Gabriella Losada

Gabriella Losada (she/her)

Professional Counselor Associate

Supervisor: Emily Berry, LPC

Collaborating to find meaningful ways to strengthen the mind/body connection and move through grief.

Client Status

not accepting clients

Contact

Portland, 97217

At a Glance

Me

Rate: $140-$200

Provides free initial consultation

Practicing Since: 2021

Languages: English

Services

  • Individual
  • Relationship
  • Teen

Insurances Accepted

  • Out of Pocket

My Ideal Client

My clients are interested in navigating uncomfortable emotions and connecting with their bodies in the process. Their concerns fall into three (often overlapping) categories: 1) a lack of mind/body connection due to trauma or depersonalization/derealization 2) grieving a death, a romantic or platonic breakup, or a loss of self 3) sex and pleasure (or lack thereof) and looking for new ways to connect with themselves and others

My Approach to Helping

Your process is important and I don’t believe in changing or taking away coping mechanisms that have allowed you to survive until this point. Instead, the idea is to give you new or different options to sift through complicated situations or feelings and help you evaluate what you feel is no longer serving you. Talking can be a great way to process but sometimes words aren't enough. During sessions, I use a mix of talk therapy, experiential and somatic techniques. Experientially, we might do some writing, make art, use music, or create a tangible coping tool you can use. Somatically, this might look like doing body scans, grounding exercises, small physical movement, guided visualizations, or just pausing and noticing what your body is doing and how it’s feeling. All of my work is rooted in trauma-informed care and intersectional feminist theory to create a collaborative environment where your "no" is honored and where we acknowledge the ways oppressive systems hinder healing.

My Personal Beliefs and Interests

Above all else, I believe in liberation for all marginalized groups. I believe in active mutual aid, radical collective care, and harm reduction. The personal and political are impossible to disentangle and what is happening globally, nationally, and locally often shows up in the therapy room. I hope to create an environment that embodies intersectionality, sex positivity, gender-affirming care, disability justice, and anti-racism. However, I fully acknowledge that this is an ongoing, imperfect process that I have to actively work on. I hold a lot of privileged identities (white, cisgender, thin, formally educated, US citizen) and some largely invisible marginalized identities (Latina, woman, living with chronic illness/pain, queer, neurodivergent). It’s important to me that I understand the impact my privilege has and how that shows up in and out of the therapy room. I always welcome conversations about how our differing or similar identities impact your process.

Techniques I Use

Specialties

  • Experiential External link

    Experiential therapy involves bringing creative elements or activities into session that take us beyond just staring at each other and talking. Sometimes this means writing, making art, using music, or creating a tangible coping tool to process things in a different way. Creativity can be helpful in moving through grief, trauma, and dissociation, especially when verbal processing feels difficult.

  • Somatic Therapy (Body Centered) External link

    Our bodies hold so much information that we aren't always (or can't be) attuned to. In session somatic work might look like doing body scans, grounding exercises, small physical movement, guided visualizations, or just pausing and noticing what your body is doing and how it’s feeling. Sometimes with neurodivergence, chronic pain, or trauma our bodies aren’t always a comfortable or accessible place to be and if that is a concern, we can collaborate to find a component that works for you.

  • Feminist External link

    The word feminist can be loaded depending on your identities. To me, feminist therapy is intersectional and includes looking at layers of privilege and oppression. Feminist theory as a therapeutic lens involves collaboration, balancing power dynamics in the traditional client/therapist relationship, and talking about identities and systems and how they impact your well-being.

Issues I Treat

Specialties

  • Loss or Grief External link

    My personal experience with grief and loss led me to volunteer at the Dougy Center where I spent time with teens whose parents or siblings died. After two years of helping facilitate grief groups there, I began seeing clients one-on-one who came in with various concerns but each of them had experience with grief or loss that impacted them deeply.

  • Dissociative Disorder (DD) External link

    Please note that I specifically work with depersonalization and/or derealization and that I do NOT have experience working with Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly, Multiple Personality Disorder). My knowledge of dissociative disorders includes personal experience, direct client work with people experiencing dissociation, and trainings such as "Treating Trauma" with Bessel van der Kolk and Pat Ogden

  • Compassion Fatigue External link

    Burnout and compassion fatigue go hand-in-hand and I love collaborating with clients who are experiencing burnout from caregiving or being in a helping profession. We can work toward restoring (or creating from scratch) a more balanced approach to being present in all aspects of your life.

Contact Gabriella

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