I'm a trained and certified Counselling Psychologist based in Netherlands. I am South Asian and have lived a life of an expat pretty much all my life. I have lived in UAE, India, South Korea and now have moved to the Netherlands. I strongly relate to the quote by Ijeoma Umebinyuo - "...too foreign for home too foreign for here. Never enough for both". I understand what it is like to uproot your life and move somewhere longing to belong to a place.
As a person of color (POC), my travels and expatriation has exposed me to intersectional differences that I can no longer unsee. I therefore, offer counseling support integrating socio-cultural and intersectional nuances of my clients to help them cope with life changes and difficulties. I have experience working with diverse client populations in individual and group settings, who struggle with - anxiety, adjustments as an expat, interpersonal stressors, life transitions, intergenerational stressors, and unhelpful negative thought cycles.
I also offer grief counseling for people who have suffered loss of their loved ones and struggling with life without them. Personally, having lost my mother in 2020, I came face to face with my own grief and what life has looked like coexisting with my grief. I try to bring, into grief sessions, an open understanding of how grief is a lifelong journey and not just an isolated event that we are all so conditioned to believe. I help grievers understand their grief and how best to honor it.
I use an eclectic and a tailor-made approach using therapies, including but not limited to, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy (REBT), and Narrative therapy. I am currently only offering video counseling sessions via Google Meet.
Therapy with me means building a therapeutic relationship designed to empower you and help you achieve your emotional needs. I look forward to meeting you!
"Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom." - Viktor Frankl
I believe a lot of the answers to our problems lie with how we are shaped- how we view our world, meanings we assign to people places and situations, beliefs we hold, and messages we carry from our past experiences. I believe exploring our worldview can help us take an honest stock of what meanings and beliefs are important and relevant to keep, and what have become obsolete and unhelpful. Therapy with such an exploration helps us harness and empower our choice-making abilities that can change the course of our journeys.
You can also visit my website to know more: https://garimacounselingservices.com/
Please contact me to first set up a free 20-30 minute call to see if I can be the right fit for you.