About Stefanie Raccuglia | Somatic Psychotherapist NYC

You weren't meant to carry this alone. With the right support, you can feel clearer in your emotions, more at ease in your body and more capable of meeting your life with more confidence

When you disconnect from your feelings, your body becomes the place they wait.

For years, I ran myself ragged with a thousand commitments, jobs, plans, obligations, conversations, anything to keep moving so I wouldn’t have to sit with what I was feeling. 

I’d drop everything the second someone needed me. I was the one people called “the most helpful or the most generous person they knew,” but inside, I felt used up and unseen.

I smoked cigarettes to get one moment alone, binged TV, food- anything to numb out, and then drowned in guilt & shame anyway. 

I thought the answer was to give more, work harder- become indispensable. I believed that if I did it all, how could anyone not love me? And if I didn’t do it, who would? And when I didn’t or couldn’t show up, I felt the fear in my core of being forgotten, lost, not chosen- not good enough. 

I let myself be walked over, manipulated, and taken for granted, and I couldn’t tell where other people's needs ended and mine even began.

All of that over-doing and over-caring wasn’t love or strength, it was survival. 

When I stopped seeing my body's exhaustion, anxiety and self-doubt as proof of failure, but instead as signals... things changed.

That's when I realized that if I wanted to change these patterns, it wasn't about trying harder. It was about getting real with myself, accepting support, and slowing down enough to find home in my own body.

Now this is the work I get to do with women every day: helping them release what was never theirs to hold, practice boundaries without guilt and deeply know themselves with the courage to take up space- messy, human and whole.

 You’re here because

However, this is a process of shaping and reshaping, moving through pauses, imperfect moments, and dynamic and gentle movements that slowly bring you back to yourself.

I believe every woman deserves to be seen, celebrated, and supported as she steps into her own rhythm of power, choice, and freedom.

It’s possible to feel steady, connected, and free when you have the right support, tools, and space to practice new patterns, whether that’s in therapy, in your leadership, or in the spaces where you create and collaborate.

My purpose is to help women reclaim trust in themselves, rewire old attachment patterns, and create relationships and lives that feel honest, embodied, and free. 

My philosophy 

I believe that the mind and body already hold the tools to find stability, make sense of things, and move forward with more ease. Healing isn’t about fixing what’s broken—it’s about creating the conditions for your system to restore balance, integrate experiences, and grow in a way that feels natural and lasting.

Much like regenerative medicine supports the body's ability to heal itself, my approach to mental health honors the body’s innate intelligence—helping you rewire patterns, reconnect with yourself, and build resilience from the inside out.

Drawing from multiple Somatic, Relational and Experiential therapies and practices,  I weave together an approach that honors the intelligence of your body. I bridge the practical and the creative—blending deep nervous system work with expressive, movement-based healing to create real, embodied change. Each modality serves as a pathway to greater awareness, integration, and ease, helping you move towards wholeness in a way that feels organic and deeply embodied.

Hey there,  I’m Stefanie Raccuglia

A Licensed Professional Counselor (CO) and a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (NY), EMDR EMDRIA-certified therapist and a Registered Dance/Movement Therapist, with additional training in Feldenkrais and other somatic approaches. 

My work is integrative and embodied, weaving somatic psychotherapy, EMDR, parts work, and movement-based practices to help people recalibrate the patterns that keep them tense, unseen, or stuck.

I’ve spent over a decade working across the developmental lifespan: from children in foster care and teens navigating adoption, school, and the justice system;  to parents and families rebuilding relationships; and to women in adulthood finally untangling the old wounds that have shaped their worth, their boundaries, and their capacity for love. 

Alongside clinical work, I’ve choreographed and directed theatre productions and programs for all ages, built dance curricula for children with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and led creative projects that centered  authenticity and embodiment. 

I don’t show up with answers, I show up with a stance of listening, skilled tools, and an integrated practice that stands behind the work. I bring directive, practical, and creative interventions that help people actually try on new ways of being in real time. My experience stands behind me, but it’s my presence with you that shapes the work. 

And honestly? The most electric part of my work is witnessing those moments of reconnection when someone does what once felt impossible. , You can see it in their posture, their breath, their whole being: the shift from fear to freedom.

I wasn’t always so rooted in myself.

I grew up in a family where worth was measured by what you could carry how much you did, how well you held everyone else together. As the oldest daughter, I became the responsible one: the doer, the fixer, the person people leaned on. I thought it was love and responsibility, but underneath it was a response to the fear that I wouldn’t be valued unless I was useful.

And woven through all of it was an early lesson that my body wasn’t acceptable as it was. When you’re taught your body is a problem, you learn to overperform and overgive just to feel worthy of a place.

Losing a close friend cracked that pattern open in a big way. I saw how much guilt and responsibility I had been carrying,  how much I tried to hold what was never mine to hold. You can’t save others by abandoning yourself, and you can’t build your worth on someone else’s approval.

 Balance and real peace grows from the inside out—rooted in your body, your truth, your enoughness. And once it takes root there, it changes everything: how you love, how you lead, and how you live.

Beyond the therapy room, I partner with teams and leaders to bring trauma-responsive, embodied practices into their work.

I help groups and organizations shift from stress and mistrust to clarity, honesty, and collaboration that actually feels supportive.

In creative and theatrical spaces, I bring that same approach to to help production teams reduce conflict, strengthen trust, and create safer, more connected environments and support performers in building embodied presence and authenticity.

I thrive in creating spaces where women can contact aspects of their identity, body, and voice that have long been buried or out of reach.

Since starting my practice, it has been my honor to walk with women through some of the biggest turning points of their lives: promotions, graduations, separation and divorce, new loves, marriage and remarriage, babies or choosing not to have children, cross-country moves, quitting jobs, starting businesses, finding community,  and ultimately reclaiming parts of themselves they had shut down for so long.

Your pain and your patterns make sense. You don’t have to keep holding everything yourself. 

Together, we’ll unpack what’s been shaping you, reconnect you to what you need, and strengthen the way you relate to yourself, to others, and to the groups you’re part of.