Therapy for Immigrants in Oakville

Practical settlement help is available close to home. HMC Connections, the Halton Multicultural Council, offers newcomers in Oakville and across Halton support with settling in, learning English and finding work. Help of that kind matters in the first months, when forms, school registration and a first Canadian résumé all land at once. Therapy sits alongside it, for the part of immigration that does not fit on a checklist, the grief and the shifting sense of who you are.

Arriving in a town that looks comfortable from the outside has its own weight. Friends back home may assume you have landed well, relatives may ask when you are buying a house, and it can feel ungrateful to admit how lonely the first years are. Some newcomers come because a spouse's job brought the family here and find themselves without work, friends or a role of their own. Therapy is a place where the full picture is allowed.

For many internationally trained professionals, the hardest part is work. You may have arrived with a degree, years of experience and a title, then found yourself in a survival job while credentials are assessed, or starting several rungs down in a field you once led. The loss is practical, and it is also about identity: who you are when the work that defined you is on hold. Ghazal Sheikhtaheri, a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) who immigrated from Iran, knows that bind from the inside, and she has worked with immigrants and refugees from many parts of the world.

Families feel it too. Children adapt to school faster than parents do, roles at home shift, and expectations from relatives overseas keep arriving by phone. A spouse who gave up a career to make the move may be carrying a loss no one names. Sessions draw on schema therapy, CBT and emotion-focused work to trace how dislocation has touched older patterns about worth and belonging, and to build a steadier sense of self in the life you have now.

Therapy is online, in English or Farsi, so there is no extra trip on top of language classes, job searching and school runs. Roya Dadollahi Sarab, RP, also works with life transitions and grief, in English and Farsi.