About Me and My Practice
Discover the story behind my work.
A Dedication to Care
Hi, I’m Héctor Pérez, Owner and Managing Director of Pérez Behavioral Health & Consultation, LLC. I am a bilingual (Spanish/English), bicultural (Boricua), queer, brown-bodied Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) based in Massachusetts (License #120061). I offer services in both English and Spanish, so language is never a barrier to a meaningful connection or healing.
My therapeutic approach integrates psychodynamic, narrative, and relational-cultural therapies with somatic and self-compassion-based practices. My work is guided by liberation psychology, trauma-informed care, and anti-oppressive frameworks, and informed by queer theory, intersectionality, transnational feminism, and decolonial thought. I view coping skills as survival strategies rather than pathologies to be fixed.
In our sessions, you can expect a warm, curious, and collaborative presence. I bring a therapeutic style that is warm, curious, and collaborative. I view therapy not as symptom management but as a healing relationship and a site of resistance, where you can challenge perspectives no longer serving you and reclaim your sense of agency and belonging. I believe authentic connection and empathic attunement are central to healing, beyond just credentials. Rather than acting as a neutral expert, I engage as a witness and co-thinker, valuing your insights and survival strategies as meaningful knowledge. I avoid rigid labels like “right/wrong,” “good/bad,” or “healthy/unhealthy,” fostering deeper self-acceptance.
I work with individuals navigating depression, anxiety, trauma, grief, relationship challenges, life transitions, and identity-related stress. As a gender specialist, I have extensive experience supporting queer, transgender, and nonbinary individuals, particularly those living with complex trauma, exploring identity development, or resisting systemic oppression. I also support racialized communities, neurodivergent individuals, immigrants, and people living at the intersections of multiple identities.
For more than 20 years, I have supported adolescents and adults through therapy, teaching, clinical supervision, research, and consultation. I have trained hundreds of healthcare providers in delivering gender-affirming care and supervised over 80 clinicians, medical students, and nurse practitioner residents. My professional settings include special education schools, residential programs, community mental health agencies, primary care behavioral health, mobile crisis teams, and NGOs in Santo Domingo, Cuzco, and India. These experiences shape my belief that healing is relational, embodied, and always contextual.
My Professional Journey
I earned my Master of Social Work (MSW) from Boston University, focusing on clinical practice with oppressed and minoritized communities, and my Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) from Anna Maria College, graduating summa cum laude. I am currently a PhD candidate in Social Work at Simmons University, where I research training interventions to strengthen healthcare providers’ knowledge and skills in gender-affirming care. Alongside my formal degrees, I have pursued advanced training in gender-affirming care, reflective supervision, psychodynamic therapy, trauma informed practices, and anti-oppressive approaches, demonstrating my commitment to lifelong learning.
Therapy with me is about reconnecting with wisdom, agency, and belonging that systems may have tried to take from you. My goal is for you to feel grounded, respected, and reconnected with what already resides within you. Together, we will create space for self-awareness, self-acceptance, and meaningful change—because being human shouldn’t be this hard.
Let’s Work Together
If you are looking for a space where your story is honored and your voice matters, I invite you to connect with me. Together, we can create opportunities for healing, self-acceptance, and meaningful change.
The values guiding my work are:
- Authenticity
- Equity and Justice
- Connection and Relational Healing
- Lifelong Learning and Growth
My approach to therapy has evolved over the past twenty years, but it remains rooted in the same motivations that first drew me to this work: a deep curiosity about how people live, how they respond to challenges, and how they create meaning in their lives. I draw from evidence-based practices, including psychodynamic, narrative, social learning, and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).
Guided by this curiosity, I structure our work through a clear and intentional process. I begin with a reflective exploration about how your inner world has developed. Then, we examine how your social experiences influence your self-perception, affect how you believe others see you, and shape the meaning you derive from them. From there, we identify patterns, both conscious and unconscious, that reinforce your beliefs or create barriers to change. Finally, we develop adaptive coping strategies, grounded in evidence-based techniques, to address challenges and support your goals. Together, we clarify what you want from therapy and work through obstacles affecting your health and well-being.
Providing supervision is one of my greatest professional joys. I create a space that is supportive, challenging, and growthfocused, where clinicians can deepen their skills and reconnect with the values and knowledge that brought them to this work. I bring more than 20 years of experience in clinical practice, teaching, and consultation. Over the course of my career:
- I have supervised more than 80 clinicians at various professional stages.
- I have trained hundreds of healthcare providers in gender-affirming and culturally responsive care.
- I have completed extensive supervisory training, including Reflective Supervision Training, the Simmons Trauma Education Project (STEP) for Trauma-Informed Supervisor Training, and the Seminar in Field Instruction (SIFI).
- I serve on Practicum Education Advisory Committees for two MSW programs.
This combination of post-graduate training, teaching, and hands-on experience allows me to guide supervisees with confidence, authenticity, and ethical grounding.
My supervision style is rooted in the reflective supervision model, with the parallel process as a central element. Through this approach, I support clinicians in re-accessing their agency and autonomy as they navigate conflicts and complex client situations, guided by the same belief that shapes my clinical work: just as clients hold the skills and knowledge they need to heal, clinicians also carry the wisdom and resources to grow in their practice. My framework is enriched by trauma-informed, liberation-focused, and anti-oppressive perspectives, which honor lived experience while integrating clinical theory and technique. I hold a deep commitment to social justice, shaped by my own experience My Supervisory Approach Add matching button as a supervisee without supervisors of color or multilingual. This absence fuels my dedication to mentoring the next generation of bilingual and bicultural clinicians with supervision that centers excellence, representation, and care. I approach supervision with the belief that intersecting or even contradicting identities should be celebrated as sources of wisdom rather than treated as deficiencies or parts needing professionalization. Finally, I describe my approach as grown from places of both injury and healing, where recognition of wounds is balanced with joy, empathy, and unconditional acceptance as essential pillars of practice.
In supervision with me, you can expect:
- A collaborative space where uncertainties and strengths are welcomed.
- A focus on cultivating competence through reflection, practice, and ongoing learning, rather than proving expertise.
- Attention to patterns, countertransference, and ethical decision-making.
- Honest exploration of how your inner world, your clients’ realities, and systemic forces intersect.
I engage as an active co-thinker, not a distant evaluator. Together, we build skills, strengthen professional identity, and ensure your work remains effective, ethical, and sustainable.
Supervision with me is both a professional and personal process. It invites joy, empathy, and unconditional acceptance, alongside rigorous reflection and critical reflexivity. My goal is to help you become a grounded, attuned, and skillful clinician who can provide care that is both humane and effective.
Grow with confidence. Practice with intention.