Therapist in Staten Island — South Asian, Couples & Anxiety

Staten Island's South Asian and Muslim communities have grown steadily, especially on the North Shore around St. George and Tompkinsville, and in pockets further south near New Dorp. Clients here often describe a particular kind of loneliness: close to Manhattan on a map, yet far from the larger desi neighborhoods in Queens where everything — groceries, mosques, temples, language — is around the corner.

That distance can be quietly freeing and quietly isolating at the same time. You may be the only family on your street that fasts in Ramadan or celebrates Diwali. Your children may feel more at home than you do. And the people you would normally lean on may be a long ride, or a long flight, away.

Rubina listens before she suggests anything. In the first session she wants to understand your family, your history and what you hope will change. After that, the work might include practical skills from cognitive behavioral therapy, conversations about the patterns you learned growing up, or couples work that helps both of you stop defending and start listening.

Progress rarely looks dramatic at first. Clients often notice small things before big ones: sleeping a little better, saying no to one request without a week of guilt, having one honest conversation with a partner that does not end in silence. Those small shifts add up. Rubina will check in with you regularly about whether the work feels useful, and adjust it if it does not.

She is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker in New York and a CASAC-2 counselor, so if alcohol, pills or another substance is part of the picture — yours or a loved one's — that can be addressed without shame. She is also the author of Stop Being Okay, a book for people who have spent years pretending they are fine.