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. Schema-based trauma therapy in English or Farsi, online from a private room anywhere in Markham.
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, from somewhere in Markham where you already feel safe.
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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:
Markham has changed fast within a single generation. Its population grew by about a quarter between 2001 and 2006 alone, and although growth slowed to 2.9% between 2016 and 2021, those years of rapid growth brought a great many new residents, from elsewhere in Canada and from overseas. Some came for opportunity. Some left because staying was not safe. Some are still in the middle of it: in 2021 about 10,100 residents were non-permanent residents, a census category that includes international students, temporary workers and refugee claimants, people who may be far from those who would normally help them carry something heavy.
Trauma does not always look like trauma. It can look like years of broken sleep, startling at sirens, working far longer hours than anyone asks, or feeling numb at family gatherings that should feel good. For people who came from difficult circumstances, the effects sometimes surface only once life is stable enough for the body to stop bracing, which can be confusing: why now, when things are finally fine?
Sometimes the weight belongs partly to the generation before. Children of parents who lived through war, persecution or a dangerous journey can grow up with a watchfulness they cannot explain, or with family stories that were never quite told. Others carry trauma that has nothing to do with migration at all: a car crash, an assault, a childhood home that was not safe. Therapy starts with your experience, whatever it is, rather than with assumptions about where you come from.
Language matters in this work. More than 10% of Markham residents could not hold a conversation in English or French in 2021, and even fluent speakers often find that the most painful memories live in their first language. Ghazal Sheikhtaheri, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), CRPO #21300, offers trauma therapy in English and Farsi, using schema therapy with emotion-focused and CBT techniques, and never pushes you to recount details before you are ready.
Online trauma work needs a private space, and in a full house that can take some planning: a room with a door, headphones, a time when the children are asleep or the house is quiet, and a few minutes afterwards before you rejoin everyone. We can talk through those practicalities in the free consultation, so the setting supports the work rather than competing with it.
Therapy is the slower, ongoing part of recovery; it is not an emergency service. York Region has a 24/7 community crisis response service run by Your Support Services Network, and the organizations below support survivors of sexual violence and people affected by crime. Sessions with NoorMinds are online, from a private space at home anywhere in Markham or elsewhere in Ontario, so that when a session ends you are already somewhere familiar.
These organizations are independent of NoorMinds and offer kinds of help, including round-the-clock support, that scheduled therapy does not, whether alongside sessions or between them.