Ep. 12 - Counseling Resources

Welcome to Episode 11 of the CSUSB Advising Podcast! Did you know your fees pay for the Counseling & Psychological Services resource? Sometimes there is a stigma with counseling, but we have Wendy Brower to let you know what CAPS is and the resources their office has for you. 

In this episode, we have:

• Wendy Brower - Counseling & Psychological Services

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Transcript

Star Wildes  
Welcome to the CSUSB advising podcast. Join us as we bring you the latest advising updates at Cal State San Bernardino. Each episode is specifically made for you the CSUSB students and parents. We provide you with advising tips, interviews with both CSUSB campus resources and those in academic advising, sit back and enjoy. Go Yoties.

Matt Markin  
Hey, Yoties. Welcome to the latest episode of the CSUSB advising podcast. We are a few weeks into the spring semester. We are midway through February. My name is Matt Markin, and I am with...

Star Wildes  
Star Wildes. Hi, Matt. How are you doing?

Matt Markin  
Doing great. How are you doing? 

Star Wildes  
Doing great. And I can't keep count of how many weeks, and I know it's going on a year next month that we've been doing this virtual thing. So hope everyone is doing well. And I hope you're doing well too. 

Matt Markin  
Yeah. And hopefully yodes, if you haven't already, check one of our previous episodes where we interviewed Provost Shari McMahon from Cal State, San Bernardino, where we actually talked about this virtual environment and what is upcoming for summer and for fall. So check out that episode and upcoming right now. The biggest thing is probably spring census, so that is going to be February 22 and that is the last day to add or drop without record of enrollment, meaning no W grade on your transcript. But we have resources. We have guests. So Star, who is our guest today?

Star Wildes  
Thank you so much, Matt. I am excited about our next guest. Our next guest is from Counseling and Psychological Services now, yo D's know that you prepay for this service, and her name is Wendy Brower, a counselor, and we are so excited to provide you with information that she has for you here today.

Star Wildes  
Thank you so much for joining us for our podcast. Our special guest today is Wendy Brower Romero is a licensed marriage and family therapist who has been working at CSUSB Counseling and Psychological Services since 2014 Wendy is a San Bernardino native and graduated from CSUSB master program in clinical counseling psychology in 2012 Wendy's interest in hobbies include meditation, yoga, reading, embroidery and intersectional feminism. Wendy, thank you so much for joining us and welcome.

Wendy Brower  
Thank you very much for having me.

Matt Markin  
Yes, thank you again for joining us. And Wendy, if we could start, we'll jump right into the questions. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and also what you do within CAPS?

Wendy Brower  
So like Star had said in her intro, I am a San Bernardino native, so I went to San Bernardino High School. I've grown up in the Inland Empire my whole life. I went to UCR as for my undergrad, and I got my degree in psychology and law and society. I initially thought I was going to go down the criminology route of things, and then I kind of had an epiphany that that wasn't what I wanted to do, but I didn't know what I was going to do. So I got a job working with children with autism, and found that I really loved just being able to apply psychology and help people. And so that's why I applied to CSUSB for the clinical counseling program, and I loved it. It was life changing, and I feel very genuinely fortunate to be able to come back and give to my alma mater. So what I do at the counseling center, we have different educational backgrounds in our counselors that work there, but we all do the same work, and we just approach things a little bit differently. So my particular educational background is, I'm a I have my master's in clinical Counseling Psychology, and then my licensure is in marriage and family therapy. So that doesn't mean that I only focus on couples and families. That's just kind of the title and one of my areas of expertise, but I also do individual counseling, and that's primarily what I do, actually at our caps, is we do a lot of individual therapy, we do group therapy, and I do like presentations and workshops. So that's mostly what I kind of focus my time on at CAPS.

Star Wildes  
Thank you so much for sharing that I know your bio. You It was mentioned that you have been with the Counseling and Psychological Services since 2014, and and you know to date. Did you ever work there? Did you begin working there as a student, as a master student?

Wendy Brower  
I didn't start working there as a Master's student. We do accept some so our clinic is a training site for students who are receiving their education in a clinical counseling degree. So that could be PhD level or master's level. So there were some people in my cohort who were who did do their, what's called a traineeship at CAPS. I didn't do so at that point, I initially, when I was starting off, I thought I wanted to work with just children, like small kiddos. So I did my traineeship in haruba, Unified School District. So that's where I started off.

Matt Markin  
Now, within CAPS, sometimes, you know when, when a student hears the word counseling, you know they might have their own definition of what that might mean. Sometimes there might be some misconceptions, or based off their backgrounds, in how they grew up. Maybe there's some, you know, negative connotations that come with that. How can you help students come at ease with the Counseling and Psychological center? 

Wendy Brower  
Well, first of all, I would say one that's incredibly normal, you know, I think most people feel uncomfortable and anxious about coming into counseling. You know, I can say that, you know, I wasn't exposed to therapy, and I myself had a lot of that stigma, you know, kind of internalized until I actually went to go get my masters, and then some of those things rearranged. So I would say, for those students that feel a little hesitant about that, is to really just normalize like, therapy isn't about you being crazy. I think that is, like the, you know, the negative stereotype. It's not about there being something wrong with you or that you're broken in any way. You know, I tell my students all the time, you're human, just like I'm human, and we all struggle. Life is hard, and we are built to connect with people, and so that's part of what therapy does. It allows you to connect with somebody that can hopefully help you get out of that tough spot. 

Star Wildes  
Thank you so much again for sharing that and in connection with that. So why? Why would a student reach out to your office? I know that there you, your office provides a variety of services. I know there's workshop and so forth, but why would a student be reaching your reaching out to your office?

Wendy Brower  
Yeah, so we see honestly, students managing a ton of different stressors and challenges. So some, like quick examples would be, we do see a lot of stress and anxiety and kind of depressive symptoms. And those words might sound like big and kind of like scary, but really what that means is, you know, difficulty focusing excessive worry, finding that you're not enjoying things as much, maybe feeling like you're noticing you're more sad or more lacking motivation compared to how you usually would. So that's some examples. Other things that we see a lot of is, you know, like I said before, we're human, we want to connect. So we see a lot of students who are managing challenges in their relationships. So that might be a breakup. It might be conflict in their partnership. It could be struggling with family dynamics, where a lot of people are spending a lot more time at home. It could be trauma. It could be there's still, there's so many things. The way that I see it is if it's causing you distress and it's impacting you, either in your work, in your relationships, in your schooling, it's worthy of the time and space of a therapist.

Matt Markin  
Definitely. Now you will offer a variety of different types of workshops throughout the school year, not that you have to name every single one, but can you talk about maybe a few of the types of workshops that you offer, and also, are those free for students?

Wendy Brower  
Sure. Yeah. So the good thing is that all of our services are included in your Student Health Center fee. So that's including workshops as well as all of our therapeutic services. So when you enroll in classes, you automatically pay a student health center fee, and that's what covers our services. So yes, that the answer to that would be, they're open for you to be able to attend, and you don't need to be a client at our center to to attend one of our wellness workshops. So that's open, actually, to all students, faculty and staff. So our our wellness workshops, I'm going to do, like a shameless plug for one of mine. I'm actually going to be doing one in on February 17, on mindfulness to manage. Much a busy mind, but that's just like one example. And we do, I do a lot of mindfulness presentations. We have one on speed, friending, on communication, on relationships. We have one specifically for like, Women's History Month, on empowering women, journaling. So every semester, we try to offer new workshops. Because now one of the good things, I guess, of doing things virtually is we record all of our webinars, and so we have those on our website. So if you go to csusb.edu/caps, and then you access our wellness workshops. You can go to all of our previously recorded workshops and access those too. So we try to keep it fresh and do new ones every semester, so you have kind of the bank of like, all of these webinars on these really cool topics. Just keeps on expanding. 

Star Wildes  
And thank you so much for sharing that and sharing your upcoming workshop. A busy mind. I think that's an amazing topic. I feel like I have a busy mind. Even when I'm trying to shut it off and go to sleep, there's still so many things that I'm like, I gotta do this. I gotta do this. I'm planning, you know, already months ahead. So thank you, amazing. And again, for those who are listening, February 17. But also you could check it out via the website, csusb.edu, forward slash C, as in cat A as in Adam, P, as in Paul, s, as in Sam. So please make sure you check out the resources that's available via the website. So as you had mentioned, you know, students can definitely take advantage of these resources virtually. You mentioned there's recording that students can check out from previous workshops. Do you refer students to, maybe outside resources, if needed, within the community? Can you talk a little bit about more about that and how that works? 

Wendy Brower  
Absolutely. So when we see students coming into our center, so the initial contact that, if you're coming in for therapy, that initial contact is usually called an intake appointment. And so what that is, is it's kind of like an information gathering session where we get a sense of, like your history, what's going on, what you're wanting to get out of therapy, and at that point, and not just in that session, but like moving forward, sometimes it might take a few sessions. We're determining and assessing whether or not the services that we have to offer at CAPS is the best fit for you. So we do offer kind of more brief, short term therapy. So that means different things for different people, but essentially, we're meeting like every other week to every three weeks for individual therapy. If someone, for example, is really, really struggling and they might need weekly support, we might determine, Okay, maybe there's actually a community clinic where they're going to be able to receive more consistent therapy, more long term therapy. And then we can, we actually have a case manager embedded within our department, and she's a social worker, and she allows us we refer to her, and then she works with a student to connect with like, if they have insurance, they can connect with providers through their insurance. If they don't have insurance, she can help the student apply for insurance. There might also be times where we assess that it's not just the frequency of treatment, but maybe, for example, there might be certain kinds of issues that require specialized treatment like, for example, like eating disorders require kind of a team approach with, like, a nutritionist and those kinds of things, and we just don't have that service at our clinic. And so if we feel like, okay, we're you're really deserving of something that's more specialized, then we'll offer up in that situation as well.

Matt Markin  
And if students had questions, or they were they were interested in scheduling an appointment, how would they go about that? 

Wendy Brower  
So at this point, while we're virtual, how you would go about scheduling an appointment is you would call our main line. And so that number is 9095, 30. 375040, and you can access, you'll connect with our front office staff, Monday through Friday, eight to five. If you call during those hours, you can schedule an appointment to see either if you want individual therapy, you can schedule an appointment to meet with an individual therapist. If you see a group therapy option that interests you, they'll schedule you with the facilitator of that group, that particular group. So that's how you would go about it. Unfortunately, we've had some students like email, our main email. We don't schedule appointments the initial appointment via email. It's only through calling that that number.

Star Wildes  
That is good to know. So again, you've heard it directly from from Wendy. You want to make sure that you do call their office via the number that was provided to schedule an appointment. If you have any additional questions, you could always reach out. I also want to make sure that I do put a plug in for their social media handle on Instagram, because I know you guys are very active on Instagram. It is C, S, U, S, B, dot, caps, C, A, P, S, and it's all one word. Please make sure that you follow, that you look into the information, because I know there's information that they have been posting. So again, thank you again for sharing that. And Wendy, what do you believe students are struggling with at this point? I know you mentioned there's a variety of things that students could come to meet with you guys, but most recently, with things and you know, having changed and everything, what are you guys seeing your end? Or what are you personally seeing on your end that students are consistently meeting you with about?

Wendy Brower  
yeah, yeah. Well, I think you named it of there. You know, the world is a stressful place for a lot of people, I'd say most of us at this point. So we are seeing, I think, just, not only on campus, but I think widely in the mental health field, we're talking about just a steep increase in anxiety and depressive symptoms, which make a lot of sense, because, you know, the kind of a recipe for anxiety is unpredictability and change, and we're in the middle of this huge pandemic that seems to have no end At this point. I mean that we see kind of a light at the end of the tunnel, but it's been going on for so long, and there's so much unknown and uncertainty. So we've been seeing a lot of students that are struggling with, like focusing, struggling with, like the virtual learning platforms, which is very normal. This is not what you thought college was going to look like. So I spend a lot of time, I think, with my students right now, like really normalizing. When I get I hear students say, Well, I don't know why I'm struggling and like focusing, it's like, can we normalize, like, what's happening in the world, and not only within the pandemic, but politically, a lot of social injustices, which is very painful and difficult to kind of view. So all of those things definitely impact students, and we're seeing just a lot more like difficulty sleeping, like I said, just things that like stress, overall stress and difficulty and adjusting to all of these tough changes.

Matt Markin  
Yeah, a lot, lot of changes, a lot of struggles. And as we end this interview, you know, as students are starting within the first couple weeks now of the spring semester, do you have any words of encouragement as they are navigating, continuously navigating this virtual environment?

Wendy Brower  
Well, I would definitely kind of building on that last point that I just made of, I think I spent a lot of time working with students, trying to get them to have some grace for themselves. Of, you know, I think we are all deserving of some self compassion right now, of not expecting that same level of productivity that you might have had before, of, you know, giving yourself Grace if you're struggling and focusing. So I think you know if you are feeling those things, and you start to go down that route of like, what's wrong with me? Of being able to know that, like, you're not alone, like even those people that you see as like having it all together are probably having breakdown moments as well, because it's just tough and we're all in this together. I think that one of the things that I've that this pandemic has taught me is that connection is connection. It may not be ideal, but as long as we're connecting, I think that that is what we need, and even if it's through zoom like just know that you're not alone. And there's not only on campus, but at our center, obviously, we have groups, we have other options to be able to connect, and just know that you don't have to go through this alone.

Star Wildes  
That's amazing encouragement and advice Wendy, and thank you so much for sharing that we Matt and I truly want to thank you and our listeners here that are listening. And thank you so much for taking the time to come and share information about caps and enjoy and again, thank you so much. I really appreciate it.

Wendy Brower  
Of course, thank you for having me, I really appreciate it.

Matt Markin  
Thank you so much, Wendy for that interview and all the great information regarding caps and yodes. Please utilize this resource again, like star mentioned prior to the interview, this is a resource that you pay for with your fees. So des. Definitely utilize it if you need it. And they got a lot of great workshops and things upcoming. So definitely check that out. But star, we've come to the end of this episode. Yoties, please check out our next episode, which will be in March. But Star, where can they find us in the meantime?

Star Wildes  
Awesome. You can find us in the meantime on our social media outlets. So Facebook, Instagram, yes, we are on tick tock, Twitter, and that will be CSUSB advising as our name. Check it out, follow, subscribe, like. We miss you all, yodis, and we hope you. Take care.