My Bio
I was born and raised in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and lived in Boston, Massachusetts, USA from 2008 to 2018 to train as a counseling psychologist before returning to Dubai. I have experience working in the US and UAE with people aged 18+ of diverse cultural and class backgrounds which included refugees, immigrants, UAE expats, adult children of immigrants and expats, UAE nationals, and those who grew up in culturally blended families or identify as "third culture kids." Currently I am employed in The Psychiatry and Therapy Centre in Dubai Healthcare City where I offer psychotherapy services and used to advise a UAE-based mental health startup called Takalam.
Most people have consulted me for difficult life transitions, relationship difficulties, work stress, toxic office cultures, trauma, grief, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, personal development, self understanding, and crises in meaning-making, cultural identity, and spirituality. An ongoing theme I have noticed in both countries I have lived in is how many people lack meaningful supportive relationships, especially when it comes to stigmatized topics, and are disconnected from a sense of place. This has had me interested in learning more about belonging, social connection, loneliness, and community care. While psychotherapy and self care are important, they can be limited when there is no community care. I started a newsletter called Belonging Co-Lab on February 2024 and plan to pursue a doctorate degree to explore these topics further.
My work as a therapist uses a combination of approaches in which the person consulting me is seen as an expert in their own lives with whom I am collaboratively exploring and reflecting with. I am an expert in what I studied and experienced but you know yourself more than I do and have had life experiences that took you as far as they could, even if not always in the ways you were hoping for. Thus we are both "experts" collaborating with each other and filling in each other's gaps in knowledge or discovering together the things we both don't know about.
I believe that every problem we come across gives us the opportunity to learn about what is valuable to us in life. The existence of a problem assumes that there is something important to us that the problem is interfering with, otherwise we would not be experiencing any problems. Learning about what is important to us is part of living a meaningful life. The existence of a problem can also be an invitation for us to reassess any personal, family, or societal expectations we have taken on and to sift between those that are helpful to us versus those that contribute to the problem. Knowing this can help you come up with a response that is helpful to you and in alignment with what matters to you.
I am further interested in the ways you have so far responded to life's challenges even if they did not lead to the results you were hoping for. I believe this can give me clues to your values, hopes, strengths, and meaningful relationships (whether with people, ancestors, books, pets, art, nature, music, or spirituality among others). I want to explore the experiences that nurtured these things in your life. So often they get easily missed in life's day to day stress that we lose touch with them. So learning about them can help us better navigate what life throws at us.
I don't prescribe "solutions" but I co-create experiments with you that could help you navigate your experience and stay anchored in what matters to you even if nothing changes. I believe that focusing on "fixes" can stigmatize parts of our human experience which includes painful ones. So often what we label as a "mental health disorder" is our body's way of alerting us to a human experience we have been shaming away instead of learning from it. "Fixing" also assumes that the only valid option for you is to go back to how you used to be. But problems may be invitations to grow in a different direction. Even if you are not experiencing problems, who you were 10 years ago is different from who you are today. So rather than proposing "fixes," therapy can be a space to explore what responses to life would be aligned with your values.
My 1-hour therapy sessions are offered one-on-one, online or in person, for people aged 18 and above in both English and Arabic. While it is recommended to do the sessions on a weekly basis, I am open to offering the sessions twice per week, every two weeks, or once per month depending on your needs and circumstances.