Joshua Montrenes, PhD, LP

About

  • Pronouns: they/them

  • Occupation and Specialty: Psychologist

  • Location (Clinic/hospital): Interna Mental Health

  • Location (City): Minnesota (Telehealth)

  • Offers Telehealth: Yes

  • Contact Information: https://www.internamentalhealth.com/team/joshmontrenes, (612) 234-7865‬, jmontrenes@jmat-services.com

  • Bio: Hi there! My name is Josh. My identities include being nonbinary, fat, and neurodivergent. In our work together, I will help you challenge ingrained notions of ableist, capitalist productivity and unlearn harmful anti-fat narratives. Do you feel like your emotions grab the wheel and tell you where to go? Or do they pull you away from the things that are most important to you? Do you find yourself looking at the dishes you haven’t washed, the work you haven’t finished, and felt that it was impossible to keep up? Does it feel like your heartbeat won't slow down or you can’t quite catch your breath when you’re trying to fit yourself into a box that wasn’t made for you? I’ll be right there with you as we work through your painful emotions together. We’ll not only process these emotions in the session but explore what these emotions mean in the context of your life: the why’s, how’s, and who’s of it all, and give you greater insight into what is really going on under the surface. I also want to work with you to recognize your worth as an individual outside the pressures of capitalism and constraints of ableism and cisheteropatriarchy. We’ll experiment with ways to get through tasks that actually fit your brain, not some imaginary ‘should’ brain.

    Through our work together, we’ll release those pent-up emotions and give you some space to breathe. We’ll work to not only make day-to-day tasks more manageable, but also to allow yourself some grace and honor your own capacity. I also provide support to COVID-Conscious folks and bring lived experience as a member of this community. I will be right there with you to work through the hurts from isolation, invalidation, and ableism that often come with being COVID-Conscious.

    If you are feeling lost, like you need support, or like your experiences are often invalidated, I'm here to provide kindness, compassion, and understanding. I am happy to follow your lead in therapy, focus on goals and concerns that you bring to each session, and provide support in a way that feels right for you. I want to explore with you different ways of being in the world outside of oppressive norms in order to help you live as your truest self.

    Outside of my therapeutic work, I enjoy spending time in nature, playing videogames, and cuddling with my cat, Walnut.

Approach to care

  • What does it look like for you to provide care to patients in larger bodies? How is, or isn’t, your approach different from how you care for patients in smaller bodies? If you work with children, how is or isn’t your approach different when working with children?

    When I am working with folks in larger bodies, I am always considering the context of how anti-fatness is affecting their lives, and how this aspect of their identity may intersect with other identities they hold. I take a fat-liberation approach to my work. I support my clients in advocating for themselves and learning to cope with the stigma they experience, so that they can live as their truest selves, free from the constraints of societal anti-fatness.

    Anti-fat narratives in our society affect everyone, even those in smaller bodies, and I often find myself discussing this context with clients in smaller bodies when they experience anti-fatness (whether external or internal).

    My work is generally the same with children, though sometimes it might look more like helping parents deconstruct internalized anti-fatness, so they are not repeating these same-harmful narratives to their children.

  • What is your perspective on how weight is or is not related to health?

    I do not believe that weight is related to health. It is clear that people can develop health problems regardless of their size. What is also clear is that fat folks seeking medical care are often discounted and told to lose weight instead of having their very real medical conditions treated, which DOES lead to negative health outcomes. From a mental health perspective, it is not one’s weight, but the stigma they experience from being fat, that has a negative effect on their mental health.

  • Finish this sentence: “Fat people are…” 

    people, who are deserving of love, kindness, and respect.

  • How do you, your clinic, and the healthcare system you work in use BMI (i.e BMI cutoffs for accessing certain services, BMI on charts and printouts, etc)? Is this flexible?

    I do not use BMI for any reason. The only time I will speak about BMI with a client is to deconstruct the harmful nature and history of BMI and validate the negative experiences folks have had as a result of BMI being used in medical systems.

  • If a patient declines to be weighed, how do you and/or your staff proceed?

    I do not weigh clients for any reason.

  • If a patient declines to discuss weight loss, nutrition, and/or exercise, how do you proceed?

    This is not something I would bring up with a client to begin with.

  • Do you offer weight loss as a service, and if so, how much of your practice is this? What do you do if a patient requests your assistance with losing weight?

    I don’t provide weight loss services.

  • What does the physical accessibility of your office space look like? What kinds of accommodations are present for people in larger bodies? Are there things you wish were in place that are currently not? 

    I work in telehealth, so this does not apply to my therapy space.

  • What do you do to allow fat people to feel comfortable and welcome in your office? 

    Since I work in telehealth, this generally does not apply. However, I always treat fat folks with the empathy, dignity, and respect they deserve to create a welcoming environment.

  • If you’d like to use this space to talk about any identities (gender, race, size, sexuality, etc.) you hold and how this relates to your care, please do so. 

    I am a fat, White, nonbinary, neurodivergent person.

Profile last updated June 2026