Sarvin Sabet Psychological Services

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Sarvin Sabet Psychological Services Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from Sarvin Sabet Psychological Services, Psychologist, 100 Matheson Boulevard East, #101, Mississauga, ON.

We specialize in providing individual therapy for anxiety, depression, stress management, self-esteem issues, addictions, post-traumatic stress disorder, phobia as well as post-motor vehicle accident and workplace injury related psychological difficulties

Skin: The Boundary Between “Me” and “the Other”Where does the self begin, and how do we first come to experience ourselv...
10/15/2026

Skin: The Boundary Between “Me” and “the Other”

Where does the self begin, and how do we first come to experience ourselves as separate from others?

Before an infant can express experiences through language, the world is encountered through
bodily sensations, touch, warmth, discomfort, and the responses of caregivers.

Didier Anzieu’s Skin-Ego model (1985) proposes that early experiences of skin and bodily contact provide a foundation for the developing representation of psychological containment. Just as skin surrounds the body, the Skin-Ego represents a psychological envelope through which the infant gradually develops a sense of an inside and an outside.

Wilfred Bion’s (1962) model of containment offers a complementary perspective. Through maternal reverie, the caregiver receives and processes the infant’s overwhelming emotional experiences, helping transform distress into something more tolerable and eventually thinkable.

Neuropsychology adds another dimension. Research on affective touch, interoception, and bodily
self-consciousness highlights how early sensory experiences and caregiver-mediated regulation
contribute to physiological regulation and the developing sense of bodily selfhood.

These early experiences also offer a psychoanalytic framework for thinking about intimacy, dependence, and psychological boundaries later in life.

Perhaps the earliest experience of a boundary is not simply about separation, but about discovering that we can remain distinct while being connected to another.

Psychoanalysis provides models of containment and the developing self, while neuroscience investigates the sensory and regulatory processes involved. These perspectives are complementary, rather than one proving the other.

References: Anzieu (1985/1989); Bion (1962); Winnicott (1960); Barrett & Simmons (2015); Blanke et al. (2015); Norholt (2021).


WilfredBion Containment InfantDevelopment Interoception Attachment BodilySelf
PsychologicalBoundaries

Homes That Remain Within Us: A Neuropsychoanalytic PerspectiveWhat makes a place feel like home? Is it the familiarity o...
10/09/2026

Homes That Remain Within Us: A Neuropsychoanalytic Perspective

What makes a place feel like home? Is it the familiarity of its walls, the memories it holds, or the sense of safety we experience within it?

In psychoanalysis, home extends beyond physical shelter. Winnicott’s concept of the holding environment offers a way of understanding how early caregiving experiences contribute to our developing sense of security, emotional containment, and continuity of being.

Neuropsychology offers a complementary perspective. Early attachment relationships participate in emotional regulation, while the hippocampus and associated memory networks connect familiar environments with autobiographical experiences. Interoceptive processes further contribute to how safety and familiarity are experienced within the body.

Yet familiarity does not always mean safety. Freud’s concept of the uncanny reminds us that what feels most familiar may also evoke anxiety, conflict, or estrangement.

Perhaps, then, home is not simply somewhere we return to, but something we gradually develop the capacity to carry within ourselves.

Psychoanalysis gives language to containment, belonging, and the internal world. Neuroscience helps us understand the processes of memory, regulation, and relational safety that may contribute to these experiences.

Home may be more than a place we inhabit. It may also be an experience of being held, remembered, and connected to ourselves.

These perspectives offer complementary explanations rather than neuroscientific proof of psychoanalytic theory.

References: Coan et al. (2006); Barrett & Simmons (2015); Epstein et al. (2017); Menon (2023); Winnicott (1960).

AutobiographicalMemory EmotionalRegulation TheUncanny PsychologicalContainment MentalHealth

Winnicott’s idea of the good-enough mother challenges the fantasy that healthy development requires perfect care.For Win...
10/02/2026

Winnicott’s idea of the good-enough mother challenges the fantasy that healthy development requires perfect care.

For Winnicott, early life begins in profound dependence. The infant cannot yet regulate distress, frustration, or bodily arousal independently, so another person helps make those experiences more bearable. In contemporary developmental language, this can be placed alongside co-regulation: before regulation becomes increasingly internal, it is first supported within a relationship.

But Winnicott also believed that development requires more than perfect responsiveness. Gradually, small and manageable failures matter. A need is not met immediately. Frustration is tolerated. The child begins to encounter separateness and discover that the world does not always conform to desire.

This creates an interesting dialogue with neuropsychology. Emotional regulation, inhibitory control, social cognition, and tolerance of frustration all develop over time through repeated interaction between the child and the environment.

Winnicott also makes room for something often left out of idealized accounts of caregiving: ambivalence. Love does not eliminate irritation, resentment, aggression, or even moments of hate. What matters is whether these feelings can be experienced without being destructively acted upon.

The same applies to the child. Development does not require the absence of aggression. It requires a relationship sturdy enough to survive it.
Over time, the child may come to learn:
I can be angry and still remain connected.
I can hurt and still repair.
Someone can disappoint me without disappearing.
Strong feeling does not have to destroy the relationship.

Neuroscience does not prove Winnicott’s theory. But placing the two perspectives in dialogue raises an important developmental question:

How does regulation first become possible between two people, and gradually become something the child can carry within themselves?

Winnicott’s idea of the good-enough mother challenges the fantasy that healthy development requires perfect care.For Win...
10/02/2026

Winnicott’s idea of the good-enough mother challenges the fantasy that healthy development requires perfect care.

For Winnicott, early life begins in profound dependence. The infant cannot yet regulate distress, frustration, or bodily arousal independently, so another person helps make those experiences more bearable. In contemporary developmental language, this can be placed alongside co-regulation: before regulation becomes increasingly internal, it is first supported within a relationship.

But Winnicott also believed that development requires more than perfect responsiveness. Gradually, small and manageable failures matter. A need is not met immediately. Frustration is tolerated. The child begins to encounter separateness and discover that the world does not always conform to desire.

This creates an interesting dialogue with neuropsychology. Emotional regulation, inhibitory control, social cognition, and tolerance of frustration all develop over time through repeated interaction between the child and the environment.

Winnicott also makes room for something often left out of idealized accounts of caregiving: ambivalence. Love does not eliminate irritation, resentment, aggression, or even moments of hate. What matters is whether these feelings can be experienced without being destructively acted upon.

The same applies to the child. Development does not require the absence of aggression. It requires a relationship sturdy enough to survive it.
Over time, the child may come to learn:
I can be angry and still remain connected.
I can hurt and still repair.

Someone can disappoint me without disappearing.
Strong feeling does not have to destroy the relationship.

Neuroscience does not prove Winnicott. But placing the two perspectives in dialogue raises an important developmental question:

How does regulation first become possible between two people, and gradually become something the child can carry within themselves?

The feeling of being a coherent, unified self may seem natural, but Lacan’s mirror stage suggests that this sense of uni...
09/25/2026

The feeling of being a coherent, unified self may seem natural, but Lacan’s mirror stage suggests that this sense of unity is gradually constructed.

For Lacan, the infant begins to form an “I” through identification with an external image of wholeness. The reflected body appears organized and complete, even while the child’s internal bodily experience is still developing. In this sense, the ego is not simply discovered from within; it is shaped through identification, representation, and the relationship between lived experience and image.

Neuropsychology approaches this question differently, but it raises a related idea. Our sense of self depends on the integration of multiple forms of information: vision, proprioception, interoception, somatosensory feedback, movement, and body representation. The brain continuously brings these signals together to maintain a relatively stable sense of embodiment and continuity.

These perspectives are not the same, and neuroscience does not “prove” Lacan. But placing them in dialogue raises an interesting question: perhaps the experience of being one whole self is not simply given to us, but continually organized.

The self may feel stable not because it has always been whole, but because the mind and body are constantly working to make experience feel coherent.

Still smiling about this one. ✨I’m incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to present my research at Psych Congr...
09/18/2026

Still smiling about this one. ✨

I’m incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to present my research at Psych Congress 2026 in New Orleans:

“ADHD and Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder in Women: Diagnostic Overlap and Clinical Implications.”

This research explores the growing evidence that ADHD and PMDD can overlap in important cognitive and emotional symptoms, including difficulties with concentration, executive functioning, irritability, fatigue, cognitive fog, sleep disturbance, and emotional dysregulation.

It also examines the possible neurobiological connection between reproductive hormones and neurotransmitter systems such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. Changes in estrogen and progesterone across the menstrual cycle—particularly during the late luteal phase—may intensify pre-existing ADHD-related difficulties in attention, motivation, executive functioning, and emotional regulation.

Because many of these symptoms can occur in both conditions, the overlap may contribute to misdiagnosis, delayed recognition, or one condition being overlooked entirely. The research therefore highlights the importance of developmental history, prospective menstrual-cycle tracking, and a more gender-sensitive approach to assessment and treatment.

Being able to share this work with physicians, clinicians, researchers, and mental health professionals was such a meaningful professional milestone. I’m incredibly proud of how far this research has come and even more excited about the conversations and questions it continues to open. 💙

Poster #225 | Psych Congress 2026 | New Orleans

WomensMentalHealth Psychiatry Psychology Neuroscience ClinicalResearch MentalHealthResearch WomenInResearch ResearchPresentation AcademicMilestone

Still smiling about this one. ✨I’m incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to present my research at Psych Congr...
09/18/2026

Still smiling about this one. ✨

I’m incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to present my research at Psych Congress 2026 in New Orleans:

“ADHD and Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder in Women: Diagnostic Overlap and Clinical Implications.”

This research explores the growing evidence that ADHD and PMDD can overlap in important cognitive and emotional symptoms, including difficulties with concentration, executive functioning, irritability, fatigue, cognitive fog, sleep disturbance, and emotional dysregulation.

It also examines the possible neurobiological connection between reproductive hormones and neurotransmitter systems such as dopamine, serotonin, and norepinephrine. Changes in estrogen and progesterone across the menstrual cycle particularly during the late luteal phase may intensify pre-existing ADHD-related difficulties in attention, motivation, executive functioning, and emotional regulation.

Because many of these symptoms can occur in both conditions, the overlap may contribute to misdiagnosis, delayed recognition, or one condition being overlooked entirely. The research therefore highlights the importance of developmental history, prospective menstrual-cycle tracking, and a more gender-sensitive approach to assessment and treatment.

Being able to share this work with physicians, clinicians, researchers, and mental health professionals was such a meaningful professional milestone. I’m incredibly proud of how far this research has come and even more excited about the conversations and questions it continues to open. 💙

Poster #225 | Psych Congress 2026 | New Orleans

WomensMentalHealth Psychiatry Psychology Neuroscience ClinicalResearch MentalHealthResearch WomenInResearch ResearchPresentation AcademicMilestone

*From Expression to Meaning: The Integrative Model*What if meaning does not come first?What if, before an experience can...
09/18/2026

*From Expression to Meaning: The Integrative Model*

What if meaning does not come first?

What if, before an experience can be understood, it first has to become organized enough to stay with, tolerable enough to remain present, and expressible enough to take form?

This final post brings the whole model together.
disrupted integration → active music-making → organization and agency → containment → expression → association → symbolization and language → autobiographical meaning → integration

The idea is not that music directly heals trauma.

It is that active music-making may create conditions in which something once fragmented, overwhelming, or difficult to represent can gradually become held, expressed, associated, symbolized, and understood.

Meaning is not hidden inside the music waiting to be discovered. It develops through the person’s own memories, relationships, associations, language, and evolving sense of self.

Perhaps integration begins when an experience is no longer only something we carry - but something we can begin to understand as part of who we are becoming.

To accompany this series, I’ve created a dedicated website where you can read the full paper and explore the integrative model in greater depth:

Read the paper here:
https://sunny-eclair-7d05ac.netlify.app

Link in bio.

ActiveMusicMaking Containment Symbolization AutobiographicalMemory MeaningMaking PsychologicalIntegration

From Expression to Meaning: How Experience Becomes Part of the SelfA feeling does not always begin as a thought.Sometime...
09/11/2026

From Expression to Meaning: How Experience Becomes Part of the Self

A feeling does not always begin as a thought.
Sometimes it begins as tension, movement, rhythm, numbness, or something that simply feels difficult to hold.
The model I explore in this paper asks what might happen next.

Active music-making may first provide structure and agency — something organized enough for emotion to remain present without becoming overwhelming.
Containment can then make that experience more tolerable.

Expression gives it form.
Association begins to connect that form with memories, relationships, and personal meaning.

Symbolization and language make it increasingly thinkable.
And eventually, what once existed as a fragmented or disconnected experience may begin to take its place within a broader autobiographical story.

So the proposed pathway is:
disrupted integration → active music-making → organization and agency → containment → expression → association → symbolization and language → autobiographical meaning → integration

The idea is not that music “heals trauma” directly.
It is that music may help create the conditions in which something previously difficult to hold can gradually become representable, meaningful, and integrated into the continuing sense of self.

So when an experience moves from feeling to form to meaning — what allows it to finally become part of the story we tell about who we are?

psychology

*Sometimes the body feels something long before the mind can explain it.*A tightening in the chest. A change in breathin...
09/04/2026

*Sometimes the body feels something long before the mind can explain it.*

A tightening in the chest. A change in breathing. A sense of heaviness, restlessness, or tension that seems to exist without a clear story attached to it.

In psychoanalytic thinking, not every experience begins in language. Some experiences are first encountered as affect, sensation, rhythm, repetition, or bodily tension. They are felt before they can be fully thought.

This is where music becomes especially interesting.
When someone plays, an internal state can begin to take form outside of them. A rhythm repeats. A phrase returns. A tempo accelerates. A silence interrupts. None of these elements have a fixed psychological meaning on their own, but they can become points around which associations begin to form.

A repeated phrase may evoke a memory. A certain sound may bring a person to mind. A musical pattern may gradually come to represent something like feeling stuck, distant, overwhelmed, or unable to move forward.

From a Lacanian perspective, meaning is not simply hidden inside an experience waiting to be discovered. It develops through signification through the connections that form between present experience and the person’s existing world of memories, relationships, images, words, and symbols.

Music is not language in the Lacanian sense. But it may occupy a space between what is felt and what can eventually be said.

It can give form to something before that something is fully speakable.

And perhaps this is one of the ways emotion begins to find its way into words.

Not by being translated directly, but by first becoming something that can be heard, encountered, associated with, symbolized, and eventually understood.

The next question is what allows us to stay with these experiences long enough for that process to happen especially when they feel overwhelming or fragmented.

That brings us to containment.

MusicTherapy EmotionalProcessing Symbolization MeaningMaking TraumaPsychology DepthPsychology

Address

100 Matheson Boulevard East, #101
Mississauga, ON
L4Z3P8

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+19055021417

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