Relationship Counselling

In relationship therapy, the main idea is to determine what makes a relationship healthy and understand the symptoms of a relationship in turmoil. While every therapist and therapy session is unique, focusing on the 'relationship' itself as their clients, IASO CARE is proud to provide culturally sensitive therapies, respecting and addressing the diverse backgrounds and values of the couple in introducing communication tools, conflict resolution strategies, and other practical techniques to improve your relationship.

Group Trainings

We offer workshops and seminars for communities and organisations committed to enhancing their collective well-being, fostering personal growth, and cultivating a positive and resilient environment. Our tailored programs cover diverse topics, empowering participants with valuable insights, practical tools, and a shared sense of purpose. Whether your focus is on team dynamics, mental health awareness, or skill development, our engaging sessions are designed to inspire positive change and contribute to the overall flourishing of your community or organisation.

Dr. Hora Zabarjadi Sar

BA (Phil), MA (Edu), MPhil (Edu), PhD (Phil), MA (Counselling)

As a philosophical counsellor and psychotherapist and the founder of IASO CARE, I believe philosophy becomes a lifeline amid unimaginable suffering and despair —a testament to the enduring resilience of the human spirit. It offers a path towards inner freedom and liberation, allowing demoralised individuals to reclaim agency despite overwhelming adversity.

I specialise in transition issues, Anxiety disorder, Depression, Relationship issues, Emotion dysregulation, Chronic Illness, Embitterment, Grief & loss and Adjustment issues.

Languages: English, Farsi (Persian)

Dr. Sameema Zahra

BA (Phil/Lit), MA (Phil), MPhil (Phil), PhD (Phil), MA (Counselling)

My counselling approach is deeply rooted in the philosophical understanding of human needs and struggles. As a seasoned traveller and a world citizen, I've experienced the joys and hardships of starting fresh in new places, enriching my empathy and connection with clients. As a licensed counsellor, I specialise in addiction (AOD counselling), anxiety, depression, and grief and loss. Embracing a person-centred approach, I create a supportive space for clients to share and find meaning in their stories.

Languages: English, Urdu/Hindi

Life Transitions

Life transitions such as moving, changing jobs, starting or ending a relationship and other major events can evoke feelings of uncertainty, anxiety, fear or even depression and lack of motivation. Transitions disrupt pre-established routines and normalities and, with this, trigger stress, challenge our coping and adjusting abilities, and result in a sense of loss of control. 

Therapy Aims: building resilience, enhancing coping skills, identifying and managing resistance to change, clarifying values and goals for creating new norms.

Emotion Dysregulation

Experiencing intense and overwhelming emotions that are difficult to control and regulate disrupts our daily functioning and negatively affects our relationships. This can be manifested as extreme emotional reactions such as anger, fear, sadness, and irritability. Impulsive behaviour, recklessness. Self-destructive behaviours, substance abuse, dysregulated eating, negative self-perceptions, and severe mood swings are regarded as emotion dysregulations. 

Therapy Aims: Improving distress tolerance, increasing self-awareness, enhancing coping skills, and addressing underlying psychological contributing factors.

Depression

Persistent feelings of sadness, lack of motivation, hopelessness, lack of interest or seeking pleasure while disrupting our daily functioning and decreasing the quality of life affect how we think, feel and behave. Depression is a multifaceted mental health issue that is the result of the interplay between genetic and biological factors such as family history and environmental and psychological factors such as traumatic life events and chronic illness.

Therapy Aims: Alleviating depressive symptoms and improving daily functioning, reframing cognitive restructuring, and behavioural improvements that promote a sense of accomplishment and decrease lethargy and apathy. Interpersonal skills, development, and problem-solving skills.

Embitterment

Embitterment is a complex psychological state characterised by intense anger, resentment, and hopelessness resulting from a perceived injustice, loss, or violation of a person’s fundamental beliefs, assumptions, and psychological integrity. Experiencing discrimination and facing social and political barriers over a lifetime for CALD women results in social isolation and feelings of neglect, loneliness, frustration, anger, demoralisation and bitterness. Embitterment can represent itself with quite similar anxiety, depression and PTSD- like symptoms. Therefore, it is an experience that can easily ignored by mainstream therapists. Therapists with intercultural competence can provide culturally sensitive and relevant regards and support unique to the IASO CARE team. 

Therapy Aims: Addressing the complex mood structure and cognitive framework of embitterment in order to remove the psychological and motivational block in fulfilling the basic needs of autonomy, agency, competence and belonging.

Relationship Issues

We are defined by our relationships to ourselves, other people and the environing world in general. Therefore, relationship issues impact all aspects of our lives. Issues can happen in any type of relationship, including romantic partnerships, familial relationships, work-related ones, friendships, etc. We experience an impaired or faulty relationship in the shape of feelings of insecurity, resentment, shame, guilt, loss of emotional intimacy, mistrust, a sense of betrayal, loneliness and disconnection. 

Therapy Aims: Addressing communication problems by developing conflict resolution techniques and boundary setting, exploring attachment styles and codependency, enhancing cultural and interfaith competence in coping with differences, and many other goals tailored to every unique relationship. 

Anxiety Disorder

Anxiety disorder refers to a group of unsettling experiences characterised by excessive worry, rumination about the past, feelings of restlessness and being on edge, loss of focus and avoiding certain places, people and activities that trigger these feelings. We feel these experiences as fatigue, irritability, butterflies in the stomach, sleep disturbances, muscle tension, and disrupted breathing patterns. 

Therapy Aims: identifying and challenging distorted thinking patterns, managing and coping with triggers, building resilience, improving stress management skills    

Chronic Illness Counselling

Living with chronic illness profoundly affects how we perceive ourselves, our bodies, our relationships, and the whole world. Encountering and dealing with the limitations that chronic illness imposes on us, such as constant pain, fatigue, mobility issues, and other disabilities, body image, results in feelings of sadness, profound grief, anxiety, frustration and depression. 

Therapy Aims: Emotional support, building resilience, problem-solving skills, improving the quality of life by managing and improving healthy behaviours, radical acceptance and adjustment, fostering self-compassion, and developing communication skills.

Grief and Loss

Navigating the world after losing a loved one is the main task of bereaved individuals.

Grief is a reaction to the universal phenomenon of loss, though grieving is quite an individual experience that can take various trajectories in people. While there seems no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in how people grieve, this natural, rational, and moral copying mechanism in the face of loss that disrupts a person's psychological and social equilibrium can be recognised as a ‘disorder.’

Therapy Aims: Validation and support, Understanding the grief process, Elevating separation distress, Promoting self-regulation, Building connections, Revisiting the world and setting aspirational goals. 

Expat Therapy

Living and working in a foreign land is a complex emotional experience: A feeling of excitement shadowed by fear of the unknown, A celebratory feeling of achievement constantly ticked by the anxiety of loneliness, humble gratefulness for the opportunity in the new land competing with a flowing sense of guilt over leaving home behind. What happens to us when our body and mind are at the crossroads of these conflicting feelings?

The overwhelming unfamiliarity of the surroundings disorients us, all new and different social norms confuse us, and communication barriers frustrate us. All these paralyses our curiosity and passion for learning the unknown; then, we feel reluctant to encounter new situations and prefer to self-isolate.

Therapy Aims: Providing support and guidance for cultural adjustment, improving the sense of belonging and identity, and sustaining pre-existing relationships in the homeland while exploring emerging ones and building resilience and cultural competence by promoting adaptation, growth and personal fulfilment. 

Workplace Stress

Stress results from a malfunctioning relationship with the environing world, ourselves and other people. Stress can be bodily experienced as fatigue, muscle tension, upset stomach, panic attacks, excessive sweating, chest pain and many others. We might struggle to manage racing or intrusive thoughts, lack of concentration, inability to feel joy and take pleasure, avoiding people and seeking isolation. 

Therapy Aims: Stress reduction, development of coping and emotional regulation skills, improvement of conflict resolution techniques, enhancement of boundary setting and decision-making abilities.