Amaranie Goonetilleke
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying)
MDiv , CRPO #22229
- Virtual (Ontario-Wide)
Meet Amaranie
Trauma-Informed Therapy for Healing and Growth
Amaranie is passionate about supporting clients who have experienced trauma, grief, childhood neglect, and difficult life experiences.
She helps clients understand how and why their past experiences can continue to affect their present lives, emotions, behaviours, and relationships.
Understanding Trauma
Amaranie’s approach is informed by the neurobiological effects of trauma and complex trauma. She integrates neuroscience and psychoeducation to help clients understand how past experiences can shape their emotional responses and relationships.
Supporting Immigrants & Minority Communities
As an older therapist with roots in Southeast Asia, Amaranie brings lived experience as an immigrant and a person of colour from a minority racial community.
This background makes her particularly sensitive to the unique needs of immigrants and minority communities. She provides a deeply empathetic space for those navigating the painful effects of racial, religious, gender, or spousal discrimination.
For clients navigating immigration, cultural identity, belonging, discrimination, or the complex emotional effects of living between cultures, Amaranie offers a space where their experiences can be understood without judgment.
Trauma, Grief & Attachment
Amaranie’s clinical work is grounded primarily in a trauma-informed and attachment-focused approach. Her additional trauma training includes specialized work around trauma-related shame and self-loathing, building on her broader training in the neurobiological effects of trauma.
She supports clients experiencing:
- Trauma and complex trauma
- Physical or sexual abuse
- Childhood neglect
- Attachment wounds
- Grief and loss
- Life transitions
- Relational conflicts and dysfunctional dynamics
- Anxiety and depression
- Mood dysregulation
She is also developing her work with couples and relational concerns, bringing an attachment-informed perspective to relationship difficulties while continuing to grow her specialized training in couples therapy.
An Integrative Approach
Amaranie believes therapy should be responsive to the individual rather than following a one-size-fits-all model. Her flexible approach allows her to tailor therapy to each client’s unique personality, experiences, and needs.
Her clinical approach draws from:
- Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT) – An attachment-based approach that helps clients understand emotional patterns and develop new ways of relating to themselves and others.
- Internal Family Systems (IFS) – A model that helps clients explore different parts of themselves with curiosity and compassion.
- Sensorimotor Psychotherapy – A body-oriented approach that recognizes the ways trauma can be held and expressed through the body.
- Grief & Trauma Therapy – Supporting clients as they process loss, trauma, and the experiences that continue to shape their lives.
Amaranie also incorporates neuroscience and psychoeducation, helping clients understand what happens in the brain and nervous system in response to adversity and trauma.
If requested by the client, biblical counselling can also be incorporated into the therapeutic process.
Education & Specialized Training
- Master of Arts in Clinical Counselling
- Post-Graduate Training in Trauma-Informed Care
- Training in Emotionally Focused Individual Therapy (EFIT)
- Training in Internal Family Systems (IFS)
- Training in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy
- Training in Grief and Trauma Therapy
A Little More About Amaranie
Before transitioning to clinical counselling, Amaranie worked for many years in TV and radio broadcasting. Her background in communication continues to inform the way she connects with people and listens to their stories.
Outside of her clinical practice, she enjoys writing and working as a freelance English editor.