About Annette
Annette Malijen is a licensed marriage and family therapist in California with 25 years of experience. She helps people who are dealing with stress, anxiety, depression, relationship problems, and struggles with addiction.
Background and approach
She approaches each person with respect, sensitivity, and compassion. Taking the first step can be hard, and she aims to make that step feel manageable.
Annette shapes conversations to fit each person's needs. She listens first and then works with clients to set practical goals.
Sessions focus on everyday skills that make life more manageable, such as coping strategies, communication practice, and planning small, achievable changes. Her background includes long-term clinical work in community and outpatient settings over two and a half decades.
That experience informs a calm, straightforward style in sessions. She concentrates on clear, usable tools rather than jargon-heavy explanations.
Annette uses client-centered techniques to make space for a person’s values and priorities. She also draws on cognitive behavioral methods to address unhelpful thinking and build new habits.
Those approaches are blended to match what an individual needs in the moment. People come to her for a wide range of concerns including grief, trauma and abuse, intimacy-related struggles, parenting stress, sleep and eating problems, career transitions, anger, and self-esteem work.
She also supports those facing compassion fatigue and life changes by helping them create sustainable routines and boundaries.
Approaches that translate to online sessions
Client-centered therapy focuses on listening and reflecting what matters to the client. It helps people feel heard and supports them as they name priorities and choose their own next steps. Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, looks at how thoughts and behaviors affect feelings and teaches practical strategies to shift unhelpful patterns; it is useful for anxiety, depression, and managing stress.Finding the right approach is part of the work together. The therapist will talk with clients about goals and preferences and then suggest techniques to try. That decision is collaborative and can be adjusted as therapy progresses.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to make therapy fit into busy lives. Video calls let people use visual cues for richer conversations. Phone sessions can be easier when bandwidth is limited or when someone prefers not to use a camera. Live chat and text messaging support brief check-ins and ongoing reflection between longer sessions, giving flexible options for different needs and schedules.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Relationship issues
- Depression
Also works with
- Addictions
- Anger management
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Compassion fatigue
- Coping with life changes
- Eating disorders
- Family conflicts
- Grief
- Intimacy-related issues
- LGBT
- Parenting issues
- Self esteem
- Sleeping disorders
- Stress, Anxiety
- Trauma and abuse
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 25 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English