Mali Austriyak Mikhli , LCSW-R

Mali Austriyak Mikhli is a licensed clinical social worker with forty years of experience in New York. She chose social work early in life after seeing how a caring therapist can change someone's quality of life. Mali offers a warm, interactive style and aims to be empathic, respectful, and sensitive in sessions.

She combines practical talk and emotional exploration. Sessions often include supportive conversation, problem solving, and tools people can use between meetings. Mali draws on approaches such as client-centered work, cognitive techniques, and emotionally focused ideas to help with common concerns.

Mali has long experience with trauma, bereavement, and disruptions that start in early childhood. She also helps people manage stress, anxiety, relationship and intimacy concerns, parenting challenges, grief, depression, and life transitions. Additional focuses include adoption and foster care, attachment issues, caregiver stress, and family of origin problems.

She works with adults across different cultures, religions, and lifestyles. Mali speaks English, Spanish, and Yiddish, which can help when language matters in processing strong emotions and memories. Her approach aims to meet each person where they are and move at a pace that feels right.

People who come to Mali can expect a collaborative process. She supports practical coping strategies alongside deeper emotional work, and she helps people find clearer ways to manage relationships, career strain, and shifting life roles.

How Mali's Approaches Work Online

Client-centered work emphasizes listening and building a strong therapeutic relationship. The therapist follows the client's lead, reflects feelings, and helps people clarify their goals so they feel heard and understood. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) focuses on identifying unhelpful thinking and testing small behavior changes; it is useful for anxiety, depression, and stress management. Emotionally focused ideas help people name and shift patterns in close relationships and manage strong emotions tied to attachment and loss.

Mali treats finding the right approach as a joint process. She will talk with each person about goals, preferences, and what has helped or not helped in the past. Together they decide which methods to try and adjust the plan as needs change over time.

Online sessions can fit into busy lives because they remove travel time and let people choose how to connect. Video calls allow face-to-face interaction; phone sessions can be a simpler option when bandwidth or camera use is difficult. Live chat and text-based messaging are useful for brief check-ins, step-by-step coaching, or when a written record helps track progress. These options make it easier to keep therapy consistent during workweeks, caregiving demands, or life transitions.