Anx­i­ety Man­age­ment Group Meets Mon­days

MISHAWAKA—Be­ing a col­lege stu­dent means deal­ing with stress and anx­i­ety about grades, ex­ams, ath­let­ics, so­cial well-be­ing, and much more. Some­times the weight of it all can be over­whelm­ing. Bethel’s Well­ness Cen­ter (lo­cated east of Suf­fi­cient Grounds) of­fers an anx­i­ety man­age­ment group to help stu­dents deal with that stress. 

Staff Coun­selor Chelsey Luke, said, “This is a group for peo­ple who strug­gle with all types of anx­i­ety—panic at­tacks, test­ing anx­i­ety, gen­eral worry and stress about what is hap­pen­ing in one’s life. Now we are learn­ing about what is anx­i­ety and giv­ing sta­tis­tics on that and work­ing on man­ag­ing those symp­toms. Also, the idea that we can learn prac­ti­cal ways to deal with those stres­sors. My hope is that more peo­ple on cam­pus are aware that this group is hap­pen­ing and are will­ing to seek out that help.” 

This is not a typ­i­cal process group where in­di­vid­u­als share their is­sues and work on so­lu­tions like a sup­port group, but is more for ed­u­ca­tional pur­poses. Stu­dents learn tech­niques to han­dle stress and anx­i­ety they may face in the every­day life. 

Luke said, “Learn­ing prac­ti­cal ways of how to deal with stres­sors and know­ing how to rec­og­nize when you are start­ing to feel anx­ious—what hap­pens in your body and in your mind—can be re­ally help­ful in be­ing able to man­age the symp­toms that you ex­pe­ri­ence af­ter­wards.” 

The group meets every Mon­day from 4 to 5 p.m., in the Aca­d­e­mic Cen­ter, room 205. It will meet has al­ready met for two ses­sions and will meet for two more. Any­one is free to come to meet­ings, even if they have not at­tended pre­vi­ously. The group has ad­dressed the topic of panic at­tacks and will be talk­ing about test­ing anx­i­ety in the com­ing meet­ings. The ses­sions are also in­ter­ac­tive and are not the same as sit­ting through a lec­ture, Luke said.