You don't have to keep surviving on autopilot. Whether the hard part happened here, in another country or in the family you grew up in, if the past still controls how you feel, how you sleep, or how close you let people get, therapy can help. Schema-based trauma therapy online for people in Thornhill, 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, and it can begin in the language you think in.
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NoorMinds provides virtual trauma therapy to residents throughout Ontario. Select your city to learn more:
Some Thornhill families carry histories of displacement: Iranian families who left after the 1979 revolution, Jewish families who emigrated from the former Soviet Union, and others whose stories began in other places. Those journeys often involved loss, fear, separation from relatives and a long stretch of uncertainty, and their effects can echo in the next generation as anxiety, hypervigilance or a sense that safety is never guaranteed.
Many residents came through nothing of the kind, and a therapist should never assume. Trauma here is just as likely to be a car accident, an attack, a sudden bereavement or a childhood home that was not safe. What matters is not the category but what it left behind: a nervous system that stays on guard, sleep that does not restore, reactions that feel bigger than the moment.
News from the places families came from can reopen old wounds overnight, arriving through a family group chat before breakfast. For people whose histories are tied to those places, a headline can bring back fear that seemed long settled, and it helps to have somewhere to take it that is not the family itself.
Children of families who lived through upheaval sometimes grow up as the calm one, the translator, the child who never added to anyone's worries. In adulthood that role can turn into over-responsibility, difficulty resting or trouble letting anyone take care of them. Schema-based trauma work can trace those patterns to their source without requiring you to know the whole family story.
Ghazal Sheikhtaheri, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), CRPO #21300, uses schema therapy with emotion-focused and CBT techniques, always at a pace you set. Retelling every detail is not required. Sessions can be in Farsi or English, and some people find that certain memories are easier to approach in the language they happened in. Tina Abadi, RP, offers a CBT-based, skills-first alternative.
If your first language is Russian, Hebrew or another language, working in English is welcome, and there is room to slow down when a word does not come, because trauma memories do not always arrive in the language you use at work.
In a community where people often know one another, privacy can matter as much as expertise. Online sessions mean no waiting room and no one noticing where you go on a weekday evening. For support between sessions, York Region's round-the-clock crisis service is included in the list below.
Independent organizations, not affiliated with NoorMinds, that you can reach out to alongside therapy or between sessions.