A Bit About Therapy

My approach to private practice centers on active collaboration with you. I believe that your engagement is key to our work together. As a malleable, empathetic, and open-minded clinician, I offer a truly integrative approach designed to meet you exactly where you are. Think of me as a co-pilot on your journey toward recovery, increased efficacy, enhanced resilience, and skillful navigation of life's events.

I deeply respect that each individual's narrative, experience, and trajectory is a sacred journey that demands an attentive and dedicated practitioner. In this capacity, my aim is to take a serious and unflinching approach to your unique truth. I strive to create a safe and supportive space where you feel heard, understood, challenged, encouraged, and ultimately fulfilled.

To foster self-understanding and encourage new perspectives, I integrate various effective psychotherapy methods, adapting my techniques and tone to your needs. As an integrative therapist, I primarily draw from a psychodynamic approach, often weaving in elements of Gestalt, Relational, and Existential therapies.

Integrated Psychotherapy

Relational therapy is a type of psychotherapy that focuses on the client's relationships with others. The therapist works with the client to understand how their past and present relationships have shaped their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. The goal of relational therapy is to help the client develop healthier and more fulfilling relationships.
Gestalt therapy is a type of psychotherapy that focuses on the client's here-and-now experience. The therapist works with the client to become aware of their thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations in the present moment. The goal of Gestalt therapy is to help the client integrate their fragmented experiences and live a more authentic life.
Existential Therapy: This approach grapples with fundamental questions of human existence, such as freedom, responsibility, meaning, isolation, and death. It encourages you to confront life's inherent challenges and uncertainties, helping you find personal meaning and purpose, and take ownership of your choices in the face of life's inevitable difficulties.

An integrated therapeutic approach that includes relational therapy and Gestalt therapy would focus on both the client's past and present relationships, as well as their here-and-now experience. As your therapist, I would help you, the client to understand how past relationships have shaped their present-day relationships, and how their present-day relationships are impacting their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. I would also be instrumental in helping the client to become more aware of their thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations in the present moment, and to learn how to express these experiences in a healthy way.

This integrated approach can be helpful for clients who are struggling with a variety of issues, including:

Relationship problems: Therapy can help the client to understand their patterns of relating to others, and to learn how to communicate more effectively and build healthier relationships.
Trauma: Therapy can help the client to process their past experiences and to heal from the emotional pain that they have experienced.
Anxiety and depression: Therapy can help the client to understand the root of their anxiety or depression, and to develop coping mechanisms to manage these symptoms.
Self-esteem: Therapy can help the client to develop a more positive sense of self and to increase their self-acceptance.

LGBT and Queer Affirmative Therapy

LGBT-affirmative therapy is a therapeutic approach that explicitly validates and supports LGBTQ+ identities, experiences, and relationships, actively working to counteract the negative impacts of heteronormativity, homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia. As a queer-identified practitioner, the interaction with cultural humility is particularly vital because:

LGBTQ affirmative therapy can be helpful for a variety of issues, including:

Coming out: LGBTQ affirmative therapists can help clients to come out to themselves and to others, and to cope with the challenges of being an LGBTQ person in a heteronormative society.
Relationships: LGBTQ affirmative therapists can help clients to develop healthy and fulfilling relationships, both with their romantic partners and with their friends and family.
Body image: LGBTQ affirmative therapists can help clients to feel comfortable with their bodies and their sexualities, and to challenge negative messages about LGBTQ people that they may have internalized.
Trauma: LGBTQ affirmative therapists can help clients to process past experiences of trauma, such as discrimination or violence, and to heal from the emotional pain that they have experienced.
Self-esteem: LGBTQ affirmative therapists can help clients to develop a positive sense of self and to increase their self-acceptance.
Shared Identity vs. Individual Experience: While a queer practitioner shares a broad identity with their LGBTQ+ clients, cultural humility reminds them that their personal queer experience is not universal. There's immense diversity within the LGBTQ+ community (e.g., race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, ability, religion, age, specific identities like asexual, pansexual, non-binary, etc.). A queer practitioner must actively resist assuming they "know" a client's experience simply because they also identify as queer.
Avoiding Internalized Homophobia/Transphobia: A queer practitioner, like any individual, may have internalized some of the societal biases against LGBTQ+ people. Cultural humility involves ongoing self-reflection to identify and address these potential internal biases, ensuring they don't inadvertently influence the therapeutic space or judgment of a client's choices.
Power Dynamics: Even within a shared identity, the therapist-client relationship inherently involves a power dynamic. Cultural humility requires the queer practitioner to remain mindful of this dynamic and actively work to reduce it, empowering the client as the expert on their own life and experiences.
Intersectionality: A queer practitioner who practices cultural humility understands that LGBTQ+ identity intersects with countless other aspects of a client's identity (e.g., race, class, disability). They recognize that a Black gay man's experience will differ significantly from a white lesbian woman's, and the therapy must be sensitive to these intersecting oppressions and privileges.

Clinical Supervision (ACSW/MFT)

The purpose of my supervision is to enhance the ASW/MFT intern professional skills, knowledge, and attitudes in order to achieve competency in providing quality patient care. This type of supervision establishes a learning alliance between the supervisor and supervisee in which the supervisee learns therapeutic skills while developing self-awareness at the same time. In addition to my private practice, I serve as Clinical Supervisory contractor for the Department of Mental Health and The Veterans Administration.

Jarrad Malamed, LCSW

2001 S Barrington Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90025