Therapy for College Students

Why get therapy during college?

College can be a time of enormous stress and uncertainty. During times of chronic stress, anxiety can worsen and become more difficult to manage, and it can feel challenging to know how to take care of yourself while maintaining a social life, putting in the hard work at school, and mapping out your future (sometimes, this can feel near-impossible!). Therapy can be enormously beneficial during this high stress time. Below are some of the common reasons why college students seek therapy:

Anxiety

You thought that college would be a fun and carefree time, but are finding that anxiety is preventing you from enjoying it to its full potential. Maybe you experience high-achiever anxiety in which you feel immense pressure to not only succeed, but to do things perfectly. The stress and anxiety that’s associated with the outcomes is starting to outweigh the good feelings that come along with a sense of pride and accomplishment. You want to do well, but you find that you’re pushing yourself to your breaking point, and you want to change that. Or, maybe you’re feeling anxious about the uncertainty that so many college students experience: What comes next? Where will I live? What kind of job will I get? What if I don’t get the job I want? These sorts of questions can plague the mental health of college students. Therapy can help college students to better cope with uncertainty, find greater feelings of calm, and actually enjoy the fun parts of these college years.

Body Image

You want to accept your body the way it is, but the concept might feel near impossible. Perhaps you find yourself scrutinizing yourself in the mirror, counting calories, or spending excessive amounts of time in the gym to try to burn calories or reshape your body. It feels like so much time and energy is spent thinking about your weight, the shape of your body, or the foods you’re eating, and you don’t know how to feel better in a culture that promotes thin body ideals. Therapy can support in exploring the impacts that diet culture, social norms, family dynamics, stress, and anxiety may have on your body image and relationship with food. Using this insight and understanding, we can begin to work towards building new habits, new thought patterns, and new feelings of acceptance towards yourself and your body. It is possible to feel better about yourself, and therapy can help.

Sexual Assault & Trauma

Sexual assaults are all too common on college campuses. Survivors of sexual assault often face enormous feelings of isolation, shame, and self-blame, all of which can perpetuate symptoms of trauma that are associated with the event itself. You may find yourself feeling afraid to walk alone on campus, or find yourself jumping at unexpected noises or sounds. Maybe it feels as though it’s hard to trust anyone, or as though you no longer get the same enjoyment from time with friends and hobbies. Maybe you’ve even questioned whether or not your experience actually “counts” as sexual assault, and whether or not your feelings are valid. Regardless of what your experience has been, I am here to support you without judgment and with compassion, empathy, and trauma-informed interventions to promote healing from your traumatic experience. We will work together to ensure that you are feeling safe and comfortable in the therapeutic relationship, and will then move forward to help you better understand your trauma experiences and the impacts they’ve had; to build skills to cope with trauma symptoms and responses; to build a sense of empowerment; and to support you in healing and moving forward from your trauma. I have found EMDR to be highly effective modality in supporting survivors of sexual assault in their healing process, and am glad to discuss whether or not this modality (or another treatment approach) may be right for you.

I provide therapy for college students in Washington, DC, Maine, and Massachusetts, and would love to connect and see if working together could be a good fit. Please feel free to reach out with any questions you may have, or to chat further!