Meet Dr. Gary Dillon | Black Male Psychologist in NYC

I grew up in a single-parent household, raised by my mother across several low-income communities in New York. Our address changed often. What stayed constant was my mother's conviction that education could open doors that circumstance had not.

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From an early age, I learned what it means to navigate the world as a person of color, to be expected to work harder for access that others inherited, and to exist in spaces where people who looked like me were rarely reflected back. That experience did not discourage me from pursuing education. It deepened my commitment to understanding why so many people like me were navigating those systems without support, and to doing something about it.

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Education and Training

I began at a local community college before transferring to New York University, where I completed my master's degree in Counseling for Mental Health and Wellness. I went on to earn my doctoral degree in Counseling Psychology from Fordham University.

My clinical training took me across New York City's most complex care environments, including Rikers Island through the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the Addiction Institute of New York at St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital, Queens Hospital Center, and Mount Sinai Beth Israel Medical Center. I have also worked in university counseling settings at John Jay College, Queens College, and Baruch College, all within the CUNY system, and through the Mental Health Service Corps.

Across those settings, my research focused on undocumented youth navigating educational systems, Black men experiencing racial and ethnic microaggressions, and LGBTQIA+ individuals navigating institutional barriers. Those research interests were not separate from my clinical interests. They were the same thing.

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Learn more about individual therapy.

How My Identities Inform My Work

I am a Black and LGBTQIA+ psychologist. Those identities are not incidental to my work. They are the foundation of it.

They shape what I notice, how I listen, and the kind of understanding I can offer to clients who have spent years feeling unseen or over-explained in therapeutic spaces. When a client walks in carrying the particular weight of being Black in America, or of building a life that doesn't match what their family imagined for them, or of navigating an identity that the world still treats as something that needs to be explained, they do not have to start from scratch here. Learn more about working with a Black male therapist in NYC and how I work with Queer clients on my LGBTQIA+ Affirming Therapy NYC page. 

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I work from a strength-based perspective. I believe people who have been historically marginalized bring extraordinary resilience and capacity, often in forms that are undervalued or misunderstood. My goal is not to fix what's broken. It is to help people understand what they've built, how they built it, and whether it's still serving the life they want.

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Featured in National & Professional Media 

Dr. Gary Dillon has been featured in WIRED, VICE, ABC7 New York/Eyewitness News, Thriveworks, Medical Daily UK, and Preferred Health Magazine as a psychology and mental health expert. His commentary explores the psychology of high achievement, burnout and recovery, relationships and boundaries, people-pleasing, motivation and behavior change, routines and self-compassion, grief, and emotional healing. His expert commentary has also been republished through syndication across additional regional and national media outlets.

Why I Founded Ally Psychological Therapy

Ally Psychological Therapy was built around a simple but necessary premise: that people deserve mental

health care that actually reflects their lives. Not care that requires them to minimize their racial identity or

explain their family structure or justify why their workplace experience feels the way it does. Care that starts

from understanding.

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For the clients I work with, therapy is not a luxury. It is a form of resistance, of repair, and of building something

better than what they inherited. I take that seriously. I'm honored to be part of it.

Learn more about my approach to therapy.

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Ready to work together? Schedule a Free 20-Minute Consultation