Stephen Yates,Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist

Hello, my name is Steve Yates and I'm a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist with over 25 years of experience. I enjoy helping individuals, couples, and families better understand themselves and learn the communication skills necessary to build and maintain positive healthy relationships. I'm skilled in a number of different therapeutic approaches and have helped people deal with mild everyday problems to severe emotional and mental health related issues. I am holistic in my thinking and am not afraid to try new things in order to help my client's find the best solutions for them. I am eclectic in nature, meaning I utilize a number of different therapeutic approaches and styles to fit the client's specific needs. I have experience in trauma, severe mental illness, crisis management, relationship issues and self-esteem. I've also served as a Christian therapist for those seeking that approach to wellness. I've even been trained in hostage negotiation.

I like to work with individuals who are dealing with self-worth related issues, and couples communication issues and depression, anxiety, and finding one's purpose in life. I am a good listener, but once I understand what the main problems are, I will be very directive in my approach, meaning that I see therapy as an opportunity to provide direction in ways that the client hasn't thought of yet. I aim to provide new ideas and a fresh approach to problem solving. I started my career in counseling 38 years ago as a drug and alcohol counselor doing personal interventions in the homes and workplaces of my clients. That gave me the experience to do assessments in the mental health field, which later led to me being trained as a hostage negotiator. I became a licensed counselor and then a licensed marriage and family therapist two years later. I have worked both inpatient and outpatient, residential therapy and private practice. Through all of this, I have the ability to bring a lot of experience to help my clients get feeling better sooner.

Goal setting is important but the systems, that one has in place is what will determine one's success or failure. I will focus on helping the client to formulate a positive outlook for themself but more specifically help them to outline a system for getting there. I am someone who will seek to understand first, and then begin to offer suggestions and direction as to how they can proceed. My aim is to have to client feel like they have something tangible to begin to work with right from the very beginning.