Charla Ruby Malamed

I provide a safe space to listen deeply, to thoughts, feelings, emotions, memories, fantasies, and bodily experience. By listening in new ways, we expand our capacity to hold more, respond with greater flexibility, clarity and ease, develop compassion, and become empowered to make positive changes, both personally and in the communities we're a part of.​​​. ​ My work is based in the understanding that body, psyche and spirit are unitary and that our suffering and joy in any of these areas leads to suffering and joy in the others. My work is trauma-informed and attachment-based. I work in a psychodynamic way, which means that I help my clients gain insight into internal and interpersonal dynamics that are non-conscious in order to become more skillful and intentional about what is required to create change. I regularly use mindfulness skills and techniques from Internal Family Systems to assist my clients in developing their ability to expand their awareness, self witness, and integrate parts that have been dissociated. ​​ ​​My work is also informed by an understanding of how systems work, how our embeddedness in systems can lead many of us, particularly those who are members of historically marginalized communities, to hold burdens of suffering that are not of our own making. These burdens might be unhealed traumatic wounding from our ancestors. It might be collective trauma from legacies of oppression or domination. Therapy and rites of passage are a powerful way to transform this suffering into empowerment, community, transformation, and liberation (both individual and collective).