Healing Starts Here

Hi there! I'm Amanda (Amy) Richardson, M.A., M.S., a Licensed Professional Counselor and trauma specialist in Austin, TX. I focus on providing specialized therapy for people with depression, anxiety, and PTSD/CPTSD. I am familiar with LGBTQIA issues, the kink and poly communities, and I am neurodiversity affirming.

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Therapy is a great tool for people in all walks of life, whether it is for personal growth and development, increasing clarity and understanding of yourself, or healing from hurtful things in your past. I see myself as a facilitator and a guide, providing information when helpful and feedback and challenges when needed. One of the most important parts of therapy is the relationship between the client and the therapist, and I focus on providing a safe and accepting environment that facilitates corrective emotional experiences and healing. I ensure that my office is a safe space for LGBTQIA+ persons and is free from discrimination. I am always delighted to see the growth in my clients, and I feel honored to be a part of their journey. 

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I am a warm, open-minded, humorous individual and I work in a collaborative, relational, integrative manner. I use a variety of empirically based methods, considering research on neurobiological, physical, relational, and cognitive factors that may contribute to an individual’s struggles. I use strategies from different perspectives and techniques to tailor treatment to the individual, including somatic, cognitive, and relational and experiential methods. I am currently trained in Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), Accelerate Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP), Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Somatic Experiencing (SE).

My work is heavily focused on helping you understand and cultivate a safe connection with your body and mind so that the two are no longer working in opposition. I believe in fostering a felt sense of safety in my counseling, engaging in both empathic listening and corrective emotional experiences to help you achieve the healing you need, at the pace that you need. I am understanding, caring, knowledgeable, and meet people where they are at. 

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I believe that change is possible for everyone and that the human brain is an exceedingly powerful machine geared toward survival, which, surprisingly, may not always benefit our mental health. I believe that mental health issues are complex and arise from multiple factors in people’s lives, from genetics to environment, to interpersonal relationships and social learning. I think that a person's early life and relationships are influential in the way they develop beliefs about themselves, others, and the world, and that those early relationships often lay the groundwork for how they relate to people in the future. Learned behavior and environment can be just as important, if not more so, than genetics in mental health. That means people can unlearn the unhealthy or unhelpful behaviors they learned in their early life and replace them with healthy behaviors. 

Whether this is your first time in counseling or you are returning for further or deeper work, I would be honored to work with you and help facilitate your growth. Depending on what your struggles are, we could work on challenging and reframing distressing thoughts and beliefs, learning and implementing body-based coping and grounding strategies, understanding the larger patterns in your life and relationships that are causing distress, or working with trauma through both the body and the mind. 

If you’d like to learn more about me and my approach, please contact me so you can get a better feel if my personality and style are a good fit for you. I'd love to speak with you!