Christen Hansel

My name is Christen, and I'm a licensed professional counselor in Virginia, USA. If you're coming to discover that you have dissociative Parts or that you are a system, you might be scared or confused, have a million questions...or maybe some things are finally starting to make sense for you. 

If you work with me, all parts are welcome in the therapy room! Your goals are my priority, but some of the things we might work on would be identifying and getting to know Parts, understanding internal relationships, exploring and working with your internal world, finding creative and effective ways to build internal communication, helping Parts have compassion for each other, and building internal cooperation. But it might be more important to you to address anxiety or depression or relationship issues, and we can work together to identify how your system impacts those concerns and how we can work with your system to make things better. 

Self-compassion tends to be a big part of my work with clients. That might seem like a stretch when you have Parts that can't stand each other, or that blame each other for trauma, or if self-criticism has been an important tool for getting you where you are. Working towards more internal compassion can be a gentle, gradual process that pays it forward in a big way. 

Being a therapist is a second career for me and has come as a part of my own journey of lived experience. It feels like an honor and a privilege to get to walk with clients the ways others have walked with me.