Anushah Malik, MSW, LSW

As a child of immigrants, she understands how stigma impacts resistance to therapy and believes this has in some ways led her to the field of social work. Anushah finds exploring early childhood experiences and family dynamics to be valuable in understanding one’s present day overall well-being. She works from a relational lens which means she values the therapeutic alliance and utilizes the therapeutic relationship to model healthy relationship building. Within the therapeutic relationship, she helps clients explore how their life story has shaped who they are in and outside of therapy. 

Within her practice, Anushah supports clients to explore and build insight around the root causes of different challenges they are facing. She hopes to help her clients understand how internal narratives develop and how they can impact self-esteem, self-image, relational conflict, etc. She then works with clients to challenge shameful narratives through building self-understanding and working towards self-acceptance. Anushah makes space to challenge negative thoughts/binary ways of thinking through cognitive reframing and other evidence based practices. She also works to provide psychoeducation around recognizing emotions and how to respond to big feelings through self-regulation. Finally, Anushah finds it important to work from strength-based, systems, and social justice oriented lenses. Specifically,  she works with clients to examine how different systems (family, school, work, government, society etc.) in a person’s life may interact and impact them based on their own intersecting identities. 

Anushah has clinical experience working with teens, young adults and adults dealing with a variety of concerns, including stress, relationship issues, anxiety, depression, loss, grief and intergenerational trauma. She has experience working in non-profit organizations, community mental health centers, schools, and foster-care systems. Anushah’s clinical expertise and passions include working with BIPOC teens and young adults. She also values working with Muslim clients who are in need of understanding their spiritual identity and acknowledges the complexity of spiritual lives of Muslims. She is fluent in Urdu and Hindi. 

Her practice is informed by concepts from attachment theory, psychodynamic approaches, narrative therapy, interpersonal process therapy, cognitive behavioral theory, and trauma informed approaches.