Skills Groups
UCS offers skills groups, which are typically short-term groups that include educational components and guidance for developing skills that can be used to better cope with a particular mental health concern.
Current Skills Group Available
Reclaim Life from Anxiety
This group focuses on building skills to manage anxiety. It runs continuously throughout the semester, with participants able to join at any time. It is ideal for students seeking evidence-based tools to better handle anxiety in daily life, in a supportive and dynamic group setting.
The focus of the group is to help your life be less about anxiety and more about what matters to you. This group helps with:
- Managing stress and anxiety
- Reducing feelings of panic and being overwhelmed
- Addressing difficulties with attention and concentration
This group will occur on Mondays from 4-5pm. Interested students should complete the form below. Students will need to first attend a pre-group meeting with the group leader where they can ask questions, learn more about the group, and make sure it's a good fit for their needs. After that one-time meeting, students can attend the group weekly. The group will cover the following topics:
- Relationship between avoidance and anxiety
- Acceptance and cognitive flexibility
- Mindfulness and self compassion
- Physical aspects of anxiety
- Actionable values
Dialectical Behavior Therapy Skills Group (DBT)
DBT Skills group is a semester-long group for those who are interested in learning tangible skills to help with emotion regulation and interpersonal effectiveness. This group helps with:
- Patterns of trying to bottle up emotions and then blowing up, struggling to regulate emotions, invalidation of own emotions
- Issues with interpersonal skills- issues with boundary setting, difficulty saying no or asking for things in relationships, learning how to end unhelpful relationships and start new positive relationships
- Patterns of black and white or all or nothing thinking, having trouble seeing the middle ground in situations
Students interested in participating in this group should schedule a "RAM" (Referral and Assessment Meeting) via the link below.
What is the difference between Group Therapy, Skills Groups, and Support Groups?
Group therapy is a form of psychological treatment where a group of patients meets to work on their issues with the help and supervision of one or more therapists. The interactions between the group members are part of the treatment, with multiple sources of feedback and ideas providing the chance to learn to connect with others in new ways and change how they deal with their problems.
Skills groups are usually in a structure-based format because there is a specific theme or topic of discussion, and each group session is focused on a topic relevant to the overall theme.
Support groups are highly effective at giving people a support network for coping. The groups can help people feel less alone with their problem and provide a lot of practical problem-solving advice that might help a group member manage their situation more effectively.
Information adapted from LifeStance.com