief. She holds an undergraduate degree from La-Trobe University (Melbourne, Australia) in gender studies.
Publications
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In 2024, Marie Therese contributed to the discussion lesson for the XQ-SLESS Tribe: "Your Excuses Are Holding You back: Break Free" by Martin Conboy.
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She has been published in several anthologies, including 'The Honoured Poets of 1998' and 'The Liquid Mirror Anthology' in 2000. Her memoir, 'Sex, Spirit and the Soul of Therapy,' was published in 2009 and chronicles her journey through psychoanalysis and healing from trauma caused by domestic violence and religious upbringing. Her film script, 'Close Your Eyes and Jump,' inspired by her mother’s story of domestic violence, received a commendation from the Austin Film Festival in 2023. She hopes to secure funding to make the film soon.
