Counseling Center aids homesick or anxious students
The Utah State University Counseling Center is ready and raring to help.
Dave Bush, who has been a therapist at USU for 15 years, expressed his desire to help the students.
“It’s mind-boggling to me that there are … 15,000 students on campus and most of them go without the emotional support they need,” Bush said. “We’re all just walking right by, ignoring each other, not saying hi or
smiling.”
The counseling center is one place a student can go if they feel they are lacking emotional support.
The most common things students go to the counseling center for fall under two categories: Adjustment problems (which could include homesickness or the transition from high school to college) and depression or anxiety problems.
Bush said many of the problems students have come as a result of unmet expectations.
“We come to college with idealistic views, with unreal expectations of how things are going to be,” he said. “We soon realize that isn’t how things really are, and that it’s harder than we thought it was going to be.”
Bush and his colleagues often offer advice for coping with stress, including relaxation and focusing techniques. One of Bush’s favorite sayings is “There are two rules: 1. Don’t sweat the small stuff. 2. It’s all small stuff.” He says it’s important for people to maintain a perspective; a problem that seems like the end of the world will seem trivial if you look at the big picture.
“It’s all about teaching people to have moderation and balance in their lives,” Bush said.
Bush said he believes the best way to live a stress-free life is to find a balance between the social, physical, spiritual, emotional and academic aspects of life. Each aspect is important and should not be neglected or given less attention than another.
“One thing we try and overcome is the urge to withdraw in times of trouble,” he said.
Bush says that all too often students remove themselves from the very thing that could help. For example, a student failing a class will often just quit going to class rather than talk to the professor or attend supplemental instruction sessions. A student who has a hard time making new friends will often just give up and retreat to his or her room, avoiding the strangers that could become friends.
The counseling center, according to Bush, works hard to provide a safe, comfortable environment where students can feel secure sharing their stories and getting the help they need.
Ryan Greene, a sophomore in psychology, said he started going to the counseling center to help him work through some personal problems with depression, but continues his sessions in order to “better himself.” He says he really enjoys the sessions and gets a lot out of them because “I actually do the leg-work in therapy. I discuss and focus on the problems that I’m facing, and [my therapist is] there to elaborate and provide professional insight, giving me a better understanding of my problems and how to resolve them.”
Many students, Bush said, have been exposed to some form of abuse in their life, whether it was physical, mental or verbal. This abuse just makes a bad situation worse. For example, if a student who was abused achieves a GPA lower than 3.0, he or she will feel more stress academically than the student whose parents encouraged them to do their best.
“We work to have corrective emotional experiences here,” Bush said.
Many students who visit the counseling center have had traumatic emotional experiences – abuse or the death of a family member or close friend, Bush said.
“We don’t try to minimize the pain … we try and help them deal with it,” he said. “[We tell them], ‘Since you had to go through this experience, what can you learn from it?'”
Bush said the counseling center is a good place to go for spiritual development as well.
“Even though we’re not specifically designed to encourage spiritual development, we’re very supportive of students’ spiritual growth,” he said. “Whatever their values are, they will be respected here.”
He says that about half the staff is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but all encourage individual spiritual growth, whatever that path may be.
According to Bush, one difference between USU’s counseling center and a traditional psychologist’s office is the time spent with the patients.
“[Our patients] don’t lie on our couches for two years,” Bush said, explaining that the average student will have six to eight sessions, although many stay for as long as a year.
Overall, Bush said he is very proud of the counseling center and believes strongly in the work done there.
“What I love about my job is that the students are so bright,” he said. “We get to see wonderful results.”
-sophisan@cc.usu.edu