However warm the welcome in Guelph, arriving still takes a toll that rarely shows. Culturally sensitive online psychotherapy for people navigating life between two worlds, in English and Farsi, in Guelph and across Ontario.
Roya is booking now. Ghazal is booking by waitlist (3–4 weeks).
Newcomers arrive in Guelph by many routes: as students at the university or at Conestoga College, as skilled workers, as family members joining someone already here, as refugees. Compared with Ontario as a whole, a smaller share of the city’s residents are immigrants, so the circle of people who share your language, faith or food can be thinner here than in the GTA. Settling is also slow and costly, and the push to find work and housing can crowd out the emotional work of arriving. Many newcomers spend years adapting on the outside while quietly struggling on the inside.
Ghazal immigrated to Canada from Iran and has worked with immigrants and refugees from all over the world: the Middle East, South Asia, East Africa, Latin America, Eastern Europe, and beyond. She doesn't just understand the theory. She knows the loneliness of starting over, the grief of distance, and the quiet courage it takes to build a new life.
Therapy that respects your cultural background, family values, and the complexity of navigating two worlds, without pathologizing your experience.
Sessions in English and Farsi (فارسی), or a mix of both. Express yourself in whichever language feels right.
Schema therapy, CBT, and emotion-focused techniques, grounded in research and tailored to your unique story.
Talk about what brought you here, ask questions, and see if it feels right. No pressure.
Together, we'll identify what's weighing on you most and build a path forward using proven therapeutic approaches.
60-minute online sessions from anywhere in Ontario. Consistent, confidential, flexible.
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.
Free 15-minute consultation available. Receipts provided after each session for submission to your extended health insurance plan.
Book a free 15-minute consultation, in English or Farsi, and start with whatever is weighing on you. No commitment, no pressure.
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.
NoorMinds provides virtual therapy for immigrants to residents throughout Ontario. Select your city to learn more:
In 2015 and 2016 Guelph drew national attention when local businessman Jim Estill led the private sponsorship of dozens of Syrian refugee families, with support from many local volunteers. It is a real part of the city’s story, and a reminder that a welcome can be generous and still leave a great deal unsaid.
Resettlement answers the urgent questions first: where to live, how to enrol the children, how to find work. The grief tends to arrive later, sometimes years later, once life is stable enough to feel it. Families who fled war may carry losses and fears that do not fit the story of gratitude others expect to hear, and they deserve pacing that lets them decide what to talk about. People who came by choice carry their own version: a parent aging far away, a profession left behind, a self that no longer quite fits either place.
Families also adjust at different speeds. Children may settle into school and friendships quickly while a parent is still searching for work that uses their training, and a spouse who came as a dependant may have no one to talk to during the day. Those gaps can strain a household that is, at the same time, genuinely glad to be here.
Kindness from neighbours helps, and it can also make the struggle harder to admit. When people have gone out of their way for you, saying that you are lonely or angry or homesick can feel like ingratitude. Therapy is a place where those feelings can be said without hurting anyone, and where they can be understood as part of arriving rather than a failure to appreciate it.
Immigrant Services Guelph-Wellington and other agencies handle much of the practical side of settling. Therapy holds the other side. Ghazal Sheikhtaheri, a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) who immigrated from Iran, works with Schema Therapy and attachment- and emotion-focused methods to look at the patterns a move brings to the surface: the drive to prove yourself, the reluctance to ask for anything, the sense of belonging nowhere. She knows from her own life that some of the heaviest parts of immigration are invisible to everyone else.
Sessions are online, which matters when you are still learning the bus routes or sharing a single car. They are available in English or Farsi to clients in Guelph and anywhere in Ontario.
None of these organizations is connected to NoorMinds; they are independent services that can be useful alongside sessions or between them.
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