Hi, I’m Gabriela, a bilingual English/Spanish Licensed Professional Counselor in New Jersey with more than 13 years of clinical experience. I specialize in working with individuals, couples, and relationship systems navigating complex emotional, relational, sexual, and interpersonal concerns.

My work is especially suited for people whose relationships do not fit neatly into simple categories. Many of my clients come to therapy carrying years of history, recurring conflict, betrayal, trauma, complicated family dynamics, sexual concerns, questions about identity or relationship structure, or patterns they understand intellectually but still cannot seem to change.

While concerns such as infidelity, high conflict, emotional disconnection, parenting stress, communication problems, and common intimacy issues are a regular part of my couples work, my practice extends beyond traditional couples counseling. I am particularly drawn to complex cases where several layers of a person’s or couple’s experience intersect.

Couples & Complex Relationship Therapy

I work with couples experiencing chronic conflict, emotional disconnection, infidelity and betrayal, trust injuries, intimacy concerns, parenting disagreements, major life transitions, attachment wounds, and long-standing relational patterns.

My goal is not simply to teach couples how to argue more politely. I help clients understand what is happening underneath the conflict: the emotional injuries, protective behaviors, attachment patterns, personal histories, sexual dynamics, fears, expectations, and relational cycles that keep repeating even when both partners desperately want something different.

I also work affirmatively with consensual non-monogamy, polyamory, kink, alternative relationship structures, and clients whose relationships or identities fall outside conventional expectations. Therapy is not about forcing relationships into a predetermined model. It is about helping people understand themselves, their agreements, their needs, their boundaries, and the kind of relationships they are intentionally trying to build.

Sex, Intimacy & Psychosexual Concerns

Sexuality is often deeply connected to attachment, identity, trauma, culture, self-esteem, safety, power, and relationship history. Because of that, I approach sexual concerns as part of the whole person and the whole relationship rather than treating sex as an isolated problem.

My work includes desire discrepancies, sexual disconnection, intimacy difficulties, performance anxiety, erectile concerns, sexual shame, changing sexual needs, communication around sex, erotic differences, kink, ethical non-monogamy, and the impact of trauma or relational injuries on sexuality.

I have extensive experience with psychosexual assessment and with complex sexual and relational presentations. When a concern may also have a medical component, such as erectile dysfunction, I require appropriate collaboration with a medical provider so that psychological, relational, and physical contributors are all addressed responsibly.

Trauma & Complex Relational Patterns

Trauma rarely stays neatly contained in the past. It can shape attachment, sexuality, boundaries, conflict, trust, identity, emotional regulation, and the ways people protect themselves inside relationships.

I have extensive trauma training, including TF-CBT and work with complex and sexual trauma. My background allows me to work with clients whose current relationship struggles are intertwined with earlier experiences of trauma, addiction, family dysfunction, betrayal, shame, or instability.

Some clients come to therapy because of a relationship. Others discover that the relationship is exposing something deeper within themselves. I work with both the interpersonal relationship between people and the intrapersonal relationship a person has with themselves.

My Clinical Background

My professional background includes graduate-level training in both clinical psychology and forensic psychology, along with extensive experience across addiction treatment, group therapy, work with children and families, trauma treatment, couples therapy, and psychosexual evaluation.

Earlier in my career, I spent several years working in addiction treatment, where I saw firsthand how trauma, secrecy, shame, family systems, trust, relapse, boundaries, and relationship patterns interact.

As my work increasingly shifted toward couples and relationship therapy, I spent approximately five to six years practicing within a relationship-focused clinical setting under the supervision and mentorship of a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. My supervision, clinical development, and continuing education became increasingly centered on couples, family systems, intimacy, sexuality, attachment, and complex relationship dynamics.

Today, that foundation informs the way I work: I do not look at one symptom in isolation. I look at the larger system surrounding it.

What Therapy With Me Is Like

My style is warm, direct, curious, collaborative, and sometimes playful. I believe clients deserve more than someone who quietly nods from across the room.

I will listen deeply, but I will also ask difficult questions. I will help you slow down patterns that normally happen automatically, notice contradictions, understand the parts of yourself or your relationship that are difficult to see from the inside, and challenge you when doing so may help create meaningful change.

I use humor, metaphor, real-life examples, curiosity, and honest conversation when appropriate. I want therapy to be emotionally safe without becoming emotionally stagnant.

My clients often come to me after feeling misunderstood, judged, overwhelmed by the complexity of their situation, or frustrated by approaches that felt too simplistic for what they were actually experiencing.

You do not need to make your story less complicated before bringing it into therapy.

Complexity is welcome here.

Who I Work Best With

I work especially well with people who are curious about themselves and willing to examine patterns honestly, even when the answers are uncomfortable.

You may be a good fit for my practice if you are navigating a relationship that feels difficult to explain in a few sentences; carrying significant emotional, sexual, relational, or family history; trying to recover from betrayal or repeated rupture; exploring a nontraditional relationship structure; struggling with intimacy or desire; confronting trauma that continues to affect your relationships; or simply realizing that the problem is more complicated than “we need to communicate better.”

My job is not to decide what your relationship should look like.

My job is to help you understand what is happening, why it is happening, what needs to change, and what possibilities become available when you can finally see the whole picture.

Outside the therapy room, I’m a lifelong learner, dancer, Harry Potter fan, and someone who has always been fascinated by unconventional ideas and the many different ways people build meaningful lives and relationships.

I believe meaningful change begins when people feel safe enough to be honest, challenged enough to become curious, and understood well enough to stop hiding the complicated parts.

That is the work I love doing.