Christine Penwell
Calm, practical guidance for family and parenting concerns
- Credentials
- LPC
- Experience
- 7 years
- Licensed in
- Tennessee
- Languages
- English
- Format
- Online sessions
About Christine
Christine Penwell is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) based in Tennessee who helps people facing relationship strain, parenting challenges, trauma and abuse, stress, anxiety, and self-esteem struggles. She also supports concerns related to intimacy, career questions, ADHD, and navigating major life changes. Her style is warm and straightforward, grounded in empathy and respect.
She aims to make sessions feel practical and focused rather than overwhelming. Christine follows a client-led approach rooted in the ideas of Carl Rogers, using unconditional positive regard and authenticity in sessions.
Background and approach
She treats the person in front of her as the expert on their life and helps them discover clearer ways to cope. Sessions emphasize real-world tools alongside space to process painful experiences. Her background includes seven years of clinical experience across Missouri, Illinois, and Tennessee.
That range of settings helped her learn different ways to support people dealing with trauma and recovery, and to work through complicated family dynamics and parenting stress. She brings that experience to each conversation. Christine uses practical techniques from cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectical behavior therapy to teach coping skills and change unhelpful thought patterns.
She also draws on attachment-based ideas to look at how past relationships influence present reactions. Motivational interviewing and solution-focused methods help when clients want clear steps and goals. People who connect with Christine can expect honest feedback, steady support, and help turning insight into manageable next steps.
Her aim is to help clients build routines and responses that reduce daily stress and improve relationship interactions over time.
How Christine’s approaches translate to online care
Christine often uses attachment-based ideas to explore how past relationships shape current reactions. This approach helps people understand patterns in parenting, intimacy, and family conflict and is useful when people want to change how they relate to others.She also employs cognitive behavioral therapy, which focuses on identifying unhelpful thoughts and testing new ways of responding. CBT gives concrete tools for anxiety, stress, low self-esteem, and everyday struggles. Dialectical behavior therapy skills are used when emotional regulation and strong reactions are a concern; these skills teach distress tolerance and mindful responses.
Finding the right mix of approaches is part of the work. Christine collaborates with each person to see which methods fit their goals and preferences. She listens to what matters most and adjusts techniques as things change over time.
Online sessions are offered by video call, phone, live chat, or text-based messaging to provide flexibility. These options make it easier to fit therapy into busy days and to return to skills between appointments. For many people, remote sessions mean consistent support without long travel, and they allow practical coaching, skill practice, and reflective conversation in a convenient format.
Attachment-Based Therapy
Looks at how early bonds shaped what you expect from closeness, and how that plays out now with a partner, a parent, or your own children.
Client-Centered Therapy
The direction comes from you rather than from a set programme. The therapist offers a warm, non-judgemental space to think out loud and work at your own pace. Online, this rests on the relationship rather than on being in the same room.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
CBT looks at the link between what you think, how you feel, and what you do. You work on noticing unhelpful patterns and practising steadier responses. It suits online sessions well, because much of the work happens between appointments and can be talked through from anywhere.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Relationship issues
- Family conflicts
- Trauma and abuse
Also works with
- Abandonment
- ADHD
- Adoption and foster care
- Attachment issues
- Autism and Asperger Syndrome
- Career difficulties
- Coaching
- Commitment issues
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder (DMDD)
- Dissociation
- Divorce and separation
- Domestic violence
- Family of origin issues
- Family problems
- Forgiveness
- Guilt and shame
- Hoarding
- Impulsivity
- Infidelity
- Intellectual disability
- Intimacy-related issues
- Isolation / loneliness
- Life purpose
- Men's issues
- Midlife crisis
- Money and financial issues
- Obsessions, compulsions, and OCD
- Panic disorder and panic attacks
- Parenting issues
- Phobias
- Post-traumatic stress
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Prejudice and discrimination
- Process addiction (porn, exercise, gambling)
- Self esteem
- Self-harm
- Sexual assault and abuse
- Sexual dysfunction
- Sexuality
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Stress, Anxiety
- Women's issues
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 7 years
- Licensed
- Tennessee
- Languages
- English
Next step
Talk to Christine
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- Stop at any point