Culturally sensitive online psychotherapy for those navigating life between two worlds. Sessions in English and Farsi. Available in Waterloo and across Ontario.
Ontario is home to one of the largest immigrant populations in the world — nearly a third of residents were born outside Canada, settling everywhere from downtown Toronto and the surrounding GTA to Ottawa, Hamilton, the Waterloo Region, London, and smaller communities throughout the province. And yet the experience of being an immigrant here often feels isolating. Community is harder to find than the statistics suggest. The pressure to establish yourself financially in one of Canada's most expensive provinces can crowd out the emotional work of settling in. Many newcomers across Ontario 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 — most extended health plans in Canada cover sessions with a Registered Psychotherapist.
Free 15-minute consultation available. Receipts provided after each session for submission to your extended health insurance plan.
Book a free 15-minute consultation — no commitment, no pressure.
Book a Free ConsultationOr call (647) 699-5142
NoorMinds provides virtual therapy for immigrants to residents throughout Ontario. Select your city to learn more:
Waterloo is the university and tech heart of the region's innovation corridor, a youthful, international city humming with startups, two universities and a large skilled-immigrant population. The work is fast and high-pressure, the kind that can quietly tip into burnout. For newcomers drawn here by opportunity, the pace can be relentless, leaving little room to notice the grief and disorientation that often travel alongside ambition.
Ghazal Sheikhtaheri is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) with the CRPO, and she knows this terrain personally as an immigrant from Iran. She understands the particular strain of high-achieving newcomer life, of proving yourself in a demanding culture while privately holding the weight of family expectations and the homesickness no schedule makes time for. She offers a slower, deeper kind of attention than the city around you tends to allow.
Her work combines Schema Therapy with attachment- and emotion-focused approaches, gently following the patterns that formed long before your career did, the early beliefs about worth and belonging that pressure and dislocation can reawaken. This is not productivity for its own sake but the quieter labour of rebuilding a self after starting over. Amid the startup energy and the constant push to do more, there is real value in a relationship that asks nothing of you except honesty, and that lets you simply be a person rather than a performance.
Sessions are virtual, available throughout Waterloo and all of Ontario, offered in English and Farsi, so that beneath the language of work, you can speak in the language of home.
Also serving nearby
Related services