Training and Accreditation
Farah is a psychotherapist with a specialization in Sex and Relationship Therapy. She has completed a post-graduate training with Middlesex University and is also a registered member of the College of Sex and Relationship Therapy (Cosrt). Farah is currently enrolled in a Master’s-level training in Couples Therapy, accredited by the Middlesex University and the National Counselling Society (UK).
Farah’s work as a therapist started around 2001, after she completed a training in Humanistic Integrative Counselling at the CPPD (BACP accredited), followed by a Diploma and Advanced Diploma from the same training school. While she was establishing her private practice in Karachi, she also had the opportunity to be trained at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ).
Counselling and Psychotherapeutic Approaches
Farah believes that “every individual has the potential to grow and make informed decisions to live their chosen life”. Her model of psychotherapy is influenced by Gestalt, Object Relations theory, and Existential and Attachment theories, among others. Farah finds the work of Schnarch, Hendrix, Bader-Pearson and Heidy Shleifer helpful for building a customized model for each partnership, sensitive to diverging sexual identities and embracing sexual diversity.
Farah’s work is transpersonal and she believes in relational transformation. She has a keen interest in understanding the impact of cultural sexual oppression; the inhibitions around talking about sexual difficulties; sexual and physical abuse and its impact on sexual identity and physical intimacy; fear of emotional intimacy; and infidelity and its impact on committed relationships. Farah has worked with countless women struggling with physical pain while desiring deeper physical intimacy and feeling flawed within themselves, and men chasing societal ideals of masculinity and feeling fixated on performance instead of recognising basic human needs. Farah hopes to bring clients into a world where they feel sexually liberated and embrace their needs and desires
Counselling Experience And Areas Of Interest
Farah has worked with individuals, couples and families, as well as an organizational therapist, associated with multiple mental health projects across Pakistan.
Her counselling experience includes:
Helping people recover from psychosexual issues (erectile dysfunctions, premature ejaculation, vaginismus, dyspareunia, among others) and enabling them to pursue healthy, enriching relationships
Developmental work with individuals who appear to be settled in their professional and person lives, yet feel unfulfilled and restless, and believe they lack social acceptance
Providing psychiatric rehabilitation to people suffering with severe mental illnesses
Helping individuals fighting gender discrimination and struggling for personal freedom and autonomy
Single mothers caught in between the challenges of raising children and pursuing a career, while searching for internal balance
Working with couples in their pre-marital relationship issues
Working on recovery with couples whose relationships have undergone challenges of infidelity
Helping individuals recover from emotionally and physically abusive relationships within marriage or otherwise
Psychosexual Work
Psychosexual therapy incorporates different philosophies and principles of Integrative Therapy while remaining rooted in Humanistic values. This approach explores a non-pathological and non-oppressive model of sexuality and integrates trans-cultural issues, sexual diversities as well as gender-specific concerns, and aims to work with the client to improve their overall environment. This form of therapy aims to help a client’s family and intimate relationships, helping them sift through cultural influences that impact their relationships and sexuality. In psychosexual work, the presenting issue may be a specific sexual or relationship difficulty which the therapist will attend to and address the way in which this difficulty affects the client’s concept of sexuality and relationships (or absence of these) in their lives.
The primary intention of sexual and relationship therapy is to enable clients to attain a more realistic sense of what can be achieved and to acquire a deeper level of understanding about themselves and their relationships. Farah believes that sexual expressions are creative, celebratory and at times spiritual, and therefore she supports a definition of sexuality beyond psychopathologies.
Farah’s fee is €95 per session for individuals and couples
