Psychotherapy

• What are Counseling and Psychotherapy?
• When Should a Person Seek Professional Help?

College is a time when there are many changes and adjustments leaving home, taking on adult roles and responsibilities, choosing career training, establishing relationships and many other challenges. Students may at times feel overwhelmed, sad, angry, afraid, confused or have other emotional responses to challenges. Being able to acknowledge and talk about emotions, identify sources of problems, and find satisfactory solutions are all skills that contribute to good mental health. Sometimes friends and family can be good resources for this process, but sometimes this option is either not available or inadequate. Problems may be too personal to share or require too much time from others. A person may wish to protect friends and family from the problems or may have difficulty trusting others. Sometimes skills and information needed to resolve problems are not available through friends or family. Counseling or psychotherapy can be helpful in solving these problems.

What are Counseling and Psychotherapy?

They involve a relationship between the client and a trained professional that focuses on resolving the client's concerns. Counselors may meet with individual clients for one hour sessions or therapy may occur in counselor-led groups with others who share similar concerns. Counseling focuses more on developmental concerns such as identity, relationships and managing the stress of daily living. Psychotherapy focuses on more intense or disabling symptoms and problems such as depression, anxiety, abuse, and trauma.

Some advantages of Professional care include:

• Confidentiality - information discussed in counseling or psychotherapy cannot be shared with others, except in rare situations¹, without written consent of the client.
• The relationship focuses exclusively on the client and the intention of the session is to help the client.
• The Counselor has specific training and expertise to work with the client's concerns. The training includes understanding of how to achieve good mental health and common problems affecting mental health.
• The Counselor has experience and training in working with people.
• The Counselor can recognize problems that warrant referral to a physician for medication.
• The Counselor is more objective than friends and family because he/she is not personally involved with the client outside of the sessions.

Counseling and Psychotherapy are collaborative efforts. The client and counselor can work together to identify problems, talk about and understand emotions and define goals. The counselor applies techniques based on established, researched psychological principles to help the client gain self-understanding, change maladaptive thoughts, feelings and behaviors and/or learn new skills.

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When Should a Person Seek Professional Help?

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According to the National Institute of Mental Health, one-third of adults in the United States experience significant emotional problems. Nearly 25% at some point experience depression or anxiety. College can be a stressful experience and students may at times feel overwhelmed. How does a person distinguish between normal challenges in living and serious distress? Some things to consider in knowing if it is time to seek professional help include:

• You feel overwhelmed or trapped with a prolonged sense of sadness, hopelessness, or apathy.
• The way you feel is affecting your sleep, eating habits or making it difficult for you to concentrate on school, work, and daily life.
• You worry all the time and feel you can't do it alone.
• Your response to your problems creates harm to yourself. For example, resorting to substance abuse or eating disorder behavior to manage emotions and problems.
• You respond to situations with excessive anger, hostility, or violent behavior.
• You have thoughts of suicide or wanting to harm yourself.
• You have a marked personality change.
• You have chronic problems establishing and maintaining good relationships with others.
• You feel victimized by past painful events. Memories that continue to trouble you interfere with daily life and relationships.
• You experience distressing, intrusive, repetitive thoughts that you feel unable to control.
• You experience frightening or bizarre thoughts, hallucinations, or extreme suspiciousness.
• Career concerns, or identity confusion.
• Chronic or severe anxiety.
• Difficulty or indecisiveness about life planning decisions.

The Counseling and Career Center offers a variety of services to students. Personal, couples, and group counseling by trained, caring professionals is available to full-time day students to help them deal more effectively with problems that interfere with the attainment of educational goals and personal fulfillment. CCC counselors can help with such concerns as career decisions, depression, anxieties and fears, self-esteem issues, sexual assault trauma, interpersonal conflicts, eating disorders, marital discord, stress management, family of origin conflict, physical/emotional/sexual abuse, and a wide variety of other distressing conditions. Counseling is provided within the established professional guidelines of confidentiality. Counseling services are oriented toward short-term interventions designed to help students develop self-reliance. For further information, call 422-3035

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1.Those situations include if the client is a risk to the life or safety of their self or others or if abuse of a person who is currently a minor is disclosed.

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