Persian & Farsi Therapist in Ottawa

Ottawa passed one million residents in the 2021 Census, and it is still a long way, in every sense, from the Persian neighbourhoods of North York and Richmond Hill. For many Iranians here, Farsi is the language of home, of video calls with family and of the occasional community evening, and much less often the language of the rest of the day. That can leave a particular kind of loneliness: surrounded by capable colleagues and kind neighbours, with nobody nearby who would understand a feeling without it being translated first.

If you came to Ottawa to study or do research, at the University of Ottawa, the world's largest French-English bilingual university, or at Carleton, you may know what it is to do demanding work in a second or third language while your family is thousands of kilometres away. News from Iran arrives in the middle of a seminar or a lab meeting, and there is no obvious place to put it. Students and early-career researchers often tell themselves they will deal with it after the degree, and the degree keeps getting longer.

If you have been here for decades, the picture is different. You may have built a career in the public service, in technology or in health care, raised children whose replies come back in English, and only now, at retirement, after a parent's death in Iran, or when your own children leave home, found the space to feel what the move cost. That grief is not a sign that something went wrong. It is often a sign that there is finally room for it.

Ottawa's Iranian community has its own organizations, such as the Ronak Association, which brings people together around Persian language, literature and culture. Nowruz comes with the spring equinox, and in Ottawa it can arrive with snow still on the ground and family joining by video from another time zone. Community offers belonging at moments like that; therapy offers something different. Where people tend to know one another, privacy matters, and a confidential hour at home, with no waiting room to be seen in, can make it easier to say what you would never say at a gathering. My approach leans on Schema Therapy and emotion-focused work, tracing the older patterns, often formed in Farsi, long ago, that still shape how you respond now.

I work fully online, so you can meet with me from an apartment in Sandy Hill, a house in Barrhaven or anywhere else in Ontario, in English, in Farsi, or in whatever mix feels right. At NoorMinds, Tina Abadi, RP, and Roya Dadollahi Sarab, RP, offer sessions in Farsi and English as well.