About Renee!

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Meet Renee, a holistic family and child therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling

Hi, I’m Renee! I am a family, teen, couples, and child therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling. I also love helping men and women who have been in abusive, emotionally traumatic relationships build healthy boundaries and regain self-worth.

As a therapist, I take into account each client’s own personal background, culture, experiences, preferences, values, and beliefs to tailor counseling to meet each person’s individual needs and goals.

Additionally, I empower children, teens, and adults to take an active role in their own therapy to decrease negative symptoms, increase positive coping skills, and increase their overall life satisfaction.

A Guided Meditation for Anxiety by family and child therapist, Renee

Other Areas I specialize in Include:

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Client Testimonial About Couples Counseling: “We had a very nice meeting with Renee and both of us felt comfortable talking about our relationship and our concerns. We look forward to our next meeting on this Sunday.” – September 2023

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Client Testimonial About Individual Counseling: “It went well, I felt comfortable with her and am looking forward to my next session.” – September 2023

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Client Testimonial About Individual Counseling: “It went well. My daughter won’t talk to anyone. She talked freely with Renee and was willing to go back for a second appointment.” – September 2023

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Education and Training

I am a child and family therapist at Wisdom Within Counseling. I am attained my Master of Science in Clinical Counseling from Albertus Magnus College.

Additionally, I attended the University of Vermont for my Bachelor of Science in Psychological Science minoring in Animal Science. I knew that I wanted to be a therapist ever since my senior year of high school when I took Advanced Placement Psychology.

Sports and Athletics

I am a big proponent of using movement, exercise, and sports as a positive coping skill and stress reliever. I love integrating sports into therapy if there is client interest in kicking around a soccer ball, shooting hoops, throwing a ball, or even just stretching during session. 

My athletic interests have evolved through the years, but have remained a priority in my own life. Today my favorite forms of exercise are hiking with her dog, Duchess, and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.      

Sex and Intimacy Work with Couples in Counseling

It’s true that relationships are not always easy, but on the other hand, they should not be tremendously difficult either. Unfortunately, we are not taught in school how to be in relationships with others, so we often just go with what we know even if it is not working for us. Then it becomes a cycle which can be hard to break without knowing what a healthy relationship could or should look like. We often learn these patterns from the relationships we witness growing up and the primary one that is modeled for us is by our parents.

But not everyone wants to have the same relationship as their parents. They may have also learned unhealthy habits from their parents which is known as a generational pattern. One common generational pattern or learned behavior is associating shame with sex and physical intimacy. For example, think back to your first conversation with your parents about sex (if it was even had at all)? For many people it was awkward and full of vague metaphors, so no one had to use the words penis or vagina in a sentence. You may remember a cookie and a cookie jar or the birds and the bees? Yeah, that’s not exactly comprehensive.

Then there is sex education in middle or high school. There may have been a banana and a condom, and TMI on STIs but even that is not always as comprehensive and helpful for what we need to know now as adults trying to be in healthy relationships. TV shows, movies, and pornography only make it more confusing by establishing unrealistic expectations for what sex and intimacy really looks and feels like.  It might feel like there is simultaneously too much and too little information out there on how to truly help couples of all sexual orientations have strong intimacy and healthy sex lives. That’s what counseling is for. 

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Client Testimonial: “5 ⭐️ Both of us feel we are in the right place and are looking forward to our next sessions. Renee is excellent! ❤️ thank you for all you do.” – October 2023

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Sex and Intimacy in LGTBQIA+ Couples

Like many topics in today’s world, even sex and intimacy are often viewed through a heteronormative lens. Sex and intimacy on their own can feel confusing enough without having to try to translate it to relate to queer relationships. Here is where LGBTQIA+ Affirming Psychotherapy comes in. No more questions or assumptions about “who is the man/woman” in the relationship. No more trying to fit into gender norms and stereotypes. You can have education, coaching, and guidance about building up sex and intimacy for you in your relationship by therapists who are informed about the unique challenges and obstacles commonly faced by the LGBTQIA+ community and who have the knowledge and ability to teach you the skills necessary to overcome those hurdles. You’re not alone in this anymore. Your problems may not be unique, but your therapy will be because it will be tailored to your unique relationship. Because what it means to be intimate and have great sex is going to look different for every couple, no matter who you are or who you love. 

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Emotional Intimacy vs. Physical Intimacy

Emotional intimacy is a large and important foundational piece of physical intimacy and sex. Sex often diminishes in relationships due to a lack of emotional intimacy. Once that goes, the sex is not far behind. But it’s not impossible to get that spark back. Through education, communication, and by following the world renowned Gottman Method with the guidance of a trained professional you can rebuild emotional and physical intimacy through rebuilding friendship, feeling known by one another, sharing fondness and admiration, decreasing obstacles to healthy communication and comprehension, establishing rituals for connection, and making plans for the future to make life dreams come true. 

Emotional intimacy is also important to create a sense of safety in a relationship. Without emotional safety, it is difficult to have constructive conversations about physical intimacy, sex, pleasure, and preferences. That is why healthy communication and comprehension are so important. Once we can feel assured that our partner will hear and comprehend what we are truly saying then we can communicate more openly. Both aspects are necessary. As with most things, it takes two to tango, and communication is no different. You cannot have healthy and effective communication without comprehension. And you can learn more about how to achieve both of those pieces in therapy.

Physical Intimacy vs Sex

When we think about physical intimacy, our first thought may be sex, but sex is not the only form of physical intimacy. If you are aware of the Five Love Languages, one of them is physical touch and that is also not just referring to intercourse. Physical intimacy is synonymous with physical closeness to your partner which can range from hand holding, hugging, hair brushing, to playing footsie under the table. Once emotional intimacy and safety is built up, physical intimacy can be improved upon too, leading to an improvement in sex as well. When working on increasing sex in relationships interventions such as Sensate Focus and using the Gottman Card Decks can be utilized to increase sexual drive and pleasure.

Sex and intimacy do not have to be scary subjects. Counseling is a safe space to have open dialogue about topics you want to know more about, but just might not know how to talk about it. Countless couples struggle with sex and intimacy in their own relationships for this very reason. Let’s talk about emotions, consent, communication, boundaries, health and safety, pleasure, foreplay, mechanics, and after care. You’ll be glad you did.

In summary, when working with couples of any sexual orientation, building up emotional intimacy and safety comes first. It may not seem like the fun stuff, but that is the piece that makes the fun stuff last and become even better than you could have imagined. Physical intimacy then is separated from sex. We want physical touch to be able to stand alone without necessarily always leading to sex. That way it can become more frequent and feel safer to engage in even when one partner is not in the mood for intercourse. Finally, sex is the cherry on top. When you are with someone you truly feel known and seen by and can be vulnerable with inside and out then you can explore sex more freely and all it has to offer. These three steps could change your whole relationship. Speak to a trained professional about how you could take that first step, today.

A personal story from Renee’s life

I grew up in Vermont which means that 9 months out of the year we have snow (or at least that’s what it felt like). We got snowstorms all the time and life didn’t just stop when it snowed. You still drove to school, participated in winter sports, went to a friend’s house, etc. But that meant you had to learn how to drive in the snow.

In my family that meant if you were 16 and a storm hit, Dad would take you out in the car whether it was day or night. He had us drive up and down hills, hit the brakes to feel what it’s like for them to lock up or to slide across the ice, and how to regain control again. He coached us through multiple experiences like that so now that I’m an adult living in the Northeast and a storm comes, I feel confident hitting the road if I have to go out.

My father knew the importance of letting me and my siblings fail while he was around to teach us how to recover. If we never knew what it felt like to slide while he was in the car to tell us what to do, we would never learn how to do it as adults on our own. We would probably start to panic and a bad situation would only get worse. But since we’ve experienced those mistakes, we know how not to make them again or how to regain control when they do inevitably happen.

I like this analogy when I think about teaching children about emotion regulation. Let them feel big or hard feelings like sadness, anger, or frustration, and then teach them how to regulate those emotions. If we are afraid of emotions and always suppress them, children will never learn how to regulate them on their own which can lead to unhealthy coping mechanisms later in life. But it’s never too late to learn.

To begin with Renee, family, couples, and child therapist, click the button below to book a phone consult.