February 06, 2023

Setting and Keeping Boundaries

50 minutes

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Join Jen and guest Dr. Lisa Tensmeyer Hansen as they explore the sometimes difficult world of setting and keeping boundaries to protect and support your LGBTQ child. From school to church to relatives to friends, there will always be opportunities to practice boundary setting and keeping. Practicing boundaries can be hard, but ultimately allow truer relationships with those we love and allow our LGBTQ child to feel safe and seen and respected.

Special Guest: Lisa Tensmeyer Hansen

Lisa Tensmeyer Hansen is the clinical director and founder of Flourish Therapy, Inc., (Flourish), a behavioral health clinic located in Provo, Utah, which she founded in February 2017 to meet the needs of LGBTQ+ and SSA individuals and their families. Lisa received a B.S. from Brigham Young University in 1990 as university valedictorian (Summa Cum Laude with Honors thesis), an M.S. in 2012 and Ph.D. in 2017, both at BYU, focusing on improving the mental health of LGBTQ+ people in conservative family and community. As part of her graduate programs at BYU, she taught a course on the family proclamation and a course in graduate research and writing. Her dissertation was a quantitative analysis of adolescent emotional self-regulation in 600 families from Seattle and Provo. Her master’s thesis on a preliminary aspect of the dissertation won the national 2013 AAMFT Masters Thesis of the Year Award.

Since 2010 Lisa Hansen has seen clients at the BYU Comprehensive Clinic, the Provo Center for Couples and Families (PCCF), and at Flourish. In 2016, she was invited to be a continuing participant in the Reconciliation and Growth Project, a dialogue group of conservative and liberal therapists and academics forging ideas to bridge divides and educate in various forums in the LGBTQ+/SSA therapeutic community. In 2018, Dr. Hansen won the Outstanding Counseling Supervisor of the Year award from the University of Utah and in 2019, she was awarded Ally of the Year award from the LGBTQ+ organization, Affirmation International.

Lisa Hansen’s interest in the well-being of LGBTQ+ and SSA people is informed by her LDS faith. She was recently released as a member of the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, and she and her husband are the composers of the Primary Children’s song, Nephi’s Courage.

Dr. Hansen has given more than 100 community presentations, articles, and podcasts for universities, clinical mental health organizations, community mental health agencies, school districts and conferences. She lives with her husband in Payson, Utah, where together they made a home for 7 children (and a few extras) and now have 18 grandchildren.

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