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FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Wondering what to expect?
Answers to the questions we hear most — about our approach, getting started, and payment.
GETTING STARTED
Root & Rise Clinical Specialists is a boutique, private-pay psychotherapy practice built on the belief that therapy should be personalized, intentional, and rooted in genuine human connection. Rather than simply matching clients with the first available therapist, we thoughtfully consider your goals, personality, concerns, and preferences to connect you with the clinician who is the best clinical fit.
Our practice combines evidence-based psychotherapy with compassionate, relationship-centered care. We believe meaningful healing happens when clients feel safe, understood, challenged, and supported.
We believe that the relationship between you and your therapist is one of the strongest predictors of success in therapy. During your initial consultation, we learn about your concerns, goals, personality, preferences, and scheduling needs before recommending the clinician we believe is the best fit for you.
You don’t have to be in crisis to benefit from therapy. Many people seek therapy because they feel overwhelmed, anxious, emotionally exhausted, stuck, disconnected, or simply want to better understand themselves. Therapy can also help you strengthen relationships, navigate life transitions, improve communication, and build healthier coping skills.
Your first session is an opportunity to get to know your therapist and begin sharing your story. Together, you’ll discuss what brings you to therapy, your personal history, your goals, and any questions you may have. Your therapist will begin developing a treatment plan that is tailored specifically to your needs.
Not every therapeutic experience is the right fit. Sometimes the therapist, approach, timing, or goals simply weren’t aligned with what you needed. At Root & Rise, we carefully match clients with clinicians based on their unique needs because we know the therapeutic relationship plays a significant role in successful outcomes.
OUR PHILOSOPHY
Mental Wealth-Care™ is our philosophy that emotional wellness is something to actively build, protect, and invest in—not simply repair during times of crisis. Our goal is to help clients develop lasting emotional resilience, healthier relationships, greater self-awareness, and practical tools that improve everyday life.
Trauma-informed therapy recognizes that difficult life experiences can affect how we think, feel, behave, and relate to others. Rather than asking “What’s wrong with you?” we ask, “What happened to you?” Treatment focuses on creating emotional safety, building trust, and helping clients heal at a pace that feels manageable.
Anyone who has experienced trauma, chronic stress, difficult relationships, loss, abuse, or overwhelming life experiences.
It promotes emotional regulation, reduces shame, strengthens resilience, and helps clients better understand how past experiences continue to influence the present.
Clients often report feeling safer, more understood, more emotionally balanced, and better equipped to navigate life’s challenges.
For many clients, we recommend beginning with weekly sessions to build momentum, develop the therapeutic relationship, and establish meaningful progress. As goals are met, many clients transition to biweekly or maintenance sessions based on their individual needs.
There is no one-size-fits-all answer. Some clients benefit from short-term, solution-focused therapy, while others choose longer-term therapy for deeper personal growth or healing from complex experiences. Your treatment plan is individualized and will evolve as your needs change.
While every person’s journey is unique, many clients experience reduced anxiety and stress, improved emotional regulation, healthier relationships, stronger communication skills, increased confidence, better coping strategies, greater resilience, and a deeper understanding of themselves. Our goal is not simply symptom relief—we aim to help clients build lasting emotional wellness and create meaningful, sustainable change.
INSURANCE & INVESTMENT
Our private-pay model allows us to focus on your clinical needs rather than insurance restrictions. It gives our clinicians greater flexibility in treatment planning, protects your privacy, and allows us to provide individualized, evidence-based care without limitations placed on diagnosis, session frequency, or length of treatment.
While we do not participate directly with insurance companies, many clients are able to use their out-of-network benefits. We are happy to provide a superbill that you may submit to your insurance company for potential reimbursement. We also accept HSA and FSA cards.
THERAPY APPROACHES
No. You don’t need to know whether EMDR, CBT, IFS, or another approach is right for you. That’s our job. We’ll learn about your concerns, goals, and history, then recommend the therapeutic approach and clinician that best fit your needs.
Trauma therapy helps people process and heal from experiences that continue to affect their daily lives. Trauma can result from a single event or repeated experiences over time. Treatment is personalized and may include EMDR, RTM, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and other evidence-based approaches.
Children (8+), adolescents, adults, couples, families, first responders, veterans, and anyone impacted by trauma.
Trauma therapy reduces emotional distress, decreases triggers, improves emotional regulation, and helps clients move beyond survival mode.
Greater resilience, increased confidence, healthier relationships, and a stronger sense of peace and control.
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an evidence-based psychotherapy that helps the brain process distressing memories so they become less emotionally overwhelming.
Individuals experiencing trauma, PTSD, anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, grief, or disturbing memories.
EMDR helps the brain naturally reprocess memories, reducing their emotional intensity and allowing clients to move forward with greater ease.
Reduced emotional reactivity, fewer triggers, improved confidence, and greater emotional freedom.
RTM is a structured, evidence-based treatment designed to reduce the emotional distress associated with traumatic memories without requiring clients to repeatedly relive those experiences.
Individuals experiencing PTSD, intrusive memories, nightmares, first responders, veterans, and survivors of traumatic events.
RTM helps the brain reconsolidate traumatic memories so they no longer produce the same emotional response.
Improved sleep, reduced fear, fewer intrusive memories, and increased confidence.
CBT is an evidence-based therapy that helps people recognize the connection between their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. By identifying unhelpful thinking patterns, clients learn practical strategies to create healthier emotional and behavioral responses.
Children, adolescents, and adults experiencing anxiety, depression, stress, low self-esteem, or life transitions.
CBT teaches practical coping skills and promotes healthier thinking patterns.
Greater confidence, improved emotional regulation, and more effective problem-solving.
Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an evidence-based therapy that helps people understand and heal the different “parts” of themselves with compassion rather than judgment. The goal is to strengthen the client’s core Self while helping wounded or protective parts heal.
Individuals experiencing trauma, anxiety, shame, self-criticism, emotional overwhelm, or relationship difficulties.
IFS increases self-compassion, reduces internal conflict, and supports emotional healing.
Greater emotional balance, healthier relationships, and a stronger sense of self.
The Stark Contrast™ is a proprietary therapeutic framework developed by Root & Rise Co-Founder Julie Stark, LCSW. It combines evidence-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with creative expression and structured reflection to help clients gain insight, challenge unhelpful thinking patterns, and create meaningful, lasting change.
Individuals seeking practical tools for personal growth, emotional resilience, and lasting behavioral change.
It encourages perspective, self-awareness, healthier thinking patterns, and emotional insight.
Increased confidence, stronger coping skills, and meaningful personal growth.
Advanced Holistic Counseling is an evidence-based, whole-person approach that recognizes the connection between emotional, physical, relational, and lifestyle factors. Rather than focusing solely on symptoms, treatment considers the broader picture of your overall well-being while remaining grounded in sound clinical practice.
Individuals looking for comprehensive, personalized mental health care.
It supports emotional wellness while considering stress, relationships, nervous system regulation, lifestyle habits, and other factors that influence mental health.
Greater emotional balance, increased resilience, improved self-awareness, and sustainable personal growth.
Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) is an evidence-based approach that helps individuals and couples better understand the emotions and attachment patterns that influence their relationships. Rather than simply teaching communication skills, EFT helps uncover the deeper feelings and unmet needs that often drive conflict, distance, or disconnection.
Individuals and couples experiencing relationship conflict, communication difficulties, trust issues, emotional disconnection, attachment wounds, or major life transitions.
EFT helps clients recognize unhealthy relationship patterns, express emotions more effectively, strengthen emotional bonds, and create greater safety and connection within relationships.
Many clients experience healthier communication, increased emotional intimacy, stronger relationships, improved conflict resolution, and a greater sense of connection with themselves and others.
The Gottman Method is a research-based approach to couples therapy developed from decades of studying what makes relationships succeed or struggle. It provides practical tools to help couples improve communication, manage conflict, strengthen friendship, rebuild trust, and deepen emotional and physical intimacy.
Dating, engaged, married, and long-term couples seeking to strengthen their relationship, improve communication, recover from conflict or betrayal, or prepare for marriage.
The Gottman Method teaches couples how to better understand one another, navigate disagreements respectfully, reduce negative interaction patterns, and build a healthier, more resilient partnership.
Couples often experience improved communication, increased trust, healthier conflict resolution, greater emotional closeness, stronger friendship, and renewed confidence in their relationship.
Inference-Based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (I-CBT) is an evidence-based treatment developed specifically for Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Unlike traditional approaches that focus primarily on compulsions, I-CBT helps clients understand and change the reasoning process that leads to obsessive doubts in the first place. Rather than asking clients to simply resist compulsions, I-CBT helps them recognize when their mind has moved away from reality and into imagined possibilities, allowing them to respond with greater confidence and clarity.
Children (8+), adolescents, and adults experiencing OCD, intrusive thoughts, compulsive behaviors, excessive doubt, perfectionism, or obsessive fears.
I-CBT teaches clients how obsessive thinking develops, strengthens trust in their own perceptions, reduces compulsions, and builds confidence in making decisions without relying on rituals or reassurance.
Clients often experience fewer intrusive thoughts, reduced compulsive behaviors, increased confidence, improved emotional flexibility, greater self-trust, and greater ability to engage more fully in everyday life.
LOGISTICS & ACCESS
We provide therapy for children (ages 8+), adolescents, adults, couples, families, and older adults.
Yes. Root & Rise proudly provides LGBTQIA+ affirming care in a welcoming, inclusive, and judgment-free environment. We are committed to providing compassionate, culturally responsive therapy that honors every person’s identity, relationships, and lived experience.
Yes. Select clinicians provide therapy in both English and Spanish, allowing clients to receive care in the language that feels most comfortable and natural to them.
Yes. We offer in-person therapy at our Port Jefferson, New York, and Boca Raton, Florida offices, as well as secure telehealth services for clients throughout New York, Florida, Connecticut, and Massachusetts.
Our clinicians work with a wide range of concerns, including anxiety, depression, trauma, PTSD, OCD, stress, burnout, grief, relationship issues, family conflict, parenting challenges, self-esteem, life transitions, emotional regulation, medical trauma, and personal growth.
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