Counseling Center: Treatment Programs

The Counseling Center offers five specialized treatment programs to assist JMU students with a variety of goals, including: reducing anxiety symptoms, improving mood, increasing coping strategies, regulating emotions, managing distress, fostering healthy relationships, and improving self-care. These 3-week programs include numerous evidence-based strategies and interventions. They are one of the quickest ways to reduce symptoms and access clinical services.

The Counseling Center treatment programs meet for 50 minutes weekly, for a total of 3 sessions. They are structured workshops, similar to a classroom lecture, for between 4-8 participants. This is not a group counseling experience. You do not have to disclose personal information and process. This experience is similar to taking a course on decreasing anxiety and improving functioning. For many students who participate, they experience enough of a symptom reduction, they do not need additional clinical services. However, participants can discuss additional services with their facilitator. These programs are highly recommended as a quick and efficient way to reduce symptoms and feel better fast. Some of the program content is also available through our self-help resources.

Anxiety Toolbox: 

Provides participants their own individualized plan for managing anxiety. Anxiety Toolbox includes modules dedicated to: (1) understanding anxiety, (2) introducing a method for slowing down and disentangling the experience of anxiety, and (3) developing alternative responses to anxiety. 

Getting Unstuck:

Provides participants their own individualized plan for improving their mood. Getting Unstuck includes modules dedicated to: (1) understanding depression, (2) exploring how thoughts and behaviors impact depression, and (3) addressing how you can begin to make changes to thoughts and behaviors in order to better manage depression.

Let it Go:

Focuses on effective strategies to take care of yourself after a significant relationship ends. The 3 sessions provide modules dedicated to helping you: (1) sit with and cope with difficult feelings, (2) explore lessons learned from previous relationships, and (3) discuss new horizons, expectations, and moving forward. By the end of the program, you will have skills and frameworks to better recognize, understand, and manage the aftermath of a relationship ending.

Quality Relationships:

Focuses on identifying ways to foster healthy relationships via self-monitoring, effective communication, and conflict resolution skills. The 3 sessions include modules dedicated to help you: (1) better understand your values and boundaries in relationships, (2) learn the role of culture in communication, different styles of communication, and strategies for effective communication, and (3) identify common causes of conflict and effective conflict management techniques.

Seeking Serenity:

Provides participants strategies for better managing overwhelming emotions. Informed by Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Seeking Serenity is designed for students who experience overwhelming emotions that feel difficult to manage. The program provides modules dedicated to: (1) distress tolerance, (2) emotion regulation, and (3) mindfulness.