Gabby
Rios-Martinez

Therapy That Starts With the Relationship

If you’ve spent years being told you were too much, too sensitive, or not trying hard enough, and lately you’ve begun to wonder whether there’s a different explanation, Gabby offers a place to take that question seriously.

Gabby works with adults (18+) navigating autism and ADHD, executive dysfunction, anxiety, depression, questions about identity, and the relationships that matter most to them. She offers secure teletherapy to clients located across Maryland.

Clinical Focus

Much of Gabby’s work is with neurodivergent adults, particularly people who reached adulthood before anyone suggested that autism or ADHD might explain what they had been struggling with. A late diagnosis tends to arrive as relief and grief at once: relief at finally having language for it, grief for the years spent thinking it was a character flaw. Gabby is neurodivergent herself, and she works from the premise that your brain is not a defect to be corrected.

That work often turns practical. Executive dysfunction is the gap between knowing what needs doing and being able to start it. It shows up as unanswered emails, unfinished projects, and the shame that collects around both. Gabby helps clients build systems that fit the brain they have rather than the one they were told to have, and untangle the self-criticism left behind by years of trying to run on willpower alone.

Gabby also works with LGBTQ+ adults: questioning and exploring identity, coming out on your own timeline, and the practical and emotional work of transitioning or navigating life as a transgender adult. She is queer herself and already knows the language, the context, and the stakes, so sessions start where you are. And as a nonbinary therapist, she knows what it takes to keep correcting how people see you, and what a relief it is when you don’t have to.

Alongside that, Gabby supports clients through depression and low mood, anxiety, OCD, people-pleasing and perfectionism, and the inner critic that narrates all of it. For OCD, she draws on Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) at a pace the two of you set together. She works with the part of you that learned to earn its place by being useful, and helps you build a sense of worth that doesn’t have to be earned.

Relationships run through much of Gabby’s practice, from romantic partnerships to family ties and everything in between. She offers couples therapy, and brings particular attention to neurodivergent relationships, where mismatched communication styles, sensory needs, and expectations about time and energy can create conflict that has nothing to do with how much two people care about each other. Much of that work is practical skill-building: assertiveness, setting boundaries, and learning to say what you mean in a way the other person can hear.

Therapeutic Approach

Gabby is an eclectic therapist who tailors treatment to the person in front of her, not the other way around. Her foundation is Person-Centered Therapy, which in practice means unconditional positive regard: acceptance that’s real, and that doesn’t depend on having a good week, saying the right thing, or being anyone other than who you are. In her experience, that relationship is where a lot of the change happens.

From there, she matches the approach to what you’re working on. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) helps you stop wrestling with every difficult thought and start moving toward what matters to you. Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) offers concrete skills for the moments when everything feels like too much at once. Internal Family Systems (IFS) treats the critical, anxious, or protective parts of you as worth understanding rather than silencing. Imago Relationship Therapy gives couples a structure for actually hearing each other. A strengths-based lens keeps the focus on what’s already working, and she brings in a bit of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) when a specific thought pattern is getting in your way.

Sessions feel familiar and comfortable — the kind of place where you can finally bring up the thing you’ve been circling for weeks. Gabby practices with cultural humility, paying attention to what you carry in from outside the room: your culture, your family, and the assumptions other people have made about you. Her care is informed by Health at Every Size (HAES), meaning your body is not a problem to be solved on the way to feeling better. You won’t be asked to justify who you are before the work can begin, or to explain what it costs to move through a world that wasn’t built with you in mind.

Background, Education & Experience

Gabby earned her M.S. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Johns Hopkins University and a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. She has been a Licensed Clinical Professional Counselor in Maryland since 2022.

Before her master’s, Gabby worked in community mental health and at a day program for adults with developmental disabilities. Those early roles are where her focus on neurodivergent and LGBTQ+ clients began.

Gabby is Puerto Rican and has lived in Maryland for most of her life. Today she sees clients across the state she grew up in.

Outside of sessions, Gabby takes her play seriously: video games, board games, puzzles, and tabletop role-playing campaigns. She collects toys and weird trinkets on the side, including enough Furbies to fill a china cabinet. Her dog, Salsa, supervises.