Malika Latchman, LMHC · ML Mental Health Counseling

Frequently Asked Questions — Attachment-Based Therapy for Black Women in NYC & NJ

Answers to the questions women ask before they reach out about therapy, about the work, about whether this is the right fit.

About attachment-based therapy and what sessions look like

What therapy with Malika actually looks like. The approach, the pace, and what you can expect.

Attachment-based therapy is grounded in the understanding that the way you connect with others as an adult was shaped by your earliest relationships. How safe, consistent, and available your caregivers were, and how your emotional needs were met or not met, created a template your nervous system still follows in every close relationship you have.
In practice, this means the work goes beyond talking about your feelings. We pay attention to the patterns underneath the feelings: how you respond when someone pulls back, what happens in your body when you try to ask for something you need, why closeness can sometimes feel more threatening than distance. The goal is not to analyze your childhood indefinitely. The goal is to understand what your nervous system learned so you can start learning something different.
Sessions are 45 minutes, conducted via telehealth video. You do not need to arrive with something specific to report. Most sessions begin with what is on your mind that day, what came up during the week, or a moment you want to look at more closely.
What makes sessions here different is the pace. We slow things down enough to pay attention to what is actually happening: not just the story you are telling about it, but what your body is doing, what you almost said, what you noticed yourself pulling back from. This is not therapy where you talk and I listen. It is collaborative and active.
Over time, the work shifts from reactive (processing what happened) to proactive (building the capacity to respond differently in real time).
This is one of the most honest questions to ask, and the honest answer is that it depends on what you are working on. For most women who come here, the patterns they are navigating developed over years, sometimes decades. Real, lasting change in those patterns takes time. I am not going to tell you that you will feel better in six sessions, because that is rarely true for the kind of work we do.
That said, most clients notice meaningful shifts within three to six months. Not that the pattern is gone, but that they can see it coming, catch themselves in it, and sometimes choose differently. The work does not end there, but that is often when it starts to feel worth it.
Some women work with me for a year or more. Others do a focused period of work and return when something new comes up. There is no single right answer, and it is always your choice.
Not necessarily, and not in the way people often fear. You will not spend sessions cataloguing childhood events. But because the patterns we work on often have roots in earlier experiences, what you learned about expressing needs, what connection felt like growing up, what roles you took on in your family, some of that context is useful to understand.
We go to the past when it helps clarify something happening in the present. Not to live there, but to understand why the present feels the way it does. Most of the work happens in the here and now.
This is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing. Therapy can feel unhelpful for several reasons: the fit was not right, the approach did not match what you actually needed, the pace felt off, or you were not ready at that time. Any of those can be true without meaning therapy itself does not work for you.
What is different here is the specificity. This is not general wellness therapy. The work is rooted in attachment science and is specifically designed for women navigating anxiety, relationship patterns, and people-pleasing, particularly within cultural contexts that rarely show up in mainstream therapeutic spaces. If previous therapy felt like it was missing something about your specific experience, that might be the gap.
If you want to talk about what did not work before, that is a useful place to start a consultation conversation. What did not help is often as informative as what did.
Yes, and often the women who benefit most from this work are those who are functioning well on the outside but feel privately exhausted, stuck in the same patterns, or unable to fully rest into their lives.
You do not need to be falling apart to deserve support. The things that bring most women here, including relationship anxiety, chronic self-silencing, and exhaustion that does not go away with rest, do not always look like a crisis. They just feel heavy, and they have felt that way for a long time.

Relationship anxiety, people-pleasing & the patterns we work on

The specific patterns and experiences this practice is built around, in the language you might be searching in.

Yes. This is one of the most common things women come here for. Repeating relationship patterns are rarely about poor judgment or bad luck. They are about nervous system familiarity. When you grew up in an environment where closeness was unpredictable, love came with conditions, or emotional unavailability was the norm, your nervous system learned to recognize that dynamic as "relationship." Stable, available partners can feel unfamiliar, even boring. Chaotic or inconsistent ones feel like home, because they match the emotional template your body already knows.
The work is not about choosing better people. It is about building enough internal safety that "familiar" and "healthy" can start to overlap. That is a real shift, and it is possible, but it takes time and it happens in the nervous system, not just in your thinking.
It can change. Anxious attachment is not a personality type. It is a strategy your nervous system developed to preserve connection when connection felt uncertain. It is not who you are; it is what you learned. And things that are learned can be updated.
What change looks like in practice: you start catching the anxiety before it makes the decision for you. The gap between the feeling and the behavior gets wider. You build enough evidence, through experience, that closeness does not have to mean bracing. That is not a dramatic transformation. It is a gradual shift in what feels possible.
Secure attachment is a set of skills, not a personality type. Skills can be developed. The work is building the evidence your nervous system needs to believe something different is safe.
The guilt you feel when you try to hold a line is not evidence that you did something wrong. It is your nervous system responding to something it learned, early on, was dangerous: expressing needs, saying no, disappointing someone. If doing those things led to tension, withdrawal, or disapproval in early relationships, your body carries that lesson forward into every relationship you have now.
This is why "just set a limit" does not work. The skill you are missing is not knowing how to say the words. It is having enough internal safety that saying them does not feel like a threat to your connection. That safety builds through practice and through having experiences where honesty does not destroy the relationship.
People-pleasing therapy is not about learning scripts. It is about building the internal steadiness that makes the scripts feel possible.
Yes, and it is far more common than most women feel comfortable admitting, because admitting it can feel like a betrayal. You can love your mother deeply and still leave every phone call feeling drained, guilty, or like a younger version of yourself. Both things are true, and neither cancels the other out.
What is often happening is that the original relational dynamic, including the roles you learned to play, the ways you learned to manage her emotions, and the version of yourself you became in her presence, is still active. Your body responds to her the way it always did, regardless of how much you have grown or changed in every other area of your life.
The work is not about resolving the relationship or choosing between love and honesty. It is about being able to be in contact with her without the contact costing you yourself.
High-functioning anxiety is one of the most underserved presentations in therapy, because it does not look like the version of anxiety most people picture. It looks like conscientiousness, productivity, and dependability. It looks like being the most prepared person in the room and still not feeling okay. The anxiety channels itself into performance, which means it gets rewarded, which means it never gets addressed.
The cost is chronic exhaustion, difficulty relaxing, an internal experience that is nothing like the composed exterior you show the world. Because everything is "working," there often is not permission to say it is too much.
This is very much something this practice is built to address. If you have been managing your anxiety by staying ahead of everything it could possibly threaten you with, therapy can help you build a different relationship with uncertainty, one that does not require constant vigilance to feel safe.
Both. The attachment and relationship anxiety work is relevant whether you are actively dating, in a relationship, between relationships, or actively trying not to be in one right now. The patterns do not wait for a relationship to show up. They show up in how you approach connection in all of its forms.
Many women come in specifically because they are dating and can see the same patterns playing out again, and they want to understand what is happening before they end up in the same situation for the fourth or fifth time.

Therapy for Black women in NYC & NJ: what makes this practice different

Why the cultural dimension of this work matters, and what it means to work with a therapist who understands it.

The short answer is that you will not have to explain yourself from the beginning. You will not have to provide context for why your mother's silence was loud, or why being called "strong" was the highest compliment and also a burden, or why asking for help in your family felt like making yourself a problem.
The longer answer is that this practice was built specifically for Black women navigating the intersection of their internal experience and their cultural context, and those two things are not separate. The way many Black women were socialized around emotional expression, self-sufficiency, and relational sacrifice shapes the patterns they bring to therapy. Treating those patterns without understanding that context means treating the symptom without understanding its roots.
Yes. Afro-Caribbean family dynamics, including the emphasis on resilience, the particular texture of intergenerational expectations, the complexity of immigration and its impact on emotional availability, and the cultural scripts around gender and who gets to have needs, are a specific and meaningful context that shapes how women in those families relate to connection, vulnerability, and self-expression.
This practice holds that context as part of the work, not as something to be translated or explained away. You can bring the full complexity of your background into the room.
The clinical foundations are the same: attachment theory, nervous system regulation, relational patterns. But the context in which those patterns develop is specific, and ignoring that context produces generic therapy that does not fully reach what is actually happening.
For many Black women, the patterns that show up in therapy, including people-pleasing, hyper-independence, difficulty receiving care, and chronic self-sufficiency, were not just personal responses to individual circumstances. They were also adaptive responses to cultural environments that had specific messages about who gets to have needs, who has to be strong, and what vulnerability costs you. Effective therapy holds that context explicitly.
It also means you can speak freely about your life without managing how the therapist is receiving it. That takes up more energy than most people realize until they do not have to do it anymore.
Yes, and this particular tension shows up frequently in sessions. The experience of being first-generation carries a specific kind of weight: you are often navigating grief for what your family sacrificed, guilt about growing beyond the context they are in, loneliness in spaces where people do not share your reference points, and the ongoing work of figuring out who you are when the expectations coming from home point in one direction and your own sense of self points somewhere else.
This is relational work. It often involves the mother-daughter dynamic, family loyalty, and how you have learned to manage your emotional needs in a context where expressing them was not always safe or possible. It is fully within the scope of what we work on here.

Fees, telehealth, and scheduling in New York and New Jersey

The practical details: location, insurance, fees, scheduling, and how sessions work.

This practice is telehealth only. All sessions are conducted via secure video. There is no physical office. This means you can attend sessions from wherever you are most comfortable: your home, your parked car, a private space at work. You do not need to commute, which is one less barrier between you and showing up consistently.
Malika is licensed in New York and New Jersey, which means she can see clients who are physically located anywhere in those states at the time of the session.
Yes. Malika accepts the following insurance plans: Aetna, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield New York, Cigna, Highmark BlueCross BlueShield of Western New York, Highmark BlueShield of Northeastern New York, United Healthcare, Oscar, and Optum.
If you do not see your plan listed, the free 15-minute consultation is a good place to confirm whether your insurance can be used and what your coverage looks like.
If cost is a concern, the free 15-minute consultation is a good place to have an honest conversation about what is possible.
Please reach out directly for current fee information. A Good Faith Estimate, which outlines the expected cost of services, is available on the website and provided at the start of work together, in compliance with the No Surprises Act.
If you would like to discuss fees before scheduling, the consultation call is a good time for that conversation.
Evening appointments are available. Many of the women who work here have full schedules, and making therapy accessible during hours that actually work is part of that commitment.
Specific availability is best confirmed during the consultation call, as the schedule changes as spots fill. The consultation itself can typically be scheduled within the week.
No special equipment is needed. Sessions are conducted through a HIPAA-compliant video platform. You will receive a link before each session. All you need is a device with a camera and microphone (a smartphone, tablet, or laptop all work), a stable internet connection, and a private space where you can speak freely.
Many clients find telehealth more accessible than in-person therapy. There is no commute, no waiting room, and you can be in your own space. If you have not done telehealth before, the first session usually takes care of any uncertainty about how it works.
Yes. Confidentiality is a legal and ethical requirement of licensed therapy practice. What you share in sessions is protected and will not be disclosed without your written consent, with limited exceptions required by law, specifically situations involving imminent risk of harm to yourself or others, or mandatory reporting obligations.
Any exceptions to confidentiality are explained clearly at the start of the work together and are outlined in the informed consent you will review before the first session.

How to begin therapy with Malika Latchman, LMHC

What happens when you reach out, and what to expect from the first steps.

The consultation is a brief, low-pressure conversation, not an intake session and not a commitment to anything. It is a chance to say a little about what has been feeling heavy, ask any questions you have, and get a sense of whether working together feels like the right fit.
At the end of the call, if it seems like a good fit on both sides, next steps are discussed. If it is not the right fit, referrals to other providers can be offered. There is no obligation to continue after the consultation.
You do not need a perfect explanation. The contact form asks for your name and email, and an optional message. If you are not sure what to write, something as simple as "I have been struggling with relationships and anxiety and I would like to learn more about working together" is completely enough.
The first conversation is where the real information gets exchanged. You do not have to explain your whole situation in a form. You just need to take the first step.
The honest answer is that readiness is often overrated. Most women who do meaningful work in therapy were not fully ready when they started. They were just tired enough to try something different, or curious enough to have a conversation.
You do not need to be in crisis, you do not need to have your goals figured out, and you do not need to know exactly what you want to work on. What you do need is a willingness to show up and look at what is there. That is enough to start.
If you have been on the fence for a while, that is usually a sign it is worth having the conversation, not a reason to wait longer.
Availability changes as spots fill and open up. The best way to find out is to reach out. The consultation call is typically schedulable within the week when there is current availability.
If you reach out and there is not availability at that moment, you will be notified and can be kept in mind for when a spot opens.
Welcome. The next step is simple. Fill out the contact form on the Begin Here page, or use the link below to book a free 15-minute consultation. You do not need to prepare anything or explain how you found the site.
If you have been reading through this page and something resonated, that is usually a good sign the work here might be a fit. The consultation call will tell you more.

Ready to take the next step?

Free 15 minutes. No pressure to continue. Evening appointments available in New York and New Jersey via telehealth.

Begin Here