Adrienne Richardson, PhD MsED RP CSAT/CPTT SEP-A OCT

Adrienne Richardson View Specialties

  • Registered Psychotherapist
  • Phone: 416-878-5556
  • Send A Message To Adrienne.
  • Session Fees: As a registered psychotherapist my rate is $250 plus HST per 50 minute session. If you are looking to utilize your health insurance and your provider requires a psychologists /psychological services the rate is $315 per 50 minute session.
  • niagaramarriagecounselling.com
  • This member is a featured provider of online counseling.
  • Online-counseling methods: Phone, Webcam



 
What's been said about Adrienne Sharma-Richardson PhD RP CSAT/CPPT SEP- Adv OCT
  • She is a highly skilled, experienced registered gestalt psychotherapist 
  • She connects with her clients in an extremely unique way so that her clients not only feel understood and supported they feel more aware of themselves and their ability to make contact with others and the world around them. 
  • Rather than maintaining an impersonal professional distance and making interpretations, gestalt therapists like Adrienne, relate to her clients with an alive, excited, warm, and direct presence.
  • She supports the creation of an open, engaged relationship.
  • She is down to earth and funny!

 
Clients...
  • get honest feedback 
  • get authentic contact, which helps clients see, hear how they are experienced by the therapist, and 
  • can learn how they affect the therapist, and 
  • (if interested) can learn something about the therapist. 

If you chose to work with Adrienne you will have the healing experience of being seen and heard by someone who profoundly cares about your perspectives, feelings, and thoughts.
 

A word from Adrienne... 
 
I support...
  • individuals of all ages including children and teens
  • those from the LGBTQ community, and 
  • first responders and veterans

If you require...
  • business/career coaching
  • leadership development 

These are also areas of support that I am well trained as I have earned a PhD in Leadership & Policy, and I am an experience entrepreneur.
 
If you are a business owner without health insurance you can write off coaching/ therapy as an educational/training expense.
 
No excuses to rise to the next level! 
 
However I specialize and I am most passionate about working with couples in crisis impacted by...
  • Betrayal, Abuse (Certified Partner Trauma Therapist)
  • Trauma & PTSD
  • Addictions, (Certified as a Sex Addiction Therapist)
  • ADHD
  • Depression & Anxiety

I am a gestalt therapist with somatic experiencing (SE) training out of California.
This specialized training is highly supportive to treating PTSD and complex trauma.
 
No one in the Niagara Region (and I might guess in Ontario) utilizes the combination of gestalt therapy and SE and applies them to working with couples in crisis.

If you or your partner's trauma is impacting your relationship I am here to support you both.
 
Healing can happen.

If you are unable to leave your home because of the lack of childcare available we can arrange sessions for you and your partner once the kids are all tucked in or during the weekends!

Couples therapy can be done very effectively via tele-therapy.
 
Give me a chance to help you rescue your shitty relationship!
(The tile of my soon to be published book- The Shitty Relationship Rescue).
 
I am sorry to say but popular approaches to healing trauma like CBT will provide only temporary relief at best.
 
If you want to get to the root of your trauma and heal somatic experiencing (SE) is what you need and when supported with the power of relational gestalt therapy you will shift your shit!

To give you a better idea about my practice I have provided you with some descriptions of gestalt therapy and SE.
 
However, please note reading about these therapies may not make that much sense to you unless you have already engaged in other types of therapy that just haven't worked. Even still both modalities are highly experiential meaning you just have to do the work! 

Gestalt therapy began as a revision of Freud's psychoanalysis (F. Perls, 1942/1992) and quickly developed as a wholly independent, integrated system (F. Perls, Hefferline, & Goodman, 1951/1994).

Since gestalt therapy is an experiential and humanistic approach, it works with patients’ awareness and awareness skills rather than using the classic psychoanalytic reliance on the analyst’s interpretation of the unconscious.

Also, in gestalt therapy the therapist is actively and personally engaged with the patient, rather than fostering transference by remaining in the analytic role of neutrality.
 
The gestalt therapist uses active methods that develop not only patients’ awareness but also their repertoires of awareness and behavioural tools.

Rather than to direct clients toward preset goals as in behavior therapy the active methods and active personal engagement of gestalt therapy are used to:
  • increase the awareness, freedom, and self-direction 
  • support greater contact
  • encourage authenticity

The gestalt therapy system is truly integrative and includes
  • affective
  • sensory 
  • cognitive
  • interpersonal, and 
  • behavioral components.


As an SE therapist- mental and emotional health follows the state of the nervous system- if the system is flowing seamlessly between sympathetic and parasympathetic; arousal and settling, within a “manageable range” there is 
  • a deep, internal sense of well-being 
  • emotional stability
  • confidence 
  • clear thinking 
  • aliveness 
  • trust in self and others, and 
  • mastery


What does this mean and look like?

SE is about:

Your experiences... in your body
By tracking, observing, and learning to describe; 
  • regulate internal arousal states 
  • shift locked patterns into action 
  • increase body awareness

 
Emotional engagement is encouraged through...
  • attention on mindfulness 
  • sensations 
  • movements and 
  • impulses.

 
I am interested in your response to the story not your story you keep playing over and over again in your head!
 
Was your response a fight, flight, freeze, collapse, or dissociation?

What impulses, emotions, and beliefs you experience are also explored.

Together we will search for...
  • strengths, 
  • what worked, 
  • resources 
  • your ”organic wisdom”
I will provide guidance for co-regulation to self-regulation which quite frankly is essential to help you get your shit together! 
 
 
I am not as formal as the above.
 
Please know I have provided more "professional/academic" descriptions for credibility purposes.
Call me for a chat and see how down to earth I am and can be with you. 
 

At this time I am continuing to train in trauma recovery out of California.
For now I am trained to work with the following traumas...
  • Global High Intensity Activation (GHIA)
  • Pre- and Perinatal Trauma
  • (Fetal distress, birth trauma, early surgeries)
  • Anesthesia
  • High fevers
  • Suffocation, Choking, Drowning
  • High Impact/Failure of Physical Defense
  • Falls
  • Acquired Brain Injury
  • High Impact and Motor Vehicle Accidents (MVA)
  • Inescapable Attack
  • Animal Attack Escape Inhibited
  • Rape/sexual abuse 
  • Physical Injury
  • Surgery Poison Burns
  • Emotional & Developmental trauma

Aside from all these traumas...
If you are a survivor of COVID-19 and you are experiencing trauma from your experience, I can help!
 
With SE work...

trauma responses are completed and energy is released back into the system and with this the resolution and disappearance of physical complaints, including
  • headaches, 
  • digestive problems, 
  • pain syndromes can be resolved, and 
  • emotional regulation can be restored.

 
The focus is on regulating your nervous system.

I will teach you...
  • how to work with your stress response - the body's innate alarm system in response to a perceived danger, also called the "Fight or Flight" response which is highly adaptive to danger and human survival when threats are physical, but less so when threats are psychological, or imaginary
  • and other somatic and relational skills.

I have been trained under some of the greats in SE and gestalt therapy...
  • Dr Abi Blakeslee part of Dr Peter A Levine's legacy group out of California for Somatic Experiencing and
  • the late great Dr Bud Feder the author of Beyond the Hot Seat was on my dissertation committee overseeing a phenomenological study of the effectiveness of a gestalt therapy group I created to reduce stress in working informal caregivers of the elderly. I named the group process Stressed WOW (We Overloaded with Work).

 
 
With Gestalt therapy and SE...
  • The power of its effectiveness can only be experienced.

 
Most present day therapies have stolen bits and pieces of its praxis and if not trained for several years in them they are probably not doing it! 
 
Get the real deal and get whole again with a combination of two holistic, here and now, experiential therapies.

I am here for you... I've got your six!

I can't urge you enough to take a risk and experience the power of the combination of gestalt therapy and somatic experiencing, it is unmatched especially when working with couples in crisis.
 
On a personal note...

I have experienced trauma in my life, I understand what you are experiencing.
I have ADHD, I understand what you are experiencing.
I am a recovering addict, I understand what you are experiencing.
I have been in narcissistic relationships, I understand what you are experiencing.
I have worked with many veterans, and first responders, I don't completely understand what your experiencing, no one can... but I get close!
I am currently writing a book called The Shitty Relationship Rescue which I hope to publish soon.
I am passionate about helping couples keep their shit together so they can stay together!
 
Call me today... and experience me supporting you experience healing!
It's time... you have suffered enough.
 

If you wish to utilize your health insurance...
  • psychological services can be provided for a rate of $315 for a 50 minute session and 
  • psychotherapy can be provided for a rate of $250 plus HST.
Adrienne Sharma-Richardson Niagara Counselling & Online Therapy
physical address is located at
  • 6150 Valley Way Suite 202 Niagara Falls, Ontario.
Due to COVID-19 phone or Zoom sessions are being offered to ensure safe social distancing to anyone throughout Ontario.

Please reach out via phone by calling 289-407-9699 or
 
check out my website https://niagaramarriagecounselling.com
 
Until then...
 
Take care,
 
Adrienne 
 


Adrienne Richardson Reaches

Niagara Falls ON
Toronto ON

Clients throughout Ontario