Uncover your true self

Person-centered, trauma-informed psychotherapy

Meet Yasa

I’m Yasa Ibragimova, a Registered Occupational Therapist, Psychotherapist (OT).

I believe that you are the expert in your own life, and my role as a therapist is not to change or teach you, but to help you uncover your true self.

Life is hard—our goal is not to wish these challenges away, but cultivate resilience as you navigate them.

My Approach

Effective therapy is a dance of paradoxes, where we meet suffering, fear, and hardship with hope, lightness, and above all, the courage to move forward.

From a young age, I found myself lost in thought about topics my peers seemed to ignore (why are we here? what is the purpose of life? how do I know if I’m doing it right?) Life’s transitions and unpredictable hardships were particularly challenging for me. To manage the uncertainty and strain, I dealt the best way I knew how, leaning on coping mechanisms that led me to struggle immensely during my 20s.

I’ve spent many hours on the other side of the therapy couch and have lived experience navigating the concerns I support my clients with.

  • CBT refers to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, which is built on the theory that our thoughts, feelings, and actions are related.

    When using CBT, we will look closer at situations where you flounder or flourish and explore how you think, feel, and react when they happen.

  • Narrative therapy is a favourite to draw on in my work, for it helps us make sense of life experiences in an empowering way.

    We look at the story we tell ourselves about who and how we are in the world, ultimately working towards writing a story that better aligns with our values and identity.

  • Existential therapy is a philosophical approach to therapy that emphasizes free will and the search for meaning in life.

    I like to lean on its pillars when we confront fundamental questions about existence and the anxiety that arises when we feel powerless to navigate them.

  • Emotion-focused therapy helps us understand our emotions to improve our relationships and well-being.

    Instead of silencing the way we feel, it encourages us to lean into the wisdom they contain as we navigate positive and challenging experiences.

  • Exposure and Response Prevention Therapy (ERP) helps people work through obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) by gradually exposing them to situations that trigger their obsessions while preventing them from using their usual compulsions to feel safe. Ultimately, this helps us learn to tolerate anxiety and reduce reliance on compulsions to manage distress.

Types of support

I support clients who are currently working through the following challenges:

  • Anxiety makes you feel like everything is an emergency, but the consequences of letting something go or someone down would set your world on fire. We would work together to learn more about what happens in the mind and body when you are anxious, explore the roots of these thoughts and behaviours, and learn other ways to respond to these situations.

  • The media portrays OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) to consist of rituals like handwashing, checking locks, and counting steps, but OCD has many other diverse presentations. You may have OCD tendencies that hide in the form of any behaviour (mental or physical) that feels like it automatically happens when you feel really anxious. OCD can interfere with your wellbeing by keeping you from taking the risks that are part of a meaningful life.

    Therapy for OCD will explore these compulsions with compassion, helping you understand how they helped comfort you when no one or nothing else was available. We will find other soothing tools and eventually, work towards challenging the strict rules that your OCD has convinced you to follow.

  • An eating disorder traps you in your mind, cutting you off from anything that doesn’t meet its demands. Your world shrinks as you dance on its tightrope and you forget who you were before it took hold, ultimately left with little to live for beyond your food and exercise rituals. Therapy for eating disorders would support you in exploring how these patterns are helping you cope with deeper issues, slowly develop the courage to challenge their constraints, and ultimately feel more at home in your life and body.

    I also support athletes with eating disorders, as well as those navigating the transition out of competitive sport.

    Please note:

    • I am unable to provide medical monitoring for clients, and as such, am only able to support clients who are not currently at medical risk and/ or are being medically monitored by other healthcare providers.

    • The roots of eating disorders are often deep and tangled, and as such, our work is often long-term as we navigate increasingly complex topics.

  • You may you feel like a stranger in your life or to yourself. Things that you previously took for granted as “just being the way they are” (your job, hobbies, or relationships) suddenly feel like they don’t fit, and no matter how much you try to push these doubts or questions away, they always seem to resurface when you let your mind go quiet. This may be a sign that there is something deeper to be tended to and long-buried parts of you are scratching at the surface hoping to be explored.

    In therapy for life transitions and identity, we will work together to make sense of your life experiences as we figure out how you came to be who you are and weave a path forward that feels true to you.

  • While humans are born with skills to be with others, many experiences can interrupt our ability to form healthy relationships (with friends, family, co-workers, or romantic partners).

    In therapy for navigating healthy relationships, we explore the relational patterns you learned in your family and previous relationships to see whether they are serving you, and if not, how we can shift these patterns as you work towards an interpersonal life that supports the health of yourself and those you care about.

Please note, humans are complicated and cannot (despite our best efforts to do so!) be divided into neat categories. The above list summarizes the primary concerns I support clients with, however, several of these themes may be present at once, or you may experience a combination of these challenges along with others not listed above.

Regardless of where you currently find yourself, I always aim to meet clients where they are at and support them with warmth, creativity, and humour.

image of thread being weaved on a loom

 FAQs

  • If you’ve never been to therapy, welcome! A session is not as scary as you may think. Above all else, I aim to make you feel comfortable, and therapy is basically like a candid conversation with someone you trust that grows to know you well. You direct where we focus our energy, but I will pause us at times to point out connections between big themes and topics, bring attention to your body, or share information that helps make sense of your current experience.

    Just like any relationship, we get to know each other better over time, and the flow of sessions settles into something that feels natural.

  • Absolutely not. Please note that it is not within my scope as an Occupational Therapist, Psychotherapist to provide you with an official diagnosis. However, we can discuss your current challenges in the context of a diagnosis if this is something that you would find helpful (for example, I can share with you that your current experience seems to match with the features of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety, etc.).

  • You’re in good company! Many people come to therapy without a specific goal, just a feeling that they need to talk to someone or that something isn’t right. I provide therapy that is both goal-oriented or exploratory.

    Sometimes, people start therapy with a goal in mind but find throughout the course of our work that this is not actually what they want to work towards, or that achieving this goal would not actually lead them to what they want. While this may feel surprising, such realizations contain rich information about yourself and are a normal part of the therapy process.

  • I often work with people in their 20s and 30s, navigating topics listed in the “types of support” heading above.

    I work particularly well with clients who:

    • Are new to therapy

    • Have worked with therapists where they did not feel it was a “good fit”

    • Have previously worked with clinicians for their eating disorder who they felt didn’t “get it.”

    A question I sometimes receive from new clients and friends looking for a therapist is, “How can you tell if your therapist is a good fit?” While it will take a few sessions to build a rapport and figure out the direction of your work, I encourage people to go with their gut. If you feel comfortable, curious, and at ease with your therapist, this is a good sign that you’re working with someone that aligns with you.

  • No, I do not provide crisis support services. If you need immediate support, please contact your local crisis support (such as calling or texting 9-8-8) or emergency services (such as calling 9-1-1).

  • I meet with clients on Sessions, a teletherapy platform offered by Psychology Today. It is a HIPAA compliant platform that provides a secure and convenient way for therapists and clients to connect online.

  • Therapy can last anywhere from a few months to several years. If you have been in therapy for a long time, this is not a sign that you’re “doing it wrong”, for it often takes time to move from what I refer to as “immediate, on the ground problems” (like relationship stressors and day-to-day challenges) to the roots that create these patterns in the first place, such as our deep beliefs about who we are and how we relate to others.

    A key part of effective therapy is the therapist’s attunement to the client’s needs—if there is something going on in our work (we are stuck, circling around important issues, or not meeting often enough to work towards your goals), we will bring this up in session and work through it together.

  • My clients know that I am fond of analogies. One of my favourites is the “operating manual”, the idea that therapy helps you learn about your patterns and how to take care of yourself, so that you can show up in your life in a way that feels real and meaningful.

    No matter how complicated, messed up, or broken you may feel, there is nothing wrong with you. Our goal is to figure out how to use who you truly are to move towards what you want in life.

Pricing

15 minute consultation

Free

50 minute session

$180

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself, just as I am, then I can change.”
— Carl Rogers