Malik McCann

Life inevitably gets rocky at times, and despite our best efforts we can feel lost as to how to move forward. My intention in therapy is to work alongside you to make sense of your particular struggle and the unconscious dynamics which contribute to it. I aim to support positive change, through greater insight, self-acceptance and understanding.

I work with adults 18 years plus with issues of:

• Cross cultural issues and marginalisation
• Depression & anxiety
• Trauma and complex trauma
• Emotional dys-regulation
• Loss and grief
• Addiction
• Relationships

Counselling/Therapy Services

Your suffering can be a result of difficult compounding life events, challenging current circumstances, or ongoing issues of depression and/ or anxiety. Whether this distress is related to your relationship with yourself or your relationship with others, I believe it is signalling that something needs your attention.

Therapy is a journey into the depths of yourself to find more clarity and meaning. As a therapist I take this journey beside you to understand your unique life story. To explore your strengths as well as your challenges and to work with you towards a deeper understanding of your thoughts, feelings and behaviours, and the beliefs and patterns that lie outside of your conscious awareness, shedding those that no longer serve you and fostering ways that do.

Outcomes of therapy can include a more supportive relationship with yourself- including greater capacity for self-compassion, self-protection, stronger self-identity and self-worth; healthier and more fulfilling relationships; and increased capacity to maintain resilience in the face of life’s unavoidable up’s and down’s.

Counselling/Therapy Approach

• I have a relational approach which means that I work with you to forge a strong, collaborative and secure relationship that can serve as a model for your future relationships. I offer a warm and empathic environment for short term or long term therapy.
• Being trained in psychodynamic psychotherapy, I’m particularly interested in how our early life experiences shape our way of relating in the world and with ourselves.
• I use DBT and other modalities to resource you with skills to support emotional regulation and equilibrium.
• As a tauiwi partner in te Tiriti,  I am committed to continually deepening my understanding of hauora Māori and kaupapa Māori, as well as other indigenous holistic and collectivist models of wellbeing.

Background and Experience

I am first and second generation Aotearoa born and raised- of Irish, Samoan, Niuean and Chinese heritage, and I identify as she/ her. I’m a wife and mother of three.

As a woman of mixed heritage I have explored the impacts of migration, colonisation and intergenerational trauma on my own whānau and following from that, my own identity. I have a passion for working with those who are grappling with similar issues of identity, culture and experiences of disenfranchisement and marginalisation.

I am in my third year of private practice as a psychodynamic psychotherapist. My previous experience as a psychotherapist includes working in the AUT allied health clinic as a trainee and two years of placement and locum work at Higher Ground, a residential addiction rehabilitation programme doing both individual therapy and group work. Before becoming a psychotherapist, I worked in community youth development and before that as a therapeutic massage therapist for many years.

My tertiary education includes a Bachelor of business, a Masters degree in Psychotherapy- graduating with first class honours and I am currently working on a doctoral thesis.