Welcome!

My name is Manal Aziz, and I’m so glad you have found me.

Whether you’re here out of curiosity or because you are at your wit’s end, I invite you to have a look around. Read about the philosophy that drives my practice and discover how I work. On this page, you can also find my story that led us to meet in this place, at this moment. Do you have trouble figuring it out by yourself? No worries. Just send me an email using the contact form, and I’ll personally get in touch with you in English, Darija and/or French.

About the philosophy

We believe that mental health is a human right, and have dedicated ourselves to creating a world where that belief becomes a reality. Therefore, our approach is rooted in empathy, prioritizing people’s imminent need to feel heard, seen and safe.

In Westernized diagnostics, the complex nuances of non-Western cultures (e.g. culture-specific family dynamics, social structures and phobia or systemic oppression) are oftentimes not considered. As a result, these often important nuances can be overlooked, leaving people feeling misunderstood and out of place.

At heard. seen. & safe., we challenge this approach heads on by integrating and applying knowledge from different schools such as behavioural and cognitive psychology to each culture-specific context. And although we believe taboos exist, they have no power in our practice. As we are convinced, effective therapy starts with complete openness and the vulnerability that comes with that. Because of that, it is our continuous mission to create an environment in which you feel safe enough to do that.

What to expect

What do one-on-one sessions look like at heard. seen. & safe.? Rather than treatments, which insinuate and emphasize disease, I work with clients on reclaiming their narrative. Using evidence-based techniques in a transdiagnostic manner, we challenge the underlying structures and systems that make up who we are without hyper-focusing on the labels that come with it.

All of this happens through online sessions right from my home office in Casablanca to wherever you are. By performing the sessions online, we have made it possible to cut back on costs to provide the lowest fee possible – making mental health more accessible to those in need.

Our day-to-day practice is driven by self-empowerment, agency, reflection and introspection using integrative psychotherapy techniques. Baring in mind the fluidity of identities and cultural sensitivities, we focus on unlearning coping mechanisms that no longer serve us and practice behaviours that help overcome the past and prepare us for whatever lies ahead.

Interested but not sure where to start? Or questions about fees and availability? Book in a free intake consultation and let’s figure it out together. No strings attached.

Get to know the therapist

I’m a fulltime mental health advocate, cultural entrepreneur and freelance writer. I earned my master degree in Clinical Psychology at Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Netherlands, where I was born and raised. After finishing my studies, I worked as a researcher at the Erasmus Medical Centre and volunteered at a suicide prevention helpline. But if I’m honest with you, I never managed to feel at home in the academic world’s uninviting environment.

Being both a child of the diaspora and a mental health professional, my relationship with the field hasn’t always been smooth sailing (to say the least). It even came to a point where I believed that maybe mental health just wasn’t for me. A few years later, I would learn to understand that it wasn’t mental health that wasn’t for me but rather the impersonal systems within which mental health was cared for.

Moving to Morocco, I started seeing opportunities where I’d only seen obstacles before and even managed to make that uncomfortable in-betweenness my safe home. Ever since I’ve learned that many ways lead to the same destination — that there is more than one way to care for mental health — I have committed myself to help anyone who needs to navigate their path and meet them wherever they’re at in life.