Chris has 26 years of diverse experience in the criminal justice, court, mediation, teaching,
counseling, group facilitating, writing, and hospice fields. A native Minnesotan, she graduated
with her masters in social work from Augsburg College in 2002. She spent 2008-2018 in
Colorado and moved to Duluth after a long stint running a non profit marriage counseling retreat
center seeing couples in crisis and doing premarriage counseling. In Colorado she and her
husband specialized in marriage counseling and she is co-author of a marriage book, “The
Hope Filled Marriage” . She was head therapist at a domestic and sexual violence crisis center
and worked closely with the community to educate the spiritual community about sexual and
domestic trauma. She is a licensed Minister and loves to officiate weddings. She is trained in
the Prepare/ Enrich tool which helps couple identify their areas of growth and strength.

Her specialties are deeply important to Chris and include; marriage counseling involving
complex barriers to intimacy including affairs and addiction, helping persons with
domestic/sexual abuse trauma begin to heal, and helping those spiritually traumatized by
religious abuses, and lastly grief support and counseling. She has a profoundly personal
connection to chronic illness and caregiver fatigue; as well as passion to use her clinical skills to
strengthen, teach and help those facing chronic illness. Her approach includes the use
attachment theory to explore emotions and core hurts and reconnect couples and help
individuals work through their barriers to intimacy, psychoanalytic theory-exploring inner
dialogue and subconscious drives; narrative therapy- understanding the stories we tell
ourselves and how we live those stories out, as well as process therapy- helping people connect
to their consciousness in deeper ways and live more intentionally. To Chris, the whole person
matters. The past, present and future are all relevant to developing treatment plans that bring
lasting change. Chris loves all adventures outside, a riveting TV series, reading books, hearty
dialogue, and most especially living life with her best friend, their two girls; son and his wife.

Chris practices under the supervision of Carolyn Dehnbostel MA, LMFT, and another LICSW board approved supervisor.