1708 Peachtree St. NE, Atlanta, GA 30309 • 315 W. Ponce de Leon Ave, Decatur, GA 30030
(404) 565-4385 |
About Our Center
Sensitive to the unique needs of BIPOC, Latinx, & LGBTQ communities and relationship structure minorities (Poly/CNM/ENM communities)
Empowering our clients to understand and dismantle the systems of oppression in our society including, white supremacy
Promoting body liberation, Health at Every Size, and advocating against fat phobia, sizism and size oppression
​
Acknowledgement of those that came before us historically and those who still stand with us on this sacred land
​
Our Philosophy & Core Values
Inclusive & Culturally Responsive
We are committed to providing excellent psychological services with a special focus on individuals holding marginalized identities, including Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) as well as gender, sexuality, and relationship minorities. Our care is culturally responsive, affirming, sex-positive, trauma-informed, weight-inclusive, feminist-informed, and welcoming of LGBTQ+, Kink, and Polyamory/Consensual Non-Monogamy communities.
​
Our work is deeply influenced by Liberation Psychology and decolonized therapy. We recognize that healing cannot happen in isolation from the historical and systemic forces—such as colonialism, racism, and white supremacy—that shape our collective and individual experiences. A decolonized approach allows us to challenge dominant Western frameworks, center clients’ cultural wisdom, and affirm practices that restore connection, community, and ancestral resilience.
In therapy, we strive to understand how power, privilege, and oppression affect our clients’ lived experiences while also honoring the cultural traditions, practices, and creativity that foster resilience, especially within BIPOC communities. For many, addressing racial stress and racial trauma—including racism, discrimination, and microaggressions—is an essential part of healing.
We practice from a lens of cultural humility, recognizing that we can never fully know every aspect of a client’s experience. Our therapists continually reflect on our own identities, biases, and worldviews while engaging in ongoing personal and professional development. This lifelong commitment allows us to offer therapy that is not only culturally responsive but also affirming, collaborative, and rooted in justice.
Anti-Oppressive &
Anti-Racist
The Aguirre Center for Inclusive Psychotherapy (ACIP) is a Latinx-owned practice built on principles of anti-oppression and anti-racism. We believe that simply claiming to be "not racist" falls far short; instead, we are committed to actively being anti-discrimination, anti-oppression, and anti-racist. Our dedication to dismantling institutional racism, white supremacy, and other oppressive systems spans every level of our practice—from our policies and procedures to our organizational culture and clinical work. To support this mission, our therapists engage in ongoing education and courageous conversations that deepen our understanding of our own experiences with power, privilege, and oppression. We believe as ethical mental health clinicians that we must continually consider and self-reflect on the following:
-
Where do I hold privilege and how might these areas affect my work?
-
How have these cultural influences shaped who I am, how I see myself, how I see my clients, and how my clients see me?
-
How have they influenced my comfort level with other groups?
-
What kind of assumptions might be made regarding my visible identities? How have I made assumptions about other visible identities?
-
How can I go about seeking spaces to further develop my awareness of biases that may exist because of my privileged identities?
​
We are committed to creating a courageous, informed, and supportive environment where both clients and therapists can explore identity and the profound impacts of culture, society, power, and oppression. As individuals and as a collective team, we consistently strive to embody our core values of inclusion, anti-oppression, and cultural humility in every aspect of our work. We recognize that, as part of this ongoing journey, we may sometimes fall short or make mistakes that are misaligned with our values and intentions. In those moments, we remain dedicated to humility, openness, and a willingness to receive feedback. We embrace discomfort as an opportunity for reflection, growth, and making necessary corrections to foster healing and repair.
Body Liberation &
Weight Inclusion
At ACIP, we affirm the values body liberation: we believe that ALL bodies are worthy and ALL bodies are deserving of compassionate, inclusive healthcare. We believe that YOU are an expert of your own body and that your body has the right exist just as it is. Unfortunately, many people with marginalized bodies frequently experience body policing in our society, particularly those that are fat, racialized, trans, queer, gender non-conforming or disabled. Our clinicians utilize a social justice lens that promotes fat acceptance and body liberation by examining the detrimental impact of sizism, sexism, transphobia, ableism and racism on both individual and societal levels. Body liberation can mean:
-
Rejecting societies narrow ideals of beauty
-
Taking back control over how your body “should” be
-
Giving yourself permission to live unapologetically in your own body
-
Releasing the belief that your worth is based on your weight
-
Promoting the understanding that no one can know another person’s health or abilities just by looking at them
-
Speaking out against body shaming, ableism, and and body-based discrimination
​
We are committed to cultivating affirming, trauma-informed healing spaces that honors our clients' individual definition of health and wellness. Our clinical approaches are informed by Health at Every Size principles which include celebrating body diversity, promoting weight/size-inclusivity and advocating for critical awareness cultural messages, structural and systemic forces, and scientific assumptions that contribute to fat-shaming, and fat phobia. We are passionate about helping our clients develop healthier relationships with their body and with food.
Land Acknowledgement
It is of the upmost importance to acknowledge those who came before us, those who walk among us and those who will stand after us in the generations to come. Our office is based in Atlanta, Georgia which sit on the stolen territories of the Muscogee (Creek) people. The Muscogee people were expelled from their ancestral lands, which include the areas now known as Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Before their forced removal by the US government, the Muscogee people lived in sophisticated, complex societies (complete with art, music, ceremony, agriculture, architecture and trade industries) and autonomous tribal towns that together formed a multi-part union known as the Muscogee Creek Confederacy. We believe it is important to honor the painful history of genocide and the thousands of lives lost during the Trail of Tears.
We gratefully acknowledge the Muscogee people on whose ancestral homelands we gather, as as well as the diverse and vibrant Native communities who still make their home here today (according to the 2010 Census, the state of Georgia reported that approximately 2% of the Atlanta population was Native American). We are grateful for the opportunity to work and live here, and to offer healing to clients and each other, on these indigenous peoples’ traditional homelands.
