Dr. Stephen Bentley , LPCC

Dr. Stephen Bentley helps people who are feeling overwhelmed, stuck, or burned out. He focuses on practical steps to ease anxiety, manage stress, and address addiction or trauma. He also supports people facing relationship or intimacy concerns, parenting challenges, grief, and career strain.

He has 32 years of experience in counseling and holds an LPCC credential. Over his career he has worked in hospitals, provided crisis intervention, led groups, and supervised other clinicians. That variety informs a straightforward approach to everyday problems.

His sessions start with building a working relationship and listening to what matters most to the client. He centers sessions on the person in front of him and avoids stigmatizing labels. Acceptance and collaboration are part of how he works.

Dr. Bentley integrates several ways of working. He uses cognitive-behavioral techniques to identify unhelpful thoughts and habits. He draws on attachment-focused ideas to look at how early relationships affect present concerns. He also uses client-centered and emotion-focused methods to help people feel understood and to deepen emotional awareness.

He has helped people with a wide range of concerns, including ADHD, bipolar disorder, eating issues, chronic illness, adoption and foster care questions, caregiver stress, and compassion fatigue. His goal is to help clients take practical steps toward change while offering steady support along the way.

How therapeutic approaches translate to online care

Attachment-Based Therapy looks at how early relationship patterns shape current bonds and emotional reactions. Online sessions can help identify those patterns and practice new ways of relating that reduce anxiety and improve intimacy. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, or CBT, focuses on changing unhelpful thoughts and behaviors by setting clear goals, trying small experiments, and tracking progress between sessions. It is useful for anxiety, depression, and managing ADHD-related routines.

Finding the right way of working is a team effort. Dr. Bentley will discuss which approaches match a person's goals and preferences, and then try methods together to see what helps. That collaborative process makes it easier to adjust techniques over time as needs change.

Online therapy offers flexibility through video calls, phone sessions, live chat, or text-based messaging. Video lets people use visual cues and practice new communication skills in real time. Phone sessions are a good fit when bandwidth is limited or a shorter check-in is needed. Live chat and text messaging work well for quick updates, coping in the moment, or adding brief coaching between longer sessions. These options make it simpler to fit therapy into busy lives and to keep continuity when travel or schedule conflicts arise.