Available Groups

 Body Image and Eating Concerns

This group provides a supportive environment to discuss struggles with body image and/or eating concerns. Members will learn to recognize the beliefs and feelings that lead to negative body image and eating concerns and will explore how to challenge the negative messages about their bodies from media, peers, and/or family members. Members also learn about themselves and others, gain insights into the origins of their concerns, give and receive support and meaningful feedback, share openly about emotions, and try new ways of relating in a safe environment.

Essential Insight (DBT group)

This group combines a cognitive therapy approach with perspectives from eastern philosophy to support students in improving functioning in multiple areas.  DBT provides psychoeducational training in the areas of: Mindfulness; Interpersonal Effectiveness; Emotion Regulation; and Distress Tolerance.  The group follow a set agenda in which new information is taught weekly and homework and skills practice is assigned. The focus of this group therapy is teaching effective skill use for regulating emotions, changing destructive patterns of thinking and behavior, improving relationship skills, and building the life you desire.

Grief and Loss

Loss is an inevitable part of life. Grieving those losses is a journey and a natural part of the healing process. We experience grief for many reasons, including the loss of a loved one, the loss of health, disenfranchised grief, or letting go of a long-held dream. Dealing with a significant loss can be a challenging time in a student's life. Grief can be complex, overwhelming, and difficult. This group helps students to feel not alone in their grief. This group helps students learn to express themselves, listen to each other, and cultivate a community for healing in their grief journey.

Neurodiversity Process Group

This is a group for students who identify as neurodiverse and struggle with all or some of the following social awkwardness, picking up and interpreting social cues and nonverbal communication, the give and take of communication, expressing emotion, making friends, or talking to romantic interests. This group attempts to help members gain insight into the many and varied ways that neurodivergence shows up for them that can be beneficial as well as an opportunity for growth.

Understanding Self & Others

Family Understanding Self & Others

Children are often scripted into familial roles, such as the responsible or good child; the problem or bad child; and the hero, rescuer, or invisible child. Most students are still filling these limiting childhood roles, which can distort and deny many important aspects of who they really are. For many students, they internalized these roles. That is, these familial roles have become their identity, and even though their parents now may live far away or even be deceased, the continue to place their families’ expectations on themselves and to re-create these problematic relational patterns with others. Additionally, students may experience family rules that governed their family relations and establish repetitive, predictable patterns of family interaction. Adding to the complexity of this tapestry, these family rules, roles, and communication patterns operate within a broader cultural context. This group draws on these basic family systems concepts and considers the impact of parental relations and familial experiences on students’ personality strengths and challenges. This group attempts to understand this impact and to come to terms with both the good news and the unwelcome news in their families of origin.  Change is indeed possible and facilitated through a relational processing of experiential relearning within this group context.

Women's Understanding Self & Others

This group attempts to provide an emotionally safe environment in which female identified students can develop further self-awareness and grow personally towards their goals, while connecting with other women.  Thanks to the cohesiveness that groups tend to develop, students usually benefit from a sense of belonging and from opportunities to experiment and receive feedback about effective vs. less effective ways to communicate and relate to others.  As a women’s group, members often focus on the impact of cultural/familial messages about female identity(ies) and emotional/psychological issues often experienced by women, including self-esteem, relationship issues, assertiveness, social anxiety, body image/eating concerns, sexual assault/trauma related concerns, etc.  In addition to the focus on the identify of group members as women, the intersection of other identities are often explored and processed in the group.  Group members are encouraged to provide support and helpful/genuine feedback to one another.

 Men’s Understanding Self & Others

Oftentimes, men are attending men’s groups to talk about things that they are not fully comfortable discussing with others in their lives. They might feel that they do not want to burden their partner or best friend with their problems or do not even want to tell them at all due to embarrassment. This group attempts to provide an emotionally safe environment in which male identified students can develop further self-awareness and grow personally towards their goals, while connecting with other men. As a men’s group, members can expect facilitators to ask clarifying questions about your relationships, career, emotions, inspirations, lifestyle, communication, the list goes on. Often this group may focus on the impact of cultural/familial messages about male identity(ies) and emotional/psychological issues often experienced by men, including self-esteem, relationship issues, assertiveness, social anxiety, body image/eating concerns, sexual assault/trauma related concerns, etc. In addition to the focus on the identify of group members as men, the intersection of other identities is often explored and processed in the group. Group members are encouraged to provide support and helpful/genuine feedback.

Previously Offered Groups

ADD/ADHD Focus Group

The Focus Group is an opportunity to meet with other students to discuss the challenges and emotions associated with living with ADD/ADHD. Participants can expect to talk about strategies and resources to assist with fulfilling their personal and academic goals, and to recognize and build upon the many strengths they already possess.

Anxiety Group

Anxiety Group creates a space to connect with others; learn about anxiety and its impact; understand connections between anxious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors; face fears in a supportive setting; and increase skills to manage anxiety. Through group relationships, members also learn about themselves and others, gain insights into the origins of their anxiety, and give and receive support and meaningful feedback. Because anxiety often affects relationships, this group also gives opportunities for overcoming barriers to sharing authentically and openly about emotions, improving interpersonal difficulties and social isolation, and trying new behaviors and ways of relating in a safe environment.

Back to Baseline

This is a group for students who have recently returned to campus following a period of absence from the university due to hospitalization or another mental health crisis, or who recently experienced a crisis that did not require hospitalization. Students actively in crisis are not appropriate for this group. Students in this group will have the option to receive wrap around services with other campus providers, and are expected to be involved with at least one other mental health service in addition to group. This group is short term, with the goal of helping group participants to stabilize and successfully implement crisis prevention strategies/tools, and then transitioning to a more typical outpatient service. Group content focuses on developing an overall crisis prevention plan, regularly creating safety plans, improving emotion regulation, and providing support during a transitionary time for those returning campus.

 Journey (Trauma group)

Journey is a group for survivors of trauma. The group is intended to provide a safe and confidential space to receive support from other survivors and work on issues related to trauma recovery. The group is comprised of up to 8 members who will have the opportunity to connect with other survivors, develop new skills, and continue their journey of healing and hope.