Meet Our Team

Dr. Steve Westby (he/him/his) will join Heartland Counseling Services in January 2026. Hegraduated with a bachelor’s degree from St. John’s University and earned his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of North Dakota. He has been working as a psychologist in Nebraska for more than 20 years. Steve has worked in private practice as well as medical settings, college counseling centers, and community mental health centers. His work includes individual and family therapy — as well as psychological evaluations for children, adolescents, and adults. In his spare time, he enjoys spending time with his family and endlessly tinkering with his (admittedly mediocre) golf game.

Steve specializes in assessing why people sometimes feel “stuck” in their therapy, clarifying diagnostic issues, and assessing for conditions like depression, anxiety, ADHD, and autism. 

Steve believes in making psychological evaluations therapeutic rather than being just about gathering information. In doing so, he focuses evaluations on questions that clients wish to have answered. For instance, some people want to know why they’re so depressed or how they can control their anger better. Others hope to better understand why they can’t let people get close to them. Steve focuses his evaluations on providing answers to these kinds of questions — and helping people take the next step on their journey toward a better life.

In therapy, Steve works to provide an atmosphere of compassion and respect, and invites people to begin exploring their thoughts and feelings. As people come to better understand themselves, they can begin to develop greater compassion and understanding for why certain feelings are there and how these feelings might become intense or extreme. This compassionate awareness helps create emotional safety so that people can begin to let go of painful feelings or beliefs about themselves — and empowers them to lead lives filled with greater connection, peace, and clarity.