Psychotherapist Supporting Trauma & Addictions
Psychotherapist Supporting Trauma & Addictions
When a partner suffers from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and is in an intimate relationship, couples therapy is an essential component of treatment for the PTSD sufferer, their partner, and the relationship itself.
It should be known that PTSD can be caused by affairs and other serious and unpredictable relationship betrayals. These events rock one's emotional and spiritual well-being.
With profound relationship betrayal, one's underlying values, beliefs, and emotional world collapses, along with the relationship that has sustained them.
Many of the symptoms seen in the worst of physically-related trauma reactions show up in those who have been betrayed by their intimate partners.
How can having your partner in session with you help with PTSD?
1. The PTSD Person is No Longer Alone.
Partners who share traumatic stories with one another are no longer alone with their pain.
2. The PTSD Person is No Longer Ashamed.
When the traumatized partner sees the tears in their listener, they see compassion – the great healer that negates their shame and self- blame.
** Involve Partner in Treatment. There are great potential benefits from involving your partner.
Have you personally experienced or witnessed a death, serious injury or sexual violence?
Have you been betrayed?
Have you learned that a family member or close friend has suffered one or more of these events?
If you have, you may be suffering from PTSD.
Are you experiencing intrusive symptoms such as recurrent and involuntary memories of a trauma, distressing dreams, dissociative reactions like flashbacks and intense emotional and/or physiological distress in relation to trauma related stimuli?
Are you finding yourself avoiding trauma-related thoughts, feelings or memories, or the experiences that arouse them?
Have you noticed negative changes in your thoughts and mood associated with the trauma such as blocked memories?
Do you now have limiting beliefs like "I am bad" or "No one can be trusted"?
Do you experience self-blame and/or persistent feelings of fear, horror, anger, guilt or shame related to the trauma?
Do you experience feelings of detachment and/ or anhedonia (in ability to feel pleasure)?
Have you noticed negative changes in behaviour, such as increased irritability and angry outbursts, self-destructive behaviour, hypervigilance, exaggerated startle responses, and/or problems with concentration and sleep?
If you and/or your partner have experienced these symptoms and they have lasted longer than a month and caused distress or impairment in social, occupational or other important functioning that is not attributed to substance abuse or another medical problem then most likely PTSD is present.
If you are in a relationship where one or both of you suffers from PTSD then an essential component, a crucial component to treating the PTSD, is to treat the relationship.
A clandestine physical or emotional liaison with someone other than the partner.
• Violates traditional wedding vows of sexual and romantic exclusivity.
• The liaison poses a threat to the primary relationship.
• Doesn’t matter how long it lasted or its meaning to the Betrayer.
What needs to be done to heal from the affair?
ATONE
(contempt, criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling)
ATTUNE- Goal TRUST
ATTACH- Goal Commitment
Nido Qubein
Addiction is a complex biosocial illness.
More than 87 percent of sex addicts also report
having other addictions, which adds to the complexity.
Research indicates for sex addicts, trauma or high stress and addiction are inextricably connected.
Treatment can be divided into seven tasks:
1. Break Through Denial
2. Understand the nature of addictive illness
3. Surrenders to process
4. Limits damage from behavior
5. Establish sobriety
6. Ensure physical integrity
7. Participate in a culture of support
Understanding how trauma works and more specifically what tools can be used to address healing after betrayal is critical to recovery.
Betrayed partners reach out, you do not have to go through this alone.
In 2006, Dr. Barbara Steffens research revealed that betrayed partners often experience posttraumatic stress reactions.
Learn how to restore your identity.
Get support in your betrayal recovery by learning to restoring your
brain, body, and mind to health.
Tremendous Harm Caused by Deception
Trained from the best of best from the world-renowned legacy team of
Pia Melody out of
The Meadows in Wickenburg Arizona
PIT is Treatment for Developmental Immaturity(Codependence).
It is a modality designed to treat the effects of childhood trauma and resulting issues of developmental immaturity.
PIT is an eclectic approach which uses individual and group therapy drawn from psychoanalytic therapies, gestalt, family systems theory, transactional analysis, rational emotive therapy, and the concepts of Erik Erikson & Carl Rogers.
Love Addiction/ Love Avoidance
Inner Child work & feeling reduction work addressed.
Counselling for addiction and codependency in Toronto & Niagara Falls, ON.
Do you or a loved one need help for alcohol or substance abuse?
Are addictions to pornography, sex and/or the internet hurting the people in your life?
Do you have a gambling, drug, alcohol, food, sex, work, and/or shopping addiction (s) that are impacting your life?
We've Got your Back
Cannabis Friendly Psychotherapist
Depressed or anxious about how to relate reconnect and rebuild your family and/or relationship?
Take a Risk!
Family or couples counselling could save your marriage/ relationships.
Feeling is Dealing & Sensing is Healing
Autonomic Nervous System :
Precision Regulation
Symptoms are of the body.
Yet we rarely consider the body as the source and inspiration for healing.
When you are out of touch with your body
You will be out of touch with your life.
Learn to live fully and experience the natural wisdom that your body holds and
hear what is have been screaming without your awareness!
Don't let fear, worry and/or panic attacks take over your life any longer.
The future is now.
Learn to find peace
moment to moment in the here and now using gestalt therapy, somatic experiencing, and/or mindfulness.
Need support on how to honour your experience of depression and/or anxiety?
Are you unable to figure out how to move forward because of a loss?
Grief can be overwhelming.
Call Adrienne Richardson & Associates at Niagara Counselling & OnLine Therapy today!
ADHD & Behaviour Issues
Educational & Career Counseling
Gender Identity / Transgender Support
Parental Stress
Co-Dependency, PTSD & Trauma
For all ages and stages!
LGBT community welcomed
with open arms.
Adrienne has volunteered
her time and services to the
Texas Wounded Warriors from Iraq
including Gulf War I and Gulf War II
as well as Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan by utilizing the game of golf to support healing trauma/PTSD.
Wounded Warrior is an American charity & veterans NPO organization . WW offers a variety of programs, services and events for wounded veterans who incurred a physical or mental injury, illnesses, or co-incident to their military service on or after September 11, 2001.
Providing elite and amateur sports enthusiast’s sports psychology techniques to improve their mental game on and off the greens.
What good are the physical skills if the player is not mentally strong enough to keep them from breaking down under the pressure of competition?
Attitude, self-belief and mental toughness affect performance. By working on your mental game you can make difference between an average round and great round.
In reality, if you want to play great golf or any sport for that matter you cannot really separate the physical skills from the mental skills.
The stigma of using therapy is often based on the idea that cops should be able to handle whatever comes their way and that seeking therapy is a sign of weakness and could lead to them losing their job. This harmful and misguided belief can prevent many of you from accessing the support you need to maintain our mental health and your relationship(s).
Police officers often experience difficulties that can impact or spill over into their intimate relationships.
Relationship wellness is essential to the safety of officers; in fact, officers who have happy and stable home lives are less likely to experience distraction on the job. Just like work life can spill into home life, problems at home also spill over to the job. When officers understand the causes of and how these spillovers occur, they can correct the difficulties in the moment, instead of years later, after damage, resentment, and contempt has built up in their relationships.
While many officers realize that shift work, sleep schedules, and lack of time often contribute to their struggles in their relationships, preventative measures can be put in place to prevent further difficulties.
By understanding the components of a happy and functional relationship and the impact of police work on one’s personal life, officers can significantly reduce negative impacts and improve their relational health.
I have a no bullshit approach when it comes to supporting conditions like depression, anxiety and PTSD which can impact your ability to do your job effectively and negatively impact your personal lives and marriage/relationship.
I've got your six!
Nurses working at hospitals experience physical and psychological stress. To relieve the tension–anxiety, depression–dejection, anger–hostility, fatigue, confusion, and vigor in high-stress that you as a nurse, paramedic and EMT experience
therapy is a great way to let someone help and support you.
While providing emergency care to patients with life-threatening medical or traumatic emergencies never gets boring !
It can be a lot on your system.
Once a perceived threat has passed, hormones return to typical levels. As adrenaline and cortisol levels drop, your heart rate and blood pressure return to typical levels. Other systems go back to their regular activities.
But when stressors are always present and you always feel under attack, that fight-or-flight reaction stays turned on.
The long-term activation of the stress response system and too much exposure to cortisol and other stress hormones can disrupt almost all the body's processes. This puts you at higher risk of many health problems including: anxiety, depression, digestive problems, headaches, muscle tension & pain, heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure & stroke, sleep problems, weight gain, problems with memory & focus, never mind PTSD and relationship problems.
That's why it's so important to learn healthy ways to cope with your life stressors. Somatic work not just talk therapy is needed to support a downward regulation in your nervous systems.
Reducing stress is critical to maintain your QoL and work performance.
Adrienne Richardson PhD RP and Niagara Counselling & Online Therapy hope to start providing affordable psychotherapy to residents of Niagara Falls, and the Niagara Region this fall through subsidized Group Art Therapy sessions.
From a gestalt perspective her team will use art to allow participants the opportunity to express their authentic selves and experiences to help them find greater contact and support from others while also gaining a greater awareness about themselves, others, and their environments to bring about healing, change, and growth.
You don't need to be an artist to join our art therapy groups, you just have to want to feel better about your life and your situation, and be open to exploring different possibilities while doing something creative!
Call or email to find out more and add your name to a wait list!
We are currently looking for local businesses and organizations who are looking to support mental health initiatives in Niagara.
We can't do this alone! Be a leader in Niagara and demonstrate how mental health matters.
"The body reacts profoundly in trauma. It tenses in readiness, braces in fear, and freezes and collapses in helpless terror. When the mind's protective reaction to overwhelm returns to normal, the body's response is also meant to normalize after the event. When this restorative process is thwarted, the effects of trauma become fixated and the person becomes traumatized" (Levine, 1997, p.6)
"If you are experiencing strange symptoms that no one seems to be able to explain, they could be arising from a traumatic reaction to a past event that you may not even remember.
You are not alone.
You are not crazy.
There is a rational explanation for what is happening to you.
You have not been irreversibly damaged, and it is possible to diminish or even eliminate your symptoms"
(Levine,1997, p.5)
Popular approaches to healing trauma like CBT provide only temporary relief of trauma at best. Somatic experiencing focuses on body sensation, rather than intense emotion, and is the key to healing trauma.
Learn how to be more aware of any emotional reactions swelling up inside you, and how your body is experiencing these emotions in the form of sensations and thoughts.
Adrienne a gestalt psychotherapist, pairs her gestalt training with somatic experiencing. She can help support you in healing from your trauma.
There is no one that utilizes the combination of these therapies in the Niagara Region.
Let her introduce you to new possibilities for the treatment of your trauma.
Check out this great video and take a couple moments to JUST BREATH and tune into what your sensing in your body in this moment!
Enjoy our Boutique Therapy Space. Come a few minutes before your session have a cup of tea and unwind. Therapy is a time set aside for you! It's time you start giving yourself the love and compassion you deserve.
Do you even know?
If you do... How are you going to get it?
Dr Adrienne's motto...
"Here and now is all you have"
Sometimes...It's just a Choice.
Choose to call today!
At Niagara Counselling & Online Therapy
We've Got Your Back!
You have waited long enough. There is no shame in needing support.
Call Adrienne Richardson PhD, registered gestalt psychotherapist for individual or couples counselling in her Niagara Falls, or Toronto Offices.
You can't afford to wait and have suffer any longer.