Boston Psychologist: Renee Hoekstra, DBT, Groups

Mindful Eating Workshops Coming This Fall!

Eating mindfully is all about slowing down and being in touch. Mindful eating includes a wide variety of eating awareness practices, such as paying attention to all or any of the following:

Our feelings, moods, or stressors that impact eating
Sensations and physical experiences of eating
Hunger cues and fullness cues
How our environment shapes our eating habits

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I help professional women reduce loneliness, enhance connection, and solve emotional problems in small group settings using functional analysis, dialectics, and collective group feedback.

Boston Psychologist - Renee Hoekstra - cannon beach

Are you successful but disconnected?

Do you want meaningful relationships with other women?

Do you get stuck in conflict, have the same patterns play out in relationships, or yearn for different results?

Do you struggle with loneliness despite having partners, families, colleagues, or social networks?

Do you value personal growth in group settings where the leader is not the only expert in the room?

Do you want the opportunity to see yourself how others see you?

Are you looking for evidence based approaches such as DBT, ACT, Mindfulness, Self Compassion, and Functional Analysis?

Are you looking for connection, feedback, and personal challenges?

Have you ever wanted to ask specific questions about how to solve your sense of being “stuck?”

Are you looking for leadership that will help everyone else stay focused on doing the work together?

The loneliness epidemic is not solved with AI. It is solved through connection, feedback, and community.

I am a psychologist, author, blogger, speaker, and workshop leader.

The overall goal of my services are to decrease emotional suffering, help people survive painful life situations, and be the best versions of themselves when all the disruption of life threatens to overtake them. It is also about living a life according to their values, maintaining self respect, and openly acknowledging the pain that inevitably comes with change and loss.

I have over 20 years of experience leading small groups where people come together to explore the ways they get “stuck” outside of group show up in group, and offer present moment real life experiences using the collective wisdom of the group, universal well researched skills, and evidence based clinical interventions.

Small Group Work:

I facilitate a few small, amazing groups where people can come together to work on solving conflict, stress, and emotionally provoking situations by making use of Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills, Functional Analytic Psychotherapy, and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. People come together to grow, share, connect, form deep connections, generate solutions and ideas, and help each other. Current small groups are a professional women’s group (Tuesdays) and mom’s group (Thursdays). Mindful Eating will be coming in the fall.

More About Small Groups

Individual psychotherapy: When I show up I am present. I am not trying to cram in hours, speed through my time with you, manage an overbooked schedule, or zone out. I work to pay attention and focus on what we need to talk about. I believe in many things (besides cartoon elephants!) that involves solving problems, focusing on solutions, helping you improve your situation, and reducing anxiety and depression. Treatment planning, feedback, organizing your case, and enabling you to make choices based in reality is all part of how psychotherapy works with me.

Workshops/ workplace wellness/ public speaking on all of the following topics:

What happens when you find yourself parenting your teen in the exact way you wanted to avoid? Our ability to parent arises from what we know, and there is no script for how to do it right! Teens can challenge our values, get under our skin, and set off intense reactions. This workshop helps parents clarify values, embrace dialectics (balance opposing truths), understand developmentally normative teen behavior, and sort though emotional responses.

What is mindfulness exactly? In addition to all the myths and truths of how to be mindful, mindfulness is also about the opportunity to really show up for the moment. What is our life about? What we are paying attention to right now. What else could our life be about? Lots of things threaten to overtake our attention (obsessions, rumination, depressed mood, self defeating thoughts, hyper-vigilance, our own self doubt) and can prevent us from behaving in ways that really matters. This workshop helps people to explore all the concepts of mindfulness plus engage in a few simple practices to bring someone back from being unglued, unfocused, and emotionally disrupted to being connected, organized, and coherent.

A speaking engagement on the basics of emotions that includes writing prompts, opportunities to explore/ problem solve your own emotions, and ways to reduce emotional suffering. The workshop incorporates the cartoon elephant book which involves pictures, graphic design, and whimsy.

These workshops include experiential participation, writing prompts and discussion, the opportunity for personal engagement/ self application of content and materials.

I feel like it has been a lifeline. Watching other people succeed has also really prompted me to move forward. Something I did not know would happen. Witnessing people grow has involuntary helped me. I really appreciate, Renee. Your honest feedback. There is something about this group that (does not allow for any bullshit. It) calls us out. You keep us accountable, and we all know what is going on.”

Something that comes up for me. The uniqueness of this space. Is being both challenged and supported. Over time I have been in different settings, I have ben able to manipulate the dynamic of the therapy I have been in. But this is not something that I do here. Because that is not why I am here.”

There is a DBT (skills learning piece). Because it is curriculum based. It requires staying on task and on subject. Is a healthier environment to not go off and be tangential. You are able to bring it back to what we are actually doing. It has been influential and impactful in my own work. Being able to come from a place of love and support, but also challenge what I am doing or saying. I used to show up and just complain with no agenda to make change. I can be supportive and know that something else has to happen.”

Is there an elephant in this room?

Boston Psychologist - Renee Hoekstra - Amazon Book Handling Cartoon Elephants

I wrote a book called The Emotional Extremist’s Guide To Handling Cartoon Elephants which offers skills, tips, and ideas for how to manage your cartoon elephants (a metaphor for emotions!).

Playfulness, humor, and flexibility are just the beginning of the skill set I possess for helping people manage their cartoon elephant situations!

Get Book

Contact me if you are interested in hosting me at your workplace, school, or other organization to assist with personal growth, self help, or healing.

Contact Me