New psychotherapy practice fulfills lifelong dream

Jen Cowart
Posted 10/14/14

“Where the light at the end of the tunnel begins.”

That’s the motto Dale Belluscio has given to her new psychotherapy practice, Greenwood Psychotherapy, which recently opened in the …

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New psychotherapy practice fulfills lifelong dream

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“Where the light at the end of the tunnel begins.”

That’s the motto Dale Belluscio has given to her new psychotherapy practice, Greenwood Psychotherapy, which recently opened in the Greenwood section of Warwick. Opening her own practice has been a lifelong dream for Belluscio, the light at the end of her own tunnel, and now that she’s officially open for business she’s excited for the next part of her own journey to begin as she helps others on their own path to mental health and wellness.

A resident of Cranston, Belluscio has worked long and hard to get to the point of opening her practice.

“When I was 30, I was married to my husband Jim, raising four children – two boys and two girls – and I was waitressing. I decided to go back to school,” she said. “I went full time for eight years and graduated summa cum laude from Rhode Island College.”

Belluscio has both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in social work and is a licensed independent clinical social worker (LICSW) and Reiki Master.

Belluscio began working, over the next five years, a series of jobs centered around counseling some of the state’s most vulnerable and needy children and families. She worked at the Groden Center, Children’s Friend and Service and Arcadia Children’s Residential Home, counseling children who were autistic and non-verbal and children in the foster care system.

She also spent time working with Fellowship Health Resources, for a federal probation program for men and women just out of prison and at a teenage girls’ emergency shelter in Warwick.

“At one point, I was working four different jobs during that time,” Belluscio said.

Six years ago she began working in a shared practice, providing individual, family, group and couples therapy. She also runs a divorce care group at her parish, St. David’s on the Hill in Cranston, along with her husband.

“I counsel people of all ages,” she said. “I currently have 40 to 50 clients who range in age from three to 92. It’s challenging, but I love the challenge. I never know who’s going to come through the door next, which of my skills I’ll need to use. As a mother of four, I know the challenges of raising children. I know that sometimes the answers are not in a book.”

Belluscio specializes in counseling patients who have experienced trauma due to sexual abuse.

“I had my own sex abuse trauma and I can connect with clients at a level that many can’t,” Belluscio said. “Sex abuse trauma is one of the worst traumas of all because it hits you at your very core. Many years ago when I was going through my own therapy, I decided then that I was going to become a therapist so that something good could come out of the trauma I’d experienced.”

Belluscio relies on a wide variety of skills and therapeutic practices to help her patients in the best way possible.

“I utilize my Reiki training, which is a non-invasive touch or no touch relaxation and meditation therapy. I do a lot with meditation. I believe in the power of positive thought and of being guided to a more positive world so that we feel less alone and more in control of our lives,” she said. “I also use art therapy, play therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy [CBT] and dialectal behavior therapy [DBT].”

Belluscio explains her unique theory of therapy and how it guides her in her practice.

“A man was walking down the street and came upon a hole in the ground. He could hear someone calling out, ‘Help! Help!’ and he saw another man in the bottom of the hole. He said, ‘Hold on!’ and ran to get a ladder. Does he put the ladder into the hole and say to the man, ‘Come up so I can help you,’ or does he put the ladder in the hole and climb down into the hole with the man, saying ‘Together we’ll come up when you’re ready’?” Belluscio said. “I get down into the hole with you and I don’t make you come up until you’re ready. I empower my clients so that they no longer need me and I look at the whole person, not just their diagnosis. I believe that every person is a puzzle, and in order to get control you have to see yourself as many pieces of that puzzle. Your diagnosis or trauma is just one piece of your puzzle – it does not define you.”

Belluscio calls her own journey an amazing one so far and said that opening her own practice has been scary and exciting all at once, but she looks forward to meeting new clients at Greenwood Psychotherapy as she transitions into her new schedule.

“Currently, I am scheduling here at Greenwood Psychotherapy days, nights and Saturdays, but I’d like to keep Monday nights at my other office to help my clients there who can’t travel to Warwick,” she said. “I take the four major health insurances – Blue Cross, United, Tufts and Neighborhood Health. I also use a sliding scale if my patients don’t have any insurance at all. I will work with them.”

Belluscio can be reached at her new practice by email, daleys281@hotmail.

com and by phone at 744-0877, where prospective clients can leave a message if she’s in a session. The office is located at 1345 Jefferson Boulevard in Warwick.

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