Spring Break
Mental Health Services offers ways to deal with anxiety
Katherine Smith
Issue date: 4/30/09 Section: News
As students are gearing up and hitting the books, with finals looming in the not so distant future, Counseling and Mental Health Services is providing free hour-long sessions teaching overwhelmed students how to deal with increased anxiety.
Organized by nurse Susan Grace, the sessions run all week long from noon to 1 p.m. on the first floor of Student Health Services and require no previous time to sign up or paperwork.
"We wanted to create a condensed version of the eight week anxiety coping session we run throughout the semester," Grace said. "We know that no one has any time at this point in the semester and it's just a quick drop in session and could really help anyone."
The session began with a group discussion about the different ways the participants dealt with stress, healthy and unhealthy. Students admitted to unhealthy coping patterns, such as food restriction, self-induced vomiting, and drug and alcohol abuse that provided them relief from stress and anxiety they found themselves with, especially during times like finals week.
Not all methods were unhealthy and, in fact, many students shared helpful and healthy methods they used.
"A big part of what we do here is to have people remember and access what they already do and to get new ideas for other participants and for us to provide additional coping methods," Grace said.
From there, Grace provides alternative methods from Counseling and Mental Health Services of ways to cope with stress. Grace proposed the acronym "ACCEPT," which stands for Active, Contributing, Comparisons, Emotions, Push Away and Thought.
The group later discussed mindfulness or, as Grace explained, "being aware of what you're thinking and feeling so you make decisions on where you are emotionally and physically and not just reacting."
"Mindfulness is important because all of a sudden you realize you're at a [dangerous level of anxiety] and you don't know how you got there," said Grace. "Putting words on how you're feeling can be incredibly powerful."
Organized by nurse Susan Grace, the sessions run all week long from noon to 1 p.m. on the first floor of Student Health Services and require no previous time to sign up or paperwork.
"We wanted to create a condensed version of the eight week anxiety coping session we run throughout the semester," Grace said. "We know that no one has any time at this point in the semester and it's just a quick drop in session and could really help anyone."
The session began with a group discussion about the different ways the participants dealt with stress, healthy and unhealthy. Students admitted to unhealthy coping patterns, such as food restriction, self-induced vomiting, and drug and alcohol abuse that provided them relief from stress and anxiety they found themselves with, especially during times like finals week.
Not all methods were unhealthy and, in fact, many students shared helpful and healthy methods they used.
"A big part of what we do here is to have people remember and access what they already do and to get new ideas for other participants and for us to provide additional coping methods," Grace said.
From there, Grace provides alternative methods from Counseling and Mental Health Services of ways to cope with stress. Grace proposed the acronym "ACCEPT," which stands for Active, Contributing, Comparisons, Emotions, Push Away and Thought.
The group later discussed mindfulness or, as Grace explained, "being aware of what you're thinking and feeling so you make decisions on where you are emotionally and physically and not just reacting."
"Mindfulness is important because all of a sudden you realize you're at a [dangerous level of anxiety] and you don't know how you got there," said Grace. "Putting words on how you're feeling can be incredibly powerful."
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