About Boone Christianson, LMFT

*Current wait to see Boone is 1-2 months, depending on the client's flexibility.

I was born at Camp Pendleton, California, on March 23, 1995. I am the middle of 5 children, and have two brothers and two sisters. My father is a family physician, and was in the US Navy for the first 10 years of my life. My mom is a nurse. We lived in California, Guam, Florida, California again, and Italy. I went to Italian public school for a year, learned sufficient Italian to survive, but can’t speak much anymore. After, we moved to Provo, Utah, where I started 5th grade at Edgemont Elementary.

I graduated from Timpview High School in Provo, after which I immediately left on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to Mozambique/Swaziland (Southeast Africa). I spoke Portuguese. After returning, I defied my medical parents’ wishes and majored in Anthropology at Brigham Young University, with an emphasis in agricultural non-profit development. I worked several landscaping, tutoring, and grocery-stocking jobs to pay my way through college, and managed to earn a few scholarships to fund research studies in Malawi, Namibia, and Ghana. 

Anthropology is the study of cultures and systems. Through a research opportunity in the BYU Family Studies department, I learned it is highly relevant to successful family therapy. I left behind the nonprofit world, applied to Marriage and Family Therapy masters programs, and got a great deal from Auburn University in Alabama. I graduated in August, 2020. I wrote a thesis about the ways religious leaders handle mental health and relational problems (Christianson, 2020).

While in my first year of grad school, I ran into my wife, Kaprena Worth, on the LDS dating app Mutual (Never thought the online dating thing was for me, but here we are!). We dated long-distance for about 6 months before getting engaged, and were married in March, 2020, just before the world went into pandemic lockdown. She came with our son, Dominic, born in 2018. Kaprena is a certified life coach, has a bachelor's degree in family studies, and graduated with her masters of social work in May, 2023. Our baby, Eilif, was born in 2021. 

Family Therapy is the best job in the world! I started at Alliance Behavioral Psychology in Orem, Utah, in August 2020, then opened Steps Family Therapy in October 2022. I love coming to work every day, and I love thinking about complex cases in my spare time. Obviously, the greatest reward is helping people improve their health and relationships, but I love the effect that doing therapy has on me. I see humans overcoming massive challenges every day by being courageous, vulnerable, and persistent. I learn about myself as I ask questions and challenge people to make changes. I wrote this about the things I’m learning from you guys. I went to school for this and have read a ton of books, but watching it play out with you makes it much more real. Thank you. Hopefully I’ve put some of my education into a digestible format.

What to expect in therapy:

-Being challenged to make changes in yourself (not others).

-Speaking about deeply personal things, opening cans of worms, revealing family secrets. Overall, talking about things you have avoided talking about. This might take some time, but it's always on my agenda.

-Education about environmental factors of mental illness and relational problems.

-Bringing as much of the family into it as possible. People heal more effectively when those around them are involved, and I rarely prefer the slower route of individual therapy.

-Owning your insecurities and mistakes.

-If a child is the presented patient, I will be spending more time with parents (the goal is that parents become the child's primary therapy source).

I welcome questions about my personal life, and will share examples in my own marriage and family when appropriate. I also welcome feedback. I need to know whenever my methods don't seem to be working, because there is always something new to try. Also, please tell me if I've offended you. I rarely get defensive and welcome your feelings, and repairing the therapeutic relationship can be a great model for your own relationships. 

Some of my interests:

-I did lacrosse, football, and wrestling in high school. I loved flag football intramurals at BYU and Auburn.

-Reading Sci-Fi and Fantasy Novels. Writing the blog

-Movies. LOTR.

-Archery

-Acting. (You might find me in the background of some LDS productions?)

-Weightlifting

-Languages and cultures (I speak Spanish and Portuguese, and have studied Malawian and Namibian dialects)

-Music. I play piano and harmonica. I love 90s-early 2000s, and soft 70s-80s.