You don't have to keep surviving on autopilot. If the past still controls how you feel, how you sleep, or how close you let people get, therapy can help you reclaim your life. Online, schema-based trauma therapy for people across Hamilton, in English or Farsi.
Tina is booking now. Ghazal is booking by waitlist (3–4 weeks).
If you recognized yourself in any of these, you are not broken. These are normal responses to experiences that overwhelmed your capacity to cope.
Schema therapy goes beneath surface symptoms to address the deep emotional patterns trauma creates. This isn't about quick fixes. It's about understanding why you respond the way you do and changing those patterns from the root.
Trauma healing requires more than talking about what happened. Emotion-focused techniques help you process what's stored in your body and emotions, not just your thoughts. Every session is paced to what feels safe for you.
As an Iranian immigrant herself, Ghazal understands how culture, family systems, and migration shape the experience of trauma. Sessions in English and Farsi, because healing works best in the language your pain lives in.
Trained in both Iran (Kharazmi University) and Canada (Yorkville University), with over a decade of clinical experience. CRPO registered, with a verified Psychology Today profile.
A calm 15-minute conversation to share what you're experiencing and see if working together feels right. No pressure, no forms beforehand.
In early sessions, we explore how trauma has shaped your emotional world: the beliefs, the coping strategies, and the triggers that keep you stuck.
Weekly 60-minute sessions using schema therapy, emotion-focused techniques, and CBT. Always at a pace that feels safe. No rushing, no re-traumatizing.
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
Visa, Mastercard, Amex, e-Transfer, PayPal, and HSA accepted. Insurance receipts provided after every session.
Healing doesn't require you to be ready for everything, just ready for a first conversation, by video or phone, wherever you are in Hamilton.
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 trauma therapy to residents throughout Ontario. Select your city to learn more:
Hamilton has strong supports for the worst moments. COAST, the Crisis Outreach and Support Team, pairs St. Joseph's Healthcare clinicians with Hamilton Police officers to respond to mental health crises, and Good Shepherd's Barrett Centre for Crisis Support is a community crisis centre for people in a mental health or substance use crisis. If you are in danger right now, those services and emergency care come first. Trauma therapy is the slower, steadier work that happens between and after crises: making sense of what happened, and helping your nervous system learn that it is over.
Trauma here takes many forms. For some it is a single event: a collision on the highway, an assault, a sudden death. For others it is childhood, growing up with fear, neglect or unpredictability that nobody named. For people who reached Hamilton as refugees it can be war, flight and years of uncertainty, followed by the pressure to be grateful and move on. None of these is a character flaw. They are what a nervous system does after it has had to protect you.
Ghazal Sheikhtaheri, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), CRPO #21300, uses Schema Therapy, with emotion-focused and CBT techniques alongside it, and does not use EMDR. The pace is set by what feels safe, and the first weeks are often about steadiness, sleep and a sense of safety in your own body before anything painful is approached. You will not be asked to relive every detail, and a session can move between English and Farsi. As an immigrant herself, she pays attention to the parts of trauma that are bound up with culture and migration: the loss of a place, a language, a version of yourself.
Much of the work is about patterns rather than memories: the vigilance that never switches off, the belief that you are to blame, the closeness you want and cannot tolerate. Tracing those patterns to where they began, and meeting them with more understanding than you were given at the time, is how the past starts to loosen its hold.
Between sessions, it helps to have ways of settling your body that do not depend on anyone else. Hamilton makes some of those easy to reach: the waterfalls and trails along the escarpment, including stretches of the Bruce Trail, and the public staircases between the lower city and the Mountain for anyone who settles more easily by moving. The sessions themselves are online, so you can meet from wherever at home feels safest, in any part of Hamilton.
These are independent organizations, not affiliated with NoorMinds, for crisis care and support in Hamilton alongside or between sessions.