Gabrielle Cooper
(They/Them)
Your Core Approach & Areas of Focus
My clinical style focuses on trauma-informed care and various methods of healing including art and EMDR. My approach is uniquely tailored to each individual. I use an open, non-judgmental stance to create a space of safety and comfort for my clients to explore their thoughts, feelings, goals, and behavioral motivations. I help clients find methods of coping with their daily lives in addition to healing emotional and psychological wounds. As an art therapist, I utilize the creative process to assist clients with healing from the past, coping with the present, and creating hope for the future. Using a variety of art media, clients work through trauma, increase self-esteem, decrease anxiety, and improve their overall well-being. The populations I specialize in are those with disabilities, the LGBTQIA+ community, BIPOC individuals, and those who battle substance abuse or misuse. I have years of experience writing gender affirming surgery letters for the trans* community, as well.
What Guides Your Work?
I utilize a strength-based method to assist clients with identifying beneficial attributes that they already possess. Honesty, trust, openness to feedback, and well-timed humor are qualities that make a healthy and valuable therapeutic relationship. I believe my role is to walk alongside my clients on their life journey instead of leading them because they are the ultimate leaders, decision-makers, and experts of their own lives.
What Makes Your Support Effective?
Clients have shared how helpful it is that I welcome feedback on my services and approach to make sure they are receiving the type of therapy that works best for them. The different techniques to healing that I offer, talk therapy, art therapy, and EMDR, gives clients different avenues to heal from the past, cope with the present, and envision their future.
Your Journey to Providing Mental Wellness Services
When I was 16 years old, I knew I wanted to help others with their journey through life and I knew I loved art. I discovered art therapy through a Google search and discovered I already possessed some qualities that would suit me as a therapist such as active listening skills, empathy, flexibility, openness to feedback, being trustworthy, good communication skills, and being about to help people with life challenges. My goal is to reduce stigma of therapy and increase my communities’ help-seeking behaviors.
What You Find Most Rewarding
As a therapist, it is truly rewarding to witness a client’s emotional and mental growth over time. Being able to see someone develop into to someone they are proud of by making decisions that are more aligned with their character, not avoiding their emotions, utilizing different coping skills, and being able to communicate their thoughts, feelings, and needs to others is truly fulfilling.
Qualifications & Credentials
Beyond Your Credentials
Clients have expressed that I have calm presence that allows them to express their feelings and thoughts freely. I provide a non-judgmental space that enables clients to feel safe enough to share thoughts and experiences that may bring shame, discomfort, dishonor, self-blame, guilty, or more unsettling feelings. My various identities and lived experiences allow me to better understand the nuances and complexities of a wide range of clients’ experiences, increases empathy, and the potential for more effective therapeutic relationships. This approach can lead to greater hope and connection, as well as empower clients through the sharing of personal stories and insights.
I take the items and art I adorn my body with seriously because creative expression is so crucial to the way I choose to exist in this world. I love clothes, jewelry, tattoos, and piercings because what better way is there to express my love for art than to wear it?
Your Unique Strength
A unique strength of mine is my calm, warm, welcoming nature that helps clients feel comfortable and safe to be themselves and express their emotions.
Off-Duty Well-Being
Pursuing my passion and advocacy for body positivity and sexual liberation through my art is my outlet for self-expression. To keep myself centered, I meditate daily, spend quality time with nature, and prioritize maintaining my close relationships.
