When Sarah Gugluizza and her husband began growing their family, they decided to swap Bay Ridge for Accord, where they’d owned a home since 2012. “We wanted to be in a place where we felt our kids could grow and be in nature at a slower pace,” says Gugluizza. “And we love being able to breathe fresh air and see the mountains every day. It always stops me in my tracks when there is a clear day or a beautiful sunset.”
After her second daughter arrived and home was solidly established, Gugluizza—an LCSW-R, or licensed clinical social worker—decided to reopen her practice upstate. Thus did Rising Lotus Counseling begin to grow, planting its own roots in Stone Ridge four years ago and blooming mid-pandemic into a team of therapists ready and able to help clients navigate life’s rapids and rocky spells.
We love being able to breathe fresh air and see the mountains every day. It always stops me in my tracks when there is a clear day or a beautiful sunset.”
- Sarah Gugluizza
Services offered at Rising Lotus Counseling include individual, couples, and family therapy. There’s a strong focus on kids, teens, and maternal mental health, a specialty Gugluizza picked up after her own second pregnancy and motherhood journey proved to be quite a ride. It fits with her career of specializing in “children, teens, and their grown-ups,” she says.
At Rising Lotus Counseling, Gugluizza carries a caseload of her own and supervises a team of specialists with a wide and deep grasp of how to help people feel and cope better, whether what’s plaguing them is trauma, substance abuse, anxiety, depression, or all the above. Creative art therapy, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing, a psychotherapy treatment) for trauma, and cognitive and dialectical behavior therapy are all delivered in a collaborative, supportive space; some services are available through telehealth.
Services offered at Rising Lotus Counseling include individual, couples, and family therapy.
“Therapy sessions are very client-focused,” says Gugluizza. “Typically a patient will lead what they want to do and talk about, and we follow, providing various supports and interventions that help patients work towards their goals and feel better. For younger children, we specialize in engaging in various forms of play therapy and artwork.
“For older clientele, we largely engage using talk therapy, but will also use other clinical tools as needed or wanted,” she continues. “All of the people who work here are members of the community that we serve, and all feel very strongly about helping the people that we live among.”
There is, of course, no community on the planet that wouldn’t be lucky to have this place; in central Ulster County, it’s a goddess-send. “There are not many practitioners that treat youth in small-practice settings here,” says Sarah. “I’m also one of only six local practitioners specializing in maternal mental health. People typically come to find support for their child or children, or to address concerns around maternal mental health needs—those are our most common populations—but we have always treated a little bit of everyone. Many adults come to work through their anxiety, depression, relationship issues…all the different kinds of life traumas. All of us here treat many kinds of presenting problems.”
Rising Lotus Counseling planted its own roots in Stone Ridge four years ago and bloomed mid-pandemic into a team of therapists ready and able to help clients navigate life’s rapids and rocky spells.
At Rising Lotus Counseling, it’s understood that human connection is essential to healing hurting hearts. “We treat our patients with honor, respect, and trust,” Gugluizza says. “We value the human connection that we are able to make with them and build our relationships. When people feel they can find trust in you that is genuine, that you are being authentic with them, they really appreciate that. When someone can feel comfortable and let you in to help, there is a rapport that’s formed. This keeps people coming until they reach the goals they have for themselves.”
Going forward, Sarah would like to add group therapy to the Rising Lotus Counseling toolkit and spread her practiced healing tactics through consulting and writing. And she’s loving the way the petals are unfolding. “I love being able to help myself and others on my own terms, in my own way, and know that I am doing great work for people and my family,” she says. “I always try to laugh, learn something new, and make sure that the people I am working with are able to feel they gained something at the end of their [therapy] time.
“It is my biggest honor that patients let me bear witness to the things going on in their lives,” Gugluizza concludes. “They share with me, tell me their stories, let me in, and value my contributions. There’s something invaluable about being with another person in that way, about having the ability to help and support and nurture them as they grow.”
Rising Lotus Counseling
P.O.Box 747, Stone Ridge
risinglotuscounseling.org
845-243-7789
