Looking for a Persian or Farsi therapist you can see from Pickering, whether you arrived last year or decades ago? Work with someone you don’t have to explain your culture, family pressure, or immigration grief to, in English or Farsi فارسی, online across Ontario. Three Farsi-speaking therapists, one practice.
Tina and Roya are booking now. Ghazal is booking by waitlist (3–4 weeks).
Ghazal, Tina and Roya all work in Farsi, so nothing gets lost in translation. Ghazal is also an Iranian immigrant herself: she knows the weight of family expectations, cultural nuance, immigration grief, and living between two worlds from the inside.
Ghazal brings over ten years of clinical experience, graduate training in both Iran and Canada, and advanced schema therapy training. Tina brings structured, skills-first CBT, and Roya brings ACT, DBT and a focus on newcomers. All three bring warmth and rigour to every session.
Anxiety, overthinking, trauma, relationship pain, burnout, immigration stress, identity conflict, low self-worth, guilt, and boundaries that feel impossible.
Start with a free 15-minute consultation with Ghazal, Tina or Roya. No pressure. Ask questions, get a feel for how your therapist works, and decide if the fit feels right before committing.
You don't need to have it all figured out. Start with a conversation.
Or call (647) 699-5142 · WhatsApp · Email
Speaking Farsi isn't the same as understanding Iranian life. Finding a therapist who actually gets what it means to grow up Iranian is something different: the layered expectations, the specific way silence is used, the pressure to appear strong, the way mental health has historically been discussed (or not discussed) in Persian families.
Ghazal trained in both Iran and Canada. She completed her first graduate degree in Clinical Psychology at Kharazmi University in Tehran, then immigrated to Canada for further training at Yorkville University. That path isn't just a credential. Learn more about Ghazal
For women, the expectation is often to manage inwardly, to be the steady person in the family even when you are not steady at all. Therapy can feel like an admission of failure, something you keep private even from close relatives.
For men, the pressure is different but just as real. Talking about anxiety, grief, or emotional struggle can feel incompatible with how strength has been defined. Many arrive at therapy having spent years convincing themselves that what they were feeling wasn't serious enough to warrant help.
These patterns are not weaknesses. They are cultural inheritances, and Ghazal understands them from the inside, not from a textbook.
Sessions are in Farsi, English, or a natural mix of both, because sometimes the right word only exists in one language.
There is no issue too culturally specific. Sessions are confidential, separate from your family, your community, and anyone else in your life.
You don't have to explain your culture before real work begins. Ghazal's training spans both Iranian and Canadian psychological frameworks. She understands how shame, honour, and loyalty operate differently in Iranian families, and how immigration can simultaneously feel like freedom and like a profound rupture, a grief rarely acknowledged because it doesn't look like the grief people recognize.
If you are ready to start, or even just ready to have a first conversation, the consultation is free. Call (647) 699-5142, message on WhatsApp, or book directly below.
Choose a time in Jane, ask your questions, and get a feel for whether working together feels right.
Sessions are online, so it makes no difference whether you live in north Pickering, near the lake or anywhere else in Ontario.
Together you work beneath surface symptoms to understand patterns, reduce suffering, and build a steadier, more grounded life.
Insurance receipts provided. Many extended health plans cover psychotherapy with a Registered Psychotherapist. Ghazal holds the Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) designation, so please confirm your plan covers it. Full fees & insurance details
Seen the pricing? The free consultation costs nothing, and many insurance plans reimburse full sessions. The hardest part is usually just sending that first message; everything after it can happen from home in Pickering.
Or call (647) 699-5142 · WhatsApp · Email
Many extended health plans in Canada cover psychotherapy by a Registered Psychotherapist. Ghazal holds the Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) designation, so please confirm your plan covers it. Clients receive receipts after sessions for reimbursement.
Booking is simple through Jane. You can start with a free consultation, then schedule full sessions only if the fit feels right.
An Iranian immigrant herself, with over ten years of clinical experience. Schema therapy and psychodynamic work for long-standing patterns, immigration grief and family pressure.
Structured, skills-first CBT for anxiety, ADHD, sleep and life transitions, and Emotionally Focused Therapy for couples.
Warm, culturally responsive care: CBT, ACT and DBT for anxiety, depression, grief and the emotional work of settling in a new country, and EFT for couples.
Ghazal is currently booking by waitlist (3–4 weeks). Tina and Roya are accepting new clients.
Pick a time in Jane App that works for you. No intake forms, no questionnaires. Just choose a slot.
Share what's bringing you here. Ask Ghazal, Tina or Roya anything. No pressure to commit. This call exists to help you decide, nothing more.
If it feels right, book your first full session. If not, there's no follow-up, no awkwardness, no commitment of any kind.
What no one tells you about starting over: the losses that don't have a name, and why they still weigh so much.
Read Article →Supporting yourself while loved ones are in Iran: how to hold your own wellbeing when the people you love are in danger.
Read Article →Book a free 15-minute consultation. No pressure, no commitment. Just a calm first conversation, in Farsi or English, with a therapist in Ontario who understands your language, culture and emotional reality.
Or call (647) 699-5142 · WhatsApp · Email
Calls and messages aren’t monitored for emergencies. If you are in immediate danger, call 911. If you are in crisis, call or text 988, the Suicide Crisis Helpline, available 24/7. You can ask 988 for an interpreter. میتوانید از ۹۸۸ درخواست مترجم کنید.
NoorMinds offers virtual Persian and Farsi-speaking (Iranian) therapy to communities throughout Ontario. Select your city to learn more:
Newcomers to Pickering have a settlement agency close to home: Welcome Centre Immigrant Services runs a Pickering site, as well as one in neighbouring Ajax, where people get settlement and employment help. Its services also include culturally appropriate family counselling and mental health supports, offered in many languages, including Farsi and Dari. For many people that is where the practical side of a new life in Durham Region gets sorted out.
What a settlement office is not built to hold is the part of immigration that does not fit on a form: the grief of leaving parents in Iran, the guilt of not being there when someone falls ill, the strain on a marriage when one partner's career restarts and the other's does not, or the feeling that you no longer fully belong in Iran or in Canada. People often carry these things for years before speaking to anyone, partly because it is exhausting to explain them to someone who does not know the culture, and partly because in many families, Iranian or not, problems are meant to stay inside the house.
Pickering's Farsi-speaking community is small and scattered across the city, and the six non-official mother tongues reported most often in Durham Region in 2021 did not include Persian, so finding a Persian-speaking therapist nearby is not a given. Online sessions solve that: Tina Abadi, RP, Roya Dadollahi Sarab, RP, and Ghazal Sheikhtaheri, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), CRPO #21300, all see clients by video at home, in Farsi, English or both. People sometimes search for an "Iranian psychologist"; Ghazal's accurate title is Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), and her work draws on Schema Therapy and attachment- and emotion-focused approaches.
Therapy and settlement support can run side by side. A settlement worker might help with a job application while sessions look at why every rejection lands so heavily, or why a phone call with your mother leaves you unable to sleep. Some people come after the practical side has calmed down, once there is finally room to feel what the move cost. Either timing is fine. So is coming years later: plenty of people who settled in Pickering long ago find that a death in the family back home, a child leaving for university or news from Iran brings the old grief back with surprising force.
Because sessions are online, they fit around a day that may include a GO train into Toronto or a shift closer to home, with no drive across the city to reach a Farsi-speaking clinician. More general questions are answered on the Ontario Farsi therapy page.
These are independent organizations, not affiliated with NoorMinds, that people in Pickering may find useful alongside or between sessions.
Also serving nearby
Related services