I’ve always been a close reader, and meaning maker: someone trying to understand the truths and realities of people and environments. When I began turning that attention inwards, it was still only part of the story. I realized that the only way to make sense of my world is to bring all worlds together. The inside, the outside, collectivism and history all come together. It is ourselves with the world.

In my practice, I work with the belief that meaning and self is all at once collective, interpersonal, and subjective. Working with me means that we will be in the process of exploring your individual and nuanced experience of the world and emotions. I am committed to learning about you from you, and alongside you.

Outside of the therapy room, I devote my time to being with the world in art, nature and community. I am passionate about many things, including songwriting, music, reading, birding, nature, movement, and cycling

anxiety  •  depression  •  life transitions
self-esteem  •  existential crises  •  chronic pain
relationship difficulties  •  attachment  •  
co-dependency  •  narcissistic abuse recovery.

I also help with:

Suicide & Self Harm
School & Work
Grief & Loss
Sexuality & Gender Identity 
Loneliness & Belonging
Highly Sensitive People
Kink & BDSM
Stress & Burnout
Shame
Trauma
ENM & Polyamory

What is
Gestalt Therapy?

Gestalt Psychotherapy focuses on awareness, presence and the here and now, or otherwise said:

Being with current and enduring iteration of the situation of your life and your relationship to the world.

Gestalt can be described as embodied, phenomenological, relational, existential, creative, and humanistic.

Together, we will work to get close to an understanding of how you experience and feel the world.

Workshops

• I Feel Myself With You: Embodied Awareness in Relational Dating - October 9th 2026 - Register Here
• Songwriting & Sensation: Feelings of Creation - October/November 2026 - Register Here
• Existential Songwriting: Being and Knowing through Gestalt and Song – Feb 2026

Education, Training, Work & Affiliations

• Gestalt Institute Toronto – Graduated June 2025
• Member of the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario – #19901
• Member of Canadian Association for Psychodynamic Therapy
• Member of the International Association for the Advancement of Gestalt

• Module 1: Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT): 4-day Intensive Certification Training Course, PESI – July 2025
• Certified Narcissistic Abuse Treatment Clinician Training – in progress
• Distress Centres of Greater Toronto CSPS Suicide Hotline Volunteer, March 2020 – August 2021
• Honours Bachelor of Arts and Science, University of Toronto 2012 (Majors in English & Semiotics, Minor in Literary Studies)

In this role I am constantly awed by the different subjective experiences of others, and what life means for them as they move through the world.

© 2026 Samantha Richter