By the time the Class of 2025 graduates, around 40% of students will have visited the Counseling Center in some capacity such as a Let’s Talk session, an intake appointment, short-term individual therapy, or group therapy. Clinician and Group Coordinator Julie Philips says that Loyola students’ most prevalent issues when they come to the Counseling Center are stress and anxiety from changes in their environment.
“When people return from abroad, or sometimes junior year, there seems to be a lot of adjustment, because people’s friends go away in the fall and they’re here, adjusting in a different way. And then sometimes people who go away in the fall come back in the spring, and it’s just like there is another adjustment period. So that’s something that brings people in, breakups, roommate issues, grief, and loss are other common reasons,” Phillips said.
The Counseling Center has recently adopted a new workshop/ small group called Anxiety Toolbox Workshop. Anxiety Toolbox Workshop comes from Cal Poly counseling services in California and has replaced the Rio workshop, which stands for recognition, insight, and openness here at Loyola. Four doctoral and master’s level externs will run and facilitate the workshop throughout the fall semester. The Anxiety Toolbox Workshop is comprised of three sessions that occur weekly, with a total of eight possible sessions to register for throughout the semester. Phillips says that these eight series allow for flexibility in students’ schedules.
“So when people say, oh, I don’t really have time for that, we have eight that they can choose from, it should fit your schedule somewhere along the course of the semester. So let’s say you would sign up for one that’s Wednesdays at 2 p.m., then you would come three Wednesdays in a row, and it’s just 50 minutes. It’s really kind of like a class. It’s different than our other support groups, in that it is more of a workshop format,” Phillips said.
Anxiety Toolbox Workshop is on managing stress and it allows students to share as much or as little as they want to during those three sessions. The workshop is formatted to be very structured as every week looks the same where you do introductions and go around to see how everyone is doing. Phillips says that a workbook is provided to students in the workshop containing homework, worksheets, and exercises that are not mandatory, but the more you put into it, the more you get out of it.
“So this is a very, very solid research-based way of managing stress. And I always tell students that if they come and if they do some of the work, they will benefit. These types of strategies have been researched for decades and it’s been shown to be very effective, which is why we’re doing it. It will help you manage stress. And it’s not one of those things that, that in three sessions, you’re cured and your anxiety is gone, but it should absolutely reduce it,” Philips said.
The workshop uses exercises that help to identify thoughts and cognitions that are not helpful, called distorted thinking patterns. We all have distorted thinking patterns. For example, catastrophizing is when something goes wrong, and you extrapolate that everything is wrong and terrible. Phillips says that this is a common thinking pattern for students, and sessions two and three are geared toward practicing alternative responses and questioning faulty thinking patterns.
Phillips said, “So, when you have that automatic thought of everything is terrible, it’s never going to feel better. We challenge students to think about, well, is that the truth? What is the evidence to support that? And so it’s a very methodical kind of deconstructing of your thoughts. And it can seem a little structured, a little formulaic, which I think sometimes for students, it feels like a little homeworky. And we know, you all are so busy that it’s maybe the last thing people want to do, but I just always encourage students to stick with it.”
Besides the Anxiety Toolbox Workshop, the Counseling Center offers additional support group programming. Support groups are typically weekly and they have anywhere from six to eight students. The facilitators of the support groups facilitate supportive conversation between the students, and model providing feedback and gentle challenging of interpersonal styles and dynamics. Support groups allow students to support one another, ask questions, and give feedback, which can be a more advanced form of treatment.
As the Facilitator of the Men’s group Dr. Ryan Sappington says studies continue to prove that group therapy is an incredibly powerful modality of treatment because not only are you being supported by a licensed mental health provider, but you are also in the presence of other people struggling with very similar things.
“For men who have joined, it has filled up every semester. Many of them return semester after semester, in addition to adding new members every semester. They speak about how impactful it has been for them to have corrective relational experiences with other men and to really learn from other men grow together, and support one another. I love group therapy. I hope that more students are open to experiencing it because I think it can, in many cases be more powerful and effective than individual therapy,” Sappington said.
The support groups offered by the Counseling Center are Women’s Group, Men’s Group, Time and Space, which is a trans and nonbinary support group, Resilient Healing, Understanding Self and Others (co-ed support group), and Grief and Loss. Visit the Counseling Center’s website to get more insight into the services the Counseling Center can provide to Loyola students.
