Gabrielle Carvajal, Licensed Professional Counselor Associate

My core values are authenticity, justice, compassion, and community. I believe therapy is a radical act of self-care, and I center my counseling space to be safe, nonjudgmental, and anti-racist so it can be a place of healing and growth. My counseling approach is decolonial, strengths-based, and rooted in relational cultural therapy. I believe human growth happens through safe, mutual connections, while honoring a person’s cultural experience through both individual and broader systemic lenses. By the same token, I believe diagnosis holds value, and I use evidence-based diagnosis when appropriate. I integrate counseling interventions to fit my clients’ needs while maintaining a trauma-informed approach. I have experience using cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), attachment theory, somatic therapy, and expressive arts therapy, such as art and gardening.

I am a queer Chicana, and I position myself within the QTBIPOC umbrella. For me, this means I feel safe, and I am safe. Being around people belonging to QTBIPOC communities empowers me to be who I am, unmasked and unafraid of the oppression of cishetero White men. I think the base is acknowledging racialized intergenerational trauma, anti-Blackness, colorism, and the significance of solidarity-building in practice, which is what I do. I am not “blind” to color, and I broach it with clients rather than avoiding it. The frameworks and lineages that ground my work are most significantly our Black Trans* teachers, such as Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera. Queer resistance and support dating back to the 1960s, and coinciding with the civil rights movement, grounds my work. Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, the ideologies of the Black Panther Party, and the Zapatistas of Chiapas are significant revolutionaries who ground my counseling work. The lineages of Indigenous Americans hold me warmly in my heart and soul as I live on my ancestors’ stolen Land. I may not know as much as I would like to about my personal lineage and individual ancestors, but I know their knowledge and teachings live through me and ground the work that I do. I take opportunities to be further educated in gender and sexuality justice, and I engage with Queer* clinicians and researchers. In 2025, I participated in a research study on Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual, and other identities (2SLGBTQIA+) affirming care for counselors. In this research study, I took an eight-hour course on providing affirmative care, and I also provided insight and interview data to the principal investigators. The goal of the study was to create accessible curriculum for providing 2SLGBTQIA+ affirmative care. I learned tangible skills, as well as theoretical frameworks, to incorporate into practice. The researchers in this study were part of the Queer* community, and I felt it was a meaningful, genuine research study focused on gender and sexuality justice.