Melissa Lehmann, Ph.D.
Melissa Lehmann, Ph.D.
I received my Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in August 2008. I completed my predoctoral internship at the Central Texas Veterans Healthcare System where my primary focus was on PTSD and women’s sexual trauma. After earning my degree, I began my post-doctoral fellowship at the Center for Therapeutic Assessment located in Austin, Texas. It was here that I received formal and in depth training in Therapeutic Assessment, which had been an interest of mine since beginning graduate school.
Therapeutic Assessment is a semi-structured approach to psychological assessment developed by Stephen Finn, Ph.D., which enlists clients as collaborators in the testing process rather than mere bystanders. The main focus of working with clients within this paradigm is to help them gain more insight into their problems, build more compassion for themselves and their ways of coping, and make positive changes in their lives. Therapeutic Assessment is based in humanistic psychology and draws from a wide range of theory and practices including cognitive behavioral, family systems, psychodynamic, attachment, and existential. To learn more about Therapeutic Assessment, please visit the following website:
My approach to psychotherapy encompasses many of the ideas and practices from the theories that are embedded in Therapeutic Assessment mentioned above, and has been greatly influenced by my studies in attachment theory and interest in mindfulness practices.
Attachment theory provides an understanding of how early relationships to significant others influence and shape the way we think about current relationships. Many years of observing children and their caregivers led to the discernment of different patterns of relating, which has been termed "attachment patterns" or "attachment classifications." Because of the abundance of research that has been conducted on attachment patterns (from infancy to adulthood), we are now able to describe how one might think, feel and behave in current relationships in their life.
My interest in attachment theory began early in my studies and has been refined throughout my years as a practicing psychologist. I was trained in the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP) and achieved AAP coding reliability in 2006. The AAP is a psychological measure developed to assess one's attachment classification. My dissertation examined patterns of attachment in an adolescent clinical population using the AAP, and in my current practice I code AAPs for other professionals from around the world. Beginning in the summer of 2013, I also began training other clinician in this particular measure, which has allowed me to gain a more in depth understanding of attachment theory, which has increasingly influenced the work I do with my clients. To learn more about the AAP, please visit the following website:
My interest in mindfulness developed later on in my career as I began working with clients who had experienced early childhood trauma and loss, as well as my involvement with individuals and families plagued by the disease of addiction. It is here that I began to understand how memories and feelings from past experiences could influence current thoughts, behaviors and emotions without conscious awareness. And how focusing attention on the present moment and body can help to discern that which is not available through the use of mere language and the retelling of the past. Thus, my work bridges together the past and the present, the mind and the body, as well as the internal emotional world that overlies our lives and well being.
Providing a safe and supportive environment wherein a strong and trusting relationship can be formed is the first and primary focus of my work. For it is only with this intact, that one is able to get curious, explore and gain more insight and compassion into their struggles, ways of coping and dilemmas of change.
