Group Counseling

University Counseling Services group programs offer students the opportunity to share common concerns, to use fellow students and resources, and to seek solutions to their own concerns. Groups offer a broad range of insight and support from peers and professional counselors. Some groups deal with general concerns, others have more specific focus such as interpersonal relationships, life options including choosing a career, study skill improvement, managing test anxiety, surviving sexual assault, substance abuse, eating disorders, bereavement, managing stress and eliminating self-defeating behaviors.

Counseling Services is planning to provide a wide range of groups and workshops for UMC students during the current academic year. The following information may be useful to you in deciding which approach would be most helpful to you.

Group approaches to personal growth are frequently the most effective to explore and support changes you may wish to make in your life. In groups, students are able to share common problems, experiment with new ways of responding and/or thinking and discovering how people experience them in an environment where individual differences are respected. While some groups focus on particular issues (e.g. personal problems, sexual abuse, roommate problems, substance abuse), general groups have no set focus and a range of issues can be explored by the group. Some groups require regular attendance and others can be attended on a drop in basis.

Groups can help reduce the sense of aloneness and strangeness that sometimes accompanies personal problems, and offer the opportunity to move back and forth between finding help and offering insight and support to others.

If you are interested in starting a group, contact Counseling Services to schedule a time and place for your group to meet.