About Malinda
Malinda Um helps people who feel overwhelmed, stuck, or emotionally worn out find steadier ground. She introduces simple, practical steps so clients can start making small changes straight away. Malinda uses clear language and a calm, steady manner to make sessions feel manageable for someone who is anxious or exhausted.
Malinda holds AASW, which identifies her as a member of the Australian Association of Social Workers. She has eight years of professional experience supporting people with anxiety, depression, trauma and major life changes.
How Malinda works
Her work often focuses on stress, compassion fatigue, self-esteem and grief, and she also helps with relationship and family concerns when an individual wants support. Her approach blends evidence-informed methods such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Attachment-Based Therapy, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Narrative Therapy and Solution-Focused Therapy. Sessions combine talking with practical exercises that target thoughts, behaviour and values.
She aims to help clients notice unhelpful patterns and try new ways of coping that fit their everyday lives. Malinda has experience with cross-cultural and intergenerational issues and will work with the full context of a person’s background. She pays attention to attachment and abandonment concerns, body image, caregiver stress, blended family issues and communication problems.
The focus is on real-life strategies rather than jargon. Therapy is offered online in Australia in English. People can choose video calls, phone sessions, live chat or text-based messaging to suit their routine.
The first step is a short matching questionnaire to identify whether her style and approach are a good fit.
Malinda lists 6 ways of working on the entry:
What Malinda works with
The areas below are the ones Malinda selected when setting up a profile. The first few are listed as the main focus; the rest are also named.
Also listed
- Abandonment
- Anger management
- Attachment issues
- Blended family issues
- Body image
- Career difficulties
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Co-morbidity
- Codependency
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Compassion fatigue
- Control issues
- Coping with life changes
- Coping with natural or human-caused disaster
- Divorce and separation
- Emptiness
- Family conflicts
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- First responder issues
- Forgiveness
- Grief
- Guilt and shame
- Immigration issues
- Infidelity
- Isolation / loneliness
- Jealousy
- Life purpose
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Mood disorders
- Multicultural concerns
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Postpartum depression
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Relationship issues
- Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD)
- Self-love
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Somatization
- Stress, Anxiety
- Veteran and Armed Forces Issues
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
- Young adult issues
Training and background
| Register | AASW |
|---|---|
| Years in practice | 8 |
| Languages | English |
| Session format | Online: video, phone, live chat or messaging |
| Country | Australia |
Memberships and registers are shown as supplied; they are not licences, and this directory does not verify them.
Online support options
How her approaches translate to online therapy
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) focuses on clarifying what matters to you and taking small, values-driven steps. It helps with anxiety, low mood and feeling stuck by teaching practical ways to notice thoughts and commit to actions that match personal values. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) looks at links between thoughts, feelings and behaviour and gives hands-on tools to change patterns that maintain anxiety or depression. Attachment-Based Therapy explores past and present relationship patterns to help reduce shame and improve emotional regulation, which is useful for people with abandonment or attachment concerns.Finding the right approach is a collaborative process. Malinda will work with each person to figure out which methods suit their needs, goals and preferences. That might mean blending ACT and CBT techniques, focusing on attachment work for relationship wounds, or trying narrative exercises to make sense of difficult events.
Online sessions can be adapted to different situations through video calls, phone sessions, live chat or text-based messaging. Video calls allow face-to-face conversation and non-verbal cues, phone sessions can fit into travel or busy workdays, live chat supports quicker check-ins and messaging can be used for ongoing reflection between sessions. These options make therapy more flexible and easier to fit into everyday life with appropriately qualified therapists.
Start online instead of waiting
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Common questions
What kinds of problems does Malinda help with?
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What professional background does she have?
What are her credentials and where is she based?
Can sessions be held in other languages or for international clients?
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How does costing work for sessions?
How do I begin if I want to work with her?
A practical next step
Write down two things you would want to be different in six months. That is the most useful thing to bring to a first session, whoever it is with. If you would rather start now than keep reading, online sessions are the quickest route.
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