Counseling Center

If you are interested in receiving counseling services, either come by our office on the northwest corner of the Student Recreation and Wellness Center, next door to the Teague Center, or fill out an online intake form. You should receive an email from our director within 1-2 working days with an appointment time with one of our counselors.

You can expect someone who is interested in listening to your concerns and in helping you develop a better understanding of them so that you may deal with them more easily and effectively. Your counselor will take you seriously and be willing to openly discuss anything you wish to discuss. Your counselor will be willing to answer some questions about herself or himself directly and honestly. Because counselors have different beliefs about how people change, they differ on how much talking they do in sessions, whether they ask you to do “homework,” and their focus of discussion. If you have any questions about what is going on, by all means ask. Counselors have no “magical” skills or knowledge and will be unable to solve your problems directly for you. Your counselor will want to work with you but won’t do for you what you are capable of doing for yourself. Except under unusual circumstances, your counselor will maintain strict confidentiality about you and will openly discuss this with you.

Your main responsibilities in counseling are to attend your regularly scheduled sessions, talk about what is bothering you as openly and honestly as you can, and complete any tasks or “homework” assignments you may be asked to do. You are expected to let your counselor know if you are unable to make it to a session.

Most counseling will require you to try something new or a “different approach.” Another thing your counselor will expect is for you to be willing to experiment and try things out without jumping to conclusions. You are also expected to let your counselor know when your problems have been solved as well as if you don’t feel like you’re making any progress. This latter point is most important: your counselor is most interested in your benefiting from counseling.

One of the most difficult steps in counseling occurs before you even see a counselor for the first time. Deciding to seek counseling is the first step in change. Once this decision has been made, the mechanics for change have been set in motion. In the process of changing the way you think, feel or behave, you usually must try out new ways of doing things. This can make you anxious or frustrated. Also, in the course of counseling you may come to realize that things you once thought of only in a positive or negative way you may see a bit differently. The challenges of pushing your limitations may also cause you frustrations, but with commitment and practice, you will find that you can stretch your limits and find new and exciting aspects of your self.

• Be ready to focus on a specific problem or issue.
• Be prepared for your sessions.
• Attend your sessions and take an active part in them.
• Complete (or at least attempt) any “homework.”
• Tell your counselor if you don’t think you’re being helped.

Simply stated, counseling is any relationship in which one person is helping another person to better understand and solve a problem. Friends and relatives provide a type of counseling, as do clergy, academic advisors, teachers and many others. The staff at the ACU Counseling Center are different from others who may offer counseling because of their extensive training in psychology and human behavior. They have a broad range of experience in developing “helping relationships” and working with many different situations.

Each 50-minute counseling session costs $35. Payment is due at time of service. Clients have the option of paying by cash, check, credit or debit card, or charging their ACU Banner account.