About Bente
Bente Hansen is a California-licensed marriage and family therapist with 20 years of clinical experience. She focuses on stress, anxiety, relationship concerns, grief, self-esteem, and coping with life changes.
Background and approach
Bente speaks English and Danish and brings a calm, respectful presence to sessions. She tailors conversations and treatment to each person’s needs.
Sessions are practical and grounded. Bente helps people name what’s hard, try new ways of relating, and build daily skills that make life feel more manageable.
Bente uses several therapy approaches to guide her work. She draws on attachment-based ideas to look at how early connections shape current relationships.
She uses cognitive behavioral techniques to spot unhelpful thinking and test new behaviors. Emotionally-focused and psychodynamic ideas also inform how she understands feelings and patterns over time.
Her background includes two decades of supporting people through major life transitions. She has experience with caregiver stress, chronic illness and pain, hospice and end-of-life counseling, and addiction-related concerns.
Communication problems, family of origin issues, and workplace stress are also areas she addresses. Bente aims to make sessions feel collaborative and straightforward.
She meets people where they are and helps them take manageable steps forward. If you want a therapist who listens and helps set clear goals, she may be a good match.
How therapeutic approaches translate to online care
Attachment-Based Therapy focuses on how relationships shape feelings and patterns. In online sessions this can help people understand trust, closeness, and repeating relationship cycles so they can try new ways of connecting.Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, looks at thoughts, feelings, and actions and teaches concrete skills to change them. This approach is useful for anxiety, stress, and low mood because it gives easy-to-practice tools and short homework tasks between sessions.
Bente treats finding the right approach as a collaborative process. She will talk with each person about goals and preferences, then suggest which methods to try first. The plan can be adjusted as therapy progresses so it fits real life and changing needs.
Online therapy offers flexible ways to meet. Video calls allow for face-to-face conversation and visual cues. Phone sessions are helpful when bandwidth is limited or when someone prefers not to use video. Live chat and text-based messaging allow brief check-ins, written reflections, and ongoing support between scheduled sessions. These formats make it easier to fit therapy into busy schedules and to keep momentum between appointments.
Frequently asked questions
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Specialties and expertise
Top specialties
- Stress, Anxiety
- Relationship issues
- Grief
Also works with
- Attachment issues
- Caregiver issues and stress
- Chronic pain, illness, and disability
- Communication problems
- Coping with life changes
- Divorce and separation
- Drug and alcohol addiction
- Family of origin issues
- Hospice and end-of-life counseling
- Isolation / loneliness
- Pregnancy and childbirth
- Self esteem
- Social anxiety and phobia
- Workplace issues
Therapeutic approaches
- Experience
- 20 years
- Licensed
- California
- Languages
- English, Danish