I’m Basir Bita—a therapist in British Columbia, writer, poet, and practitioner of nonviolence and Sufism. My work begins with relationship: to ourselves, to one another, and to the worlds we hope to build.
Private practice · British Columbia
I work with individuals, couples, and families whose lives cannot be reduced to a diagnosis or a single problem. People may come carrying trauma or complex trauma, anxiety, depression, grief, relationship or family conflict, migration and displacement, questions of identity and belonging, intergenerational pain, parenting stress, addiction, neurodivergence, experiences of racism or oppression, or the uncertainty of a major life transition.
Counselling can be a place to slow down, listen closely, and understand how mind, body, relationships, culture, history, and spirit meet within your experience. Our work begins with curiosity about what you carry, what has helped you survive, and what you need now—not with a promise to “fix” you.
My practice is decolonial and anti-oppressive. I understand distress not only as something within an individual, but also in relation to family, culture, migration, racism, displacement, power, and the body. I work collaboratively, honouring your knowledge, agency, identities, and pace.
Depending on your needs, I draw on transpersonal and somatic perspectives, Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), cognitive and dialectical behavioural skills, play therapy, expressive and creative practices, grief work, mindfulness, and solution-focused therapy. The approach is always shaped around the person—not the person around a method.
I see clients virtually only. Online counselling makes it possible to meet from a private place that works for you, without travel time and with greater flexibility around work, family, mobility, and location. It can bring care closer to people who may not otherwise find a culturally responsive counsellor nearby, while allowing us to build a consistent and meaningful therapeutic relationship.
My clinical background includes supporting individuals, couples, and groups across diverse communities in Canada and the United States. I have worked with refugees, immigrants, survivors of torture and trauma, and people from BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and neurodivergent communities. My U.S. experience also included work connected with Child Protection Services and the foster-care system, supporting children and families through the complex challenges surrounding safety, separation, placement, identity, and belonging.
I hold a master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Marquette University and am pursuing doctoral studies in Transpersonal Psychology. I can offer counselling in English, Farsi, Dari, and Pashto.
Privacy, informed consent, and professional boundaries are central to the counselling relationship.
A collaborative space attentive to emotion, body, culture, relationships, and lived experience.
Basir’s writing moves through memory, place, migration, belonging, conflict, and the stubborn presence of hope. Across memoir, fiction, and essays, he attends to lives shaped by Afghanistan and diaspora without reducing them to a single story.
Basir writes poetry and works with the power of language to give form to experiences that can be difficult to speak. A poem can hold grief, memory, longing, contradiction, and hope without asking them to become simple.
Across counselling, workshops, and creative practice, he draws on expressive arts, storytelling, movement, dance, and the spontaneity through which healing and relationship can emerge. Creativity is not used to make pain beautiful; it offers another way to listen to the body, encounter one another, and imagine what may still be possible.
A memoir of memory, migration, grief, survival, and the long work of making a life across worlds. Moving between Afghanistan and the experience of displacement and belonging, Basir reflects on the personal histories carried inside collective loss—and on the relationships, stories, and acts of imagination that make renewal possible.
The memoir is not yet available. Publication news and ordering information will be shared here when confirmed.
A literary novel that looks beneath the names placed upon a country—toward the intimate lives, contested histories, memories, and silences held within it. Rooted in Afghanistan and shaped by questions of identity, power, exile, and belonging, the novel asks what remains when official stories no longer contain the truth of a people’s lives.
The novel is not yet available. Publication news and ordering information will be shared here when confirmed.
Subscribe for announcements, excerpts, and new-work updates. Full future poems and essays will be published here on basirbita.com.
Relational nonviolence · Learning & community
For Basir, nonviolence is more than the absence of physical harm. It is a living practice: how we meet conflict, how we hold power, and how we remain in relationship without surrendering truth or dignity.
This inquiry takes shape through learning spaces, dialogue, workshops, community practice, and research. The work is rooted in relationship and responsive to Afghan and diaspora contexts.
Basir’s doctoral research belongs to this larger body of inquiry. A public summary, institutional affiliation, and research status will be added here once Basir confirms the exact wording.
Participatory spaces for exploring conflict, dignity, relationship, and nonviolent practice.
Carefully held conversations across difference, with attention to history and power.
Developing language and practice for relational approaches to nonviolence.
Basir’s work includes online workshops and programming created with and for Afghan women and girls in Afghanistan.
The program creates spaces for learning, reflection, relationship, and participation under difficult conditions. Its public description must protect participants’ privacy and safety; identifying details are intentionally not shared here.
Contributions support the Afghan women and girls programming and related nonviolence education—not Basir’s counselling practice. Donation processing and a clear description of how funds are held and used will be published before contributions are accepted.
A clear boundary: Donations are never connected to access, priority, or outcomes in counselling. Counselling clients are not asked to donate.
Basir Bita is a Registered Clinical Counsellor in British Columbia, a writer, and a nonviolence practitioner and educator.
His work crosses forms, but its centre remains consistent: a belief in human dignity and in relationship as a place where change becomes possible. In counselling, that means careful, collaborative attention. In writing, it means making room for memory and complexity. In community work, it means treating nonviolence as a practice rather than a slogan.
A fuller biography—including education, languages, doctoral affiliation, professional registration number, and selected experience—will be published after Basir confirms the exact public details.
Read the practice details, fees, format, and privacy information once they are published.
Use the secure booking link to request an initial appointment.
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Keeping these pathways separate helps Basir respond clearly and protects the boundaries of counselling work.
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