Grace Malonai, Phd, LPCC

I believe each person, each client, is incredibly and beautifully unique. Humanistic psychology describes the individuality of each human, and supports a holistic approach to counseling work.

One focus of humanistic psychology views how deep feelings and self-concept influence behaviors. This motivates an exploration of each client as a whole person in all his or her unique individuality, where multiple perspectives are used to regard a situation.

I deeply value the humanistic view that people are innately good.

With existential therapy, we work together to create balance, and to promote acceptance without overwhelm. This perspective helps us explore how you make meaning in life, your connections, relationships, and sense of purpose.

Existential therapy adds additional perspective, so that you can process internal conflicts (and subsequent choices) in a way that supports you to blossom in the present, without becoming overwhelmed or preoccupied with a potential future.

Family systems theories, including Narrative Therapy, are foundational to my work. From this therapeutic viewpoint, individual clients are seen as part of, and interconnected with, larger systems— primarily the family. As a systems therapist, I believe it is important to explore how my clients relate with their own extended personal contexts— and not only their families, but also their school or work, their community, their culture, era, and other external influences.

As a Narratively informed family systems therapist, I see my role as partner to my clients, on their journey of authoring their own stories.

When I say I that I work relationally, I am describing a specific type of empathy, a sense of mutuality, and a contextual awareness that I believe is essential to therapy work. Relational-cultural counseling includes a sense of partnership in therapy, where I work to help my clients experience feelings of being truly understood and partnered on their path. Part of this includes providing a safe “container” for my clients, so that they can more easily trust me to hold them in compassion and care.

Another important aspect of Relational-cultural therapy is that it explains growth and development as part of learning about relationships, as well as the disconnections and re-connections in life.

Incorporating spirituality into psychotherapy is part of a holistic approach. A sense of connection with matters of spirit—whether it includes an experience of nature, devotion to spiritual or religious beliefs or practices, the wonder of science, meditation, or other ideas, values or beliefs—can be part of healing, gaining a sense of being better connected with the world, and feeling more whole.

Play therapy is as diverse as it is fun. It is an important part of my practice, and can be essential when working with children. It can involve games, toys, puppets, cars, costumes, crafts, or even physical movement (such as sword play, dance or catching lizards). Play therapy is way to help clients, especially children, achieve optimal mental health.

Even neurodivergent children (and adults) who have strong verbal skills can benefit from play therapy, which provides an alternative means to process emotions, challenges, and what is going on in their lives. Play therapy has been shown to improve social, emotional, behavioral and other mental health issues.

Not just for children, I also have therapeutic games and crafts geared specifically for teens and adults. Play therapy can help clients resolve conflict, solve challenges, and learn positive preventative coping skills.

For further information, please view this short video, which explains how play therapy works:

Many of my clients really like doing art projects. More than a fun and entertaining way for children to learn therapeutic skills, art therapy can be part of a deep healing process for people of all ages. It can also provide an enjoyable way to practice positive coping skills, as well as providing space for for creativity and personal reflection.

Child, teen and adult clients can make meaning of their lives via art projects, improve self-esteem, find strengths, and become more self-aware. Creating art can also bring about profound insight and understanding of relationships, coping, responses to stress and trauma.

Sandplay is the process of arranging small figurines and representational objects in therapy sand that represent an inner state of being. Therapy sand has the properties of both wet and dry sand, so it can be light and sandy or molded and sculpted.

Sandplay is a powerful therapeutic technique in that it can change how clients view themselves within their world, and bring their inner world out, to an expressive world. It also gives space for deep healing, processing and discovering new outcomes. Sandplay is especially helpful because it can be a non-verbal way to communicate when verbal communication is difficult or does not feel right. I utilize a complete sandplay set-up in my office, and children, teen and adult clients are all welcome to sandplay.

To start sandplay, I ask clients to choose figurines to place in the sand. Clients typically shape or mold the sand before placing the figurines. Molding play sand can feel really good—it allows for expression of emotion, plus the texture of the sand on the hands can be calming and relaxing.

When choosing figurines, clients pick whichever they are most drawn to, even if there is no obvious reason for making those choices. It is actually very easy to get into the process of building a sandtray world. It is an inner experience of creativity, guided by the subconscious. Also, it is okay not to know the meaning of the scene that is created. The strength of sandtray work is that it is healing and powerful, even if the outcome is not explicit.

I am native to the city of San Francisco, born into a large, multi-cultural family. I have lived in or near San Francisco for most of my life. The exception was in my 20s, when I was on a mission to figure out who I was and what that meant. During those ten years, I lived in some beautiful places: Camden (Maine), Santa Barbara, Santa Cruz, on the American river in Sacramento, and in Telluride (Colorado). I currently live in the San Francisco Bay Area with my spouse of 30 years, along with various winged, finned, and 4-legged creatures. 

My interest in counseling psychology started when I was an undergrad. I had always loved science, and chose a major in nutrition, with an emphasis in physiological chemistry. That meant that I took chemistry classes every quarter of my college career. My major felt challenging and stressful at times, and I found reading my psychology-major roommate’s textbooks more interesting than my own. I was fascinated by the human psyche, connections between mind and body, and family relationships. These psych texts were also surprisingly relaxing and engaging. So, I perused them for pleasure.

Later, while working as a nutritionist for a national clinic and at my own nutrition private practice, I realized that most people who came to me for nutrition help suffered from emotional or psychological challenges. I was often frustrated because I genuinely cared for my clients, but my particular science degree didn’t teach me to treat these underlying problems and real needs of my clients. Many who came to me for weight loss support or for healthier lifestyle tips suffered from eating disorders, anxiety or depression. Back then, I sought advice from mental health help lines, and I referred most of my case load to counseling. Like I said, I really cared for my clients, and did my best, but ultimately, to really help, I needed more training.

Still, I was in my 20s and didn’t feel quite ready for graduate school. That’s when I traveled about, pursuing divergent careers, including food chemistry, cooking, marketing, fine art and photography, and even got nationally certified in therapeutic massage therapy. Then, it struck me again, that sense that I wanted formal training in psychology, when I worked as a sports massage therapist in Telluride. It seemed ironic to me that my massage clients wanted to tell me their troubles, sometimes stalling their actual massage in order to keep talking with me eye-to-eye. Massage clients often experienced cathartic relief on the table (usually crying, but sometimes laughter), yet somatic work alone didn’t seem enough.

By the time I completed my M.S. and Ph.D. in clinical psychology, I was in my 30s, married, and fairly settled—a much better place and time to do the self-reflective work that I believe is essential to become an effective psychotherapist. I loved graduate school and thrived on attaining skills that I had waited many years to learn. Now, decades after my interest in counseling psychology was first sparked, it remains my goal to help you thrive.