A practice built around the cultures, families, and stories that shape us.

Why Culturoots

Many people come into therapy editing themselves: explaining their family, softening their story, or leaving culture out entirely. Culturoots was started so you don't have to translate who you are to be understood. Your background is part of the work from the start.

Therapy here is for the spaces where generations, identities, and cultures overlap. You don't have to simplify yourself to be understood here.

Where Culturoots began

Culturoots was founded by Ankur Varma, LCPC, after more than a decade of working in community mental health, private practice, education, and clinical leadership across Chicago. In that time, he worked with people across the lifespan and saw the same thing again and again: therapy works better when people don't have to leave important parts of themselves at the door.

His work has included direct care with adults, teens, couples, and families, along with supervising clinicians, developing training, and building programs meant to make good care more consistent and accessible. Those experiences shaped Culturoots into a practice that is rooted in who you are, integrative in how it helps, and relational in how the work unfolds.

Today, that means making room for culture and family history, but also for ADHD, anxiety, relationships, changing roles, and the ordinary transitions that can make you question who you are becoming. Your context matters. It just doesn't have to become a box.

Our approach

We bring together evidence-based tools (cognitive-behavioral and acceptance-based approaches, attachment work, and trauma-informed care) with respect for identity, spirituality, family systems, and lived experience. The goal isn't to fix you. It is to help you live with more honesty, agency, and ease.

How we show up

We hold space for the realities of being a child of immigrants, a person of color in white-dominant spaces, a man learning to feel, a partner navigating two cultural playbooks, or a working parent with quiet burnout. These are modern lives. They deserve care that is rooted in your context, integrative in method, and relational in its delivery.

What you can expect

• A real person, not a script.
• Curiosity about your culture, not assumptions.
• Honest collaboration about what works and what doesn't.
• Practical tools alongside deeper exploration.