Sitara Thobani

Counsellor

It can be hard to know where one challenge ends and another begins — the stress, the strained relationships, the ache that lingers. Beneath these feelings, however, a deeper story is often at work.

I know this not only as a therapist, but as someone who has experienced how deeply our lives and relationships are shaped by histories and contexts larger than ourselves. These questions — of who we are, where we belong, and how the world shapes us in ways we may not even realise — are not abstract ideas. They are woven into our closest relationships, the roles we inhabit, and the most intimate corners of our lives.

I bring this perspective to my work with individuals and couples, making room for what often goes unnoticed to help you connect your present moment with your deeper story. Together we explore what can be hard to put into words, making meaning of what might seem fragmented or uncertain so that you can come away feeling more grounded in yourself. I welcome all that you bring — the tensions, the transitions, the sense that something doesn't quite fit — as well as the questions that lie beneath.

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Identity and selfhood

Culture and heritage

Intergenerational patterns

Stress, anxiety and burnout

Couples and relationships

Pregnancy and new parenthood

Histories of migration and belonging

Life Transitions

Meaning and Connection

Sitara's Education and Training

Professional Counselling Diploma - Rhodes Wellness College
Relational Life Therapy Level 1 (in progress) - Relational Life Institute
PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology - University of Oxford
MA in Sociology and Equity Studies - University of Toronto
BA in Anthropology and Asian Studies - University of British Columbia

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A Little About Sitara

I came to this work through my experience of needing it. I know what it means to want a therapist who understands how our identities and sense of self are shaped by the world we live in.

Prior to becoming a therapist, I worked as an academic researching and teaching topics of culture, identity and belonging. I was drawn to a question that had long been with me: how do social, cultural and historical contexts shape our sense of who we are, as well as how we relate to those we love? I believed I understood this. What I hadn't anticipated was how personally I would come to feel it.

This realization occurred when I became a mother for the first time. Motherhood, for me, raised questions I hadn't known I was carrying — about who I was, who I wanted to be, and what kind of world I wanted to create for my child. These questions arrived with an urgency and weight I could not have imagined, and asked something of me I was only beginning to understand.

Seeking support during this time, I found myself needing a therapeutic space that could hold all of who I was — a space where I didn't have to translate myself at the same time as I was trying to find myself.

My challenges became an invitation to explore questions I did not know to ask. Questions that stretch across generations, across cultural geographies, across everything that has made me who I am.

This need became the foundation of what I now offer: a practice where the personal and all that shapes it can be held simultaneously.

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Meet The Team

We believe that different ways of working offer different ways of seeing.

Summit Within brings together three practitioners whose approaches are complementary — not by accident, but by design. Between us, our practice is at once emotionally alive, structurally grounded, and always in search of meaning.