Multi-discipline therapist is mindful of making a difference

By JOHN BARTIMOLE

September 26, 2026

OLEAN — Karan Turnquist’s career road map may have included many stops, twists and turns, but it always has had the same unwavering destination: to help people, especially children and their parents.

And with the opening of her own business, Mindful State Therapy Services, she has more than arrived where she was always destined to be.

Turnquist, who ironically started out as a literature major in college, said her first experience with a counselor took place

in a North Union Street location when she was just 8 years old. That experience may have been a foreshadow of what her career would become, which includes more than 25 years of experience as a counselor and therapist.

Her business is one of eight selected for the 2026 Laine Business Accelerator cohort and, with offices in Chautauqua and Cattaraugus counties, it is expanding and helping more people and children every day. In fact, Turnquist said, she already has “12 calls to return since last Friday.”

“My business specializes in treating trauma, using a variety of evidence- based tools,” she said. “Trauma can be defined in many ways, and it is not limited to just to physical or emotional trauma. It could be trauma caused by living with a narcissistic individual, for example.The more modern definition of trauma helps us to understand trauma and how we experience it and how we react to it. That is what my service focuses on.”

Her clients run the gamut of ages, including infants.

“I realized early on in my career that I love working with children and helping their

parents,” she said. “I specialize in children, infants and early childhood, using targeted trauma resolution methods, such as play therapy and cognitive behavior therapy, among others.”

In fact, previously, she had worked as a counselor at an 8 to 4:30 job, which fit in perfectly with her children’s school schedules, but she discovered that, while working with adults was rewarding, “I missed working with kids,” especially after she had spent time in an innovative, schoolbased mental health program before leaving to work with adults.

In 2018, she started offering therapy services online and that eventually led to her leasing an office and offering in-person services. Now, she has two offices — one in Westfield and one in Olean — and her business is growing. Spurring that growth is Turnquist’s bevy of certifications and academic accomplishments, including a master’s degree in social work from University at Buffalo and in counseling St. Bonaventure University. She is also pursuing her doctorate in clinical psychology. And from a further part of her quest for knowledge is her participation in the Laine Business Accelerator.

“I applied to be in the cohort because there’s so much I want to learn about the communities,” she said, “and the Laine Business Accelerator is a great vehicle for that. It is also going to help me with my business acumen and in getting in front of the greater Olean community. I’m looking forward to learning business and leadership skills with the support of the cohort and the instructors.”

Turnquist holds several certifications, including trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy, progressive counting therapy, cognitive processing therapy and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing. Additionally, she is a registered play therapy supervisor and offers internal family system therapy, first play therapy, filial play therapy and clinical hypnotherapy. She is also a Kundalini yoga instructor and certified in reiki.

“One of the advantages I have is that I am qualified to train people in certain disciplines and techniques, which makes it easier for them and gives me the opportunity to have people I have personally trained,” she said. “That makes a difference.”

And making a difference in the lives of children, their parents and other adults is what her business — and her career and life — is all about.