Amanda "Amy" Gonzalez Richardson, LPC Associate

she/her/hers

Welcome to Therapy Austin! 

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. 

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 methods, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and relational and experiential methods. I am working toward specialty certification in trauma modalities like Internal Family Systems, Polyvagal Therapy, and Somatic Experiencing, EMDR, and Trauma Model Therapy. 

Are you looking to live your life more authentically? Are there things getting in the way of your happiness that you aren't quite able to make sense of or get past? Do you have trauma that impacts your relationships and day-to-day life? I know what that can be like, feeling like you're drowning with no clear way forward. I am here to help you gain clarity and find the path forward with practical tools to reduce stress, improve insight, increase your ability to cope, and take your life back. 

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. 

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. To get in touch, request me on the Get Started page. I'd love to speak with you! 

Professional Background and Experience:

I earned my dual B.A. in Psychology and Cognitive Science from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland and I have an M.A. in General Psychology from The New School, as well as an M.S. in Clinical Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling from Thomas University. I am a Licensed Professional Counselor Associate working toward full licensure and specialization in the treatment of trauma. 

I have learned much in my experience over the years working with children, teens, and families as well as adults. I have spent time working with family systems doing intensive In-Home Therapy, assessing risk and providing crisis counseling, working with domestic violence survivors, and providing individual therapy for those with trauma, depression, anxiety, and a myriad of other concerns.