START Creative Arts Therapy

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United States
West Islip, NY
START Creative Arts Therapy

Offering in-person, telehealth therapy services across NY state. Your mental health journey STARTS here!

Our West Islip office is home to a dedicated group of licensed clinicians now accepting new clients.

07/13/2026

Ever walked away from something with your sibling, partner, or friend and remembered it completely differently? You're not making it up. Neither are they.

Memory isn't a recording. It's a story your nervous system writes using your attention, history, and what your body read in the moment. Two people. Same event. Different true stories.

Healing starts when we stop fighting over who's "right" and get curious about both.

07/09/2026

What does Expression Lab actually do for a kid? More than you might think.

Confidence. Friendship. A safe spot for big feelings. New ways to communicate. And the kind of summer Saturday they remember.

Expression Lab runs every Saturday from July 18 through August 22, 3:00-4:30 PM. Ages 5-9. 248 Higbie Lane, West Islip. $40 per session. Registration is open on our website.

07/07/2026

Expression Lab is open. Ages 5-9, six Saturdays this summer, all about creative chaos.

Two of our creative arts therapists co-lead every week. Kids paint, move, play, build, and share. The first session is COLOR CHAOS on July 18.

If your kid loves making a mess. If your kid has big feelings and not enough words yet. If summer needs to be more than screens. This is for them.

Saturdays, 3:00-4:30 PM at 248 Higbie Lane, West Islip. July 18 through August 22. $40 per session. Registration is open on our website.

07/06/2026

Ever been in therapy, said all the right things, understood it intellectually, and still felt it sitting in your chest?

Some things don't live in words. Stress, grief, and trauma get stored in the body. Talk can name it. Movement can move it.

You don't have to be a dancer. You just have to let your body have a turn.

06/22/2026

Somewhere along the way, making became performing.

You start a piece and your brain is already writing the caption. You stop creating things nobody will see. That's not creativity. That's auditioning.

Make one thing this week that nobody else will ever see. Notice what shifts.

06/17/2026

A lot of people avoid trauma therapy for one reason: they're afraid they'll have to retell the whole thing, in detail, again and again, until it's somehow fixed.

That fear makes sense. It also isn't EMDR.

EMDR works with the way your brain naturally stores and resolves memory. You don't have to narrate every scene. You don't have to perform your pain to be believed. The work happens in your brain and body, with a trained clinician guiding the pace, on your terms.

For a lot of clients, that's the difference between 'I can't go back there' and 'I'm finally ready to set this down.'

06/15/2026

The longest day. The fullest light. The season of vitality.

On Saturday, June 20 (6 to 9 PM), join Danielle LaGrandier, ATR-BC, LCAT for the Summer Solstice session of Art + Astrology: Creativity Written in the Stars. Seasonal and zodiac symbolism, meditative practice, and hands-on art-making to explore how cosmic and earthly cycles shape your inner emotional landscape.

Adults 21+. No astrology experience required. $120. Students save 25% with code STUDENT25.

Register: https://www.startcreativearts.com/ceu-programs

06/10/2026

Somewhere along the way, a lot of us learned that healing means hiding the messy parts.

Skip the rage. Skip the shame. Skip the chapter that doesn't make sense yet. Hand over a cleaner version of yourself and maybe you'll be deserving of help.

That's not how this works. Not here.

Your whole story belongs in the room. The contradictions. The chapters you're still trying to understand. The parts you've never said out loud. Therapy isn't a place to perform recovery. It's a place to finally bring all of you and have all of you met.

06/03/2026

Not all stress is the enemy.

The pre-performance buzz before you go on stage? Good stress. The push before a deadline that helps you finish? Good stress.

Toxic stress is different. It doesn't lift. It doesn't pass. It just sits in your shoulders, your jaw, your stomach, and your sleep, and refuses to leave even when the source is long gone.

If you're trying to figure out which one you're dealing with, ask yourself: does this stress eventually let me go, or am I starting to wear it like a second skin?

05/30/2026

Final seats: our May 31 workshop on disenfranchised grief in substance use recovery is tomorrow.

Sunday, May 31 | 6 Ð 9 PM | West Islip, NY
3 CEUs | $120 | Capacity 10
For LCATs and creative arts therapy professionals.

Register on our CEU Programs page. If this date doesn't work, additional CEU workshops are on the calendar.
https://www.startcreativearts.com/ceu-programs

Address

248 Higbie Lane
West Islip, NY
11795

Telephone

+16318672501

Website

https://www.startcreativearts.com/

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