Annually, the Counseling Center develops and rolls out a public health campaign on a specific topic related to mental health. Previous campaigns focused on suicide prevention, grief and loss, gender inclusivity, gender-based health, and healthy and affirming relationships. This year’s public health campaign is Therapy 101: It’s Work and It’s Worth It. Licensed Psychologist and Clinician Dr. Ryan Sappington says this campaign’s goal is to build and promote awareness and understanding of what happens within the work of therapy.
“I think in recent years, our society has done a great job at destigmatizing and normalizing therapy and the importance of seeking help and support for our mental health. As a team and staff, we still notice a lot of misconceptions, misunderstandings, and myths about what therapy is, what it’s like to do therapy, what the therapeutic relationship is like between a therapist and client, and the client’s roles and responsibilities in that work as well as the therapist’s roles and responsibilities,” Sappington said.
This topic was chosen as the team at Counseling Center believes in the effectiveness of therapy and that someone’s experience with therapy depends on to some extent that person’s understanding of it. Dr. Sappington says that the relationship between you and the therapist is at the core of what makes therapy effective, and that understanding our roles and responsibilities in that relationship, whether as client or therapist, is vital to its success.
“The ability of both people, the therapist and the client to be really honest, open, and vulnerable with each other. It’s all really important for the engine of therapy and for therapy to be actually impactful and helpful,” Sappington said.
This campaign seeks to spread understanding to students in the Loyola community that therapy is a very collaborative process, which involves learning to be more open and honest, and to develop skills to have open and honest conversations with therapists and others. The therapeutic relationship is dependent on the willingness of both the client and therapist to talk about their professional relationship and how they relate to one another.
Therapists need to be in tune with and be aware of how socio-cultural identities such as race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, class, and family structures show up in the context of that relationship. Sappington says the role and responsibility of the therapist is to see clients in their wholeness and all parts of them including the identities they hold.
“What we want clients and college students to understand when they come to therapy is they play a very big role in the work of therapy, it’s really important for them to work on, grow, and develop their comfort with being open, honest, and vulnerable with a therapist, including how the therapist is impacting them, how they feel about the therapy, how the therapy is going, and also to have open and honest conversations about identity within the context of that relationship,” Sappington said.
One common misconception that Counseling Center staff continue to notice about the therapeutic process is the expectation that the therapist has a magic wand to make all of our struggles and pain go away. Sappington says sometimes people come to therapy expecting to feel completely happy by the end of the first session or several sessions.
“While part of the goal of therapy is to absolutely help someone feel better. That’s absolutely true, there’s also more to it. There’s self-understanding, self-reflection, self-insight, self-awareness that we really want to cultivate and coping skills to manage some of the difficult experiences that we will inevitably have in our lives,” Sappington said.
Another myth or misconception is that the work of therapy is only done within the therapy session. Within a week, there are 168 hours and a therapist is only meeting with you for one of those hours every week or even two weeks. He says this leaves us with time outside of the therapy session to do the important work around coping with our mental health, and that the impact of therapy emerges outside of the therapist’s office more than the work done in the sessions.
“It’s when you leave that office, how are you taking what you learned from that work, what you learned in the context of that relationship, and how open are you to applying that into your life? How you move through the world and change outside of the room. How much time, effort, and energy are you devoting in between sessions to noticing, monitoring, observing, and even journaling/taking notes about your emotions, thoughts, behaviors, relationships, and bringing those back in the next session to be able to talk about that with the therapist,” Sappington said.
The Counseling Center can be a helpful resource for anyone starting their therapy journey as all of their services are free and confidential. Students can schedule different types of appointments such as ‘Let’s Talk’, which is meeting with a clinician for one to two sessions about a specific issue. Another option is scheduling an intake appointment where students meet with a counselor to talk to get a brief, but general picture of who the student is and discuss what service would serve them best. Clinician and Group Coordinator Julie Phillips says that group therapy can accelerate progress as it helps you to think about things differently and increases coping skills.
“You’re not just getting two professionals or one professional therapist in the room, but you’re getting your peers, which in some ways is more helpful than anything that I could do in a room with you individually, you know. So it’s like your peers understand what you’re going through and I think, in a way that we may not, because it’s been a very long time since I’ve been in college or since most of us have been in college and your generation of students faces different challenges than we did,” Phillips said.
Additionally, there are various support groups and workshops, for example, Women’s group, Men’s group, Time and Space, a trans and nonbinary support group, Resilient Healing, Grief and Loss, and Anxiety Toolbox workshop. Visit the Counseling Center’s website to get more insight into the services the Counseling Center can provide to Loyola students.
