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Nan Wise, PhD, LCSW

Relationship & Couples Counseling
West Orange New Jersey 07052

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About Dr. Nan Wise

Short Term Approaches with Long Term Results

With three decades of experience, Nan Wise, Ph.D., LCSW, is a:

  • Licensed Psychotherapist
  • Certified Relationship Specialist
  • Certified Sex Therapist
  • Board Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist

 I am a licensed psychotherapist, mindfulness practitioner, certified sex therapist, certified relationship therapist, board-certified clinical hypnotherapist and Yoga teacher who is passionate about my work. As a clinician with over 25 years of experience, I have cultivated numerous empirically-tested tools which I employ with clients to co-create a multifaceted approach to fit their unique needs. As a cognitive neuroscience researcher, I apply my knowledge of how the brain creates the mind using emotionally-intelligent strategies for effective living and loving. I help clients develop short-term strategies with long-term benefits by honing new skills and habits that work to empower life-enhancing goals. I have powerful tools to share.

My specialty is to help clients design their lives from their conscious commitments rather than from emotional habits. I use a mindfulness-based approach to helping people focus on the outcomes they wish to create rather than the problems that bring them into therapy, and use a therapeutic consultation-coaching to assist them in embodying the changes that they wish to create.

Nan’s interest in the biology of emotional well-being is both personal and professional. She was born into a family predisposed to anxiety and suffered her first panic attack at age 21 while working at a psychiatric hospital. Although she initially grappled with feelings of shame and embarrassment, she discovered that her willingness to be authentic about her own struggles proved to be a major breakthrough. By accepting her anxiety and embracing her personal quest to find ways to loosen and soften around it, she became a lifelong student and teacher of what she needed (and continues to need) to practice and learn.

What I believe to be most unique to my practice is my willingness to share my authentic experience. Having been blessed with a predisposition to anxiety, I teach what I have needed to know. And I am always learning.

After her training in clinical social work in 1984, Nan went on to study numerous therapeutic modalities including Yoga, mindfulness meditation, Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Gestalt Therapy, Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), and Eriksonian Hypnotherapy—all tools which she uses to develop personalized therapeutic approaches in consultation with her clients whom she sees as fellow travelers. She offers her clients—individuals and couples—the opportunity to co-create their own therapy by focusing on the positive outcomes they desire, rather than the problems that brought them to treatment. Each client partners in the therapy process by participating in the selection of the specific approaches that best fit and developing a plan for actively implementing these tools and monitoring their progress. In her practice, Nan enthusiastically embraces the notion that unwanted symptoms –that which brings the client or couple into therapy–are in fact an attempt at a solution, and that listening deeply into the underlying positive intention beneath what we experience as problematic often facilitates the process of developing healthy behaviors, attitudes, and strategies which empower.

Sex is an important, wonderful part of being human. And sexual pleasure is a powerful life-affirming force for healing. And since the study of sex is key to understanding the neural basis of pleasure and reward, I am enthusiastic about the implications for learning how to harness the power of positive hedonism.

Nan’s interest in the study of sex stems from her belief that many problems have a root in some form of shame. During three decades of her clinical practice, she has observed that clients are often challenged in the practice of self-acceptance and at odds with being comfortable in their own skin. Shame had roots in disowned parts of self—often manifesting in discomfort with fully embodied sexual expression—frequently complicated by histories of receiving negative sexual messages or having traumatic experiences. For others, even if the sexual self is not the source of shame, too much “mind” – in the form of a relentlessly critical or judgmental inner dialogue –hampers the individual’s ability to be present to his or her own experience. Recognizing that we live in a culture that is both obsessively preoccupied with pleasure as well as pleasure-phobic, the ability to feel comfortable and connected with our own bodies with permission to embrace pleasure and joy is necessary to forge healthy relationships with self and other.

Please visit Nan’s website. You are welcome to email Nan directly using this form, or call her office for a free phone consultation.

Contact Information

Phone Number
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Business/ Practice Name
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City
West Orange
State
New Jersey
Zip Code
07052
Online Social Profiles
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License Certification

What type of license/certification do you hold?
LCSW - Licensed Clinical Social Worker
License Number
44SC00187000
License State
NJ

Education

Graduate School/University
Rutgers Graduate School of Social work
Highest Degree Earned
MSW
Graduation Year
1984
Gender
Female
Therapy Settings
In Office Online

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