You've spent years working on this. You want to be the one who breaks the cycle. So why does the same thing still set you off the way it always did?

Smiling man with a shaved head, wearing a light blue collared shirt and a pink zip-up jacket, sitting on a couch.
Smiling man with a shaved head, wearing a light blue collared shirt and a pink zip-up jacket, sitting on a couch.

About Me

Hi, I'm Farhad. I'm the child of Iranian immigrants, and I grew up knowing that doing well wasn't something to be proud of, it was the baseline. Falling short of it meant something about me. When things didn't go the way they were supposed to, I took it as evidence about who I was. 

I understood Farsi growing up and stopped somewhere along the way, and I can't speak it now. I became a therapist in a family that had engineer, doctor, or lawyer in mind. I grew up in a culture with a lot of unspoken rules about how you carry yourself in front of others. Composed, agreeable, never the one causing a scene. I'm actually pretty goofy, and it took me a while to let that show. 

I did the work on it. Years of therapy, classes, reading. I could explain my own patterns in detail. I understood it completely and still reacted the same way.

A smiling, bald man with a goatee wearing a dark blue sweater, standing outdoors with trees in the background.

Why I do this work

What eventually moved it wasn't more understanding. It was reprocessing what my body had been holding the entire time, which is what EMDR and Accelerated Resolution Therapy® do.

I work with adult children of immigrants who look fine from the outside and are tired in a way that's hard to explain to anyone who hasn't been there. You apologize for things that aren't yours. You say yes and spend the next week resenting it. You get somewhere you worked years for and feel almost nothing. You can name the pattern while it's happening and it happens anyway.

You don't need to call it trauma or anxiety or anything else. You just need it to be different. That's enough to start.

If you've done the understanding and you're ready for the part that reaches further, I'd love to help you get there.

Schedule An Intro Call

Training and Licensure

  • Licensed Clinical Social Worker, California #77084

  • EMDRIA Certified Therapist

  • Certified Clinical Trauma Professional (CCTP)

  • Advanced EMDR training, including DeTUR and Attachment-Focused EMDR

  • Trained in Accelerated Resolution Therapy® and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

  • MSW, New York University, 2013

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