For now over 75 years, The Baylor Line has been publishing vivid storytelling from across the Baylor Family. I don’t think our archives full of deep, inspirational features should live solely on shelves, so we are bringing them back to life in BL Classics. This November 1977 Classic article reflects on ways in which the counseling center at Baylor supported students experiencing personal challenges. Students participated in group therapy workshops relating to exam tension, assertiveness, weight control, relationships, and career planning.
“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as others see us!”
— Robert Burns
It almost seems ironic that an adage so old and so common as “Know thyself” could be the key to solving so many problems today. The counseling center at Baylor offers group workshops each semester, and repeatedly the emphasis is on self-awareness.
Four counselors direct the program: Dr. Wilson Manning, William Mygdal, Dr. Alice Anne Brunn and graduate student John Preston. This fall there are workshops in weight control, assertiveness training, career decision, exam tension and interpersonal problems.
Any Baylor student who has paid the health fee is entitled to counseling, but counselors like to limit group size to ten. The atmosphere is relaxed—just a group of people discussing how to deal creatively with their problems.
One of these people facing up to a problem is Susan. She enters the Health Center each Thursday at about 1:15 and checks her weight at the scales. Then she heads downstairs to the small conference room and settles into a comfortable chair. Susan is an active member in a sorority. She is a good student and is well-liked. Her problem is not exceptional—just the few extra pounds that college life sometimes adds. But she has recognized the problem and is seeking help through self-understanding.
Robert likewise is an average student. He is not sure what he wants to do after he graduates; he’s not even sure of his major. Career choices are a big problem to a great many students, but Robert is one who has admitted his indecision and is trying to do something about it by attending the career decision workshop.
All students in the workshops are somewhat alike: they have problems and actively seek to deal with them. Some want to lose ten pounds, like Susan does. Some, like Robert, want to pick a major. Others want to become more assertive, to learn how to relax or to work out a personal problem. Each wants to change something about himself, and at the heart of change is self-awareness.
Each group has a different approach. The weight workshop is divided into two sections — one for students at least ten pounds overweight, one for those twenty-five or more pounds overweight. Both sections follow a seven- phase program which aims at understanding the behavioral reasons why people overeat, rather than focusing on the overeating itself. One of the introductory handouts for the group explains: “Diets attack only the physical manifestation of the problem — the excess weight — and leave the cause — eating patterns — untouched.”
A typical meeting of the weight control group begins with an informal discussion of the past week and is followed by Dr. Brunn’s introduction of new material. The session ends with some awareness exercises: each student has to write down ten reasons for losing weight and ten reasons why he overeats. Dr. Brunn, who is participating in the program as well as leading it, is quick to share her thoughts. “I have learned that I eat when I’m mad. I eat when I’m happy. I eat anytime,” she said, citing paper cups and McDonalds bags in her car as evidence. She tells the students to think about the reasons they wrote down during the next week, all in an effort to understand why they have the problem of overeating.
Students who sign up for the exam tension workshop want to change that apprehensive, pre-test nausea to a relaxed confidence. William Mygdal begins the workshop by trying to teach students to recognize when they are tense. For example, a student may tense his forehead muscles in anxiety before a test without ever realizing it.
Mygdal uses tape recordings which focus on the flexing and relaxing of various muscle areas to help students become aware of tension. The first instruction is to clench a fist, noting what it feels like for the muscles to be flexed, especially in contrast with the rest of the body, which should be relaxed. The tape takes students through a series of similar exercises with the back, the tongue, the stomach and other parts of the body. Mygdal believes that awareness of tension is the first step to overcoming it.
The director of the counseling center, Dr. Manning, heads the assertiveness training workshop in which the emphasis is on coming to grips with one’s feelings and learning to relate them to others. In one session, a girl described an incident in which her boyfriend had called her and suggested that she come visit him because he was busy and thought the trip to her place would take too much of his time. The group suggested that she should have said, “Look, it makes me angry that you think I should cater to you,” or “You are coming across to me like you think your time is more valuable than mine and that makes me angry.”
Dr. Manning, who readily admits his passion for diagrams, interrupted the discussion with a diagram which applied to the situation. The girl realized her anger didn’t originate with the actual phone call but with the fact that her boyfriend wasn’t showing a great deal of concern and care for her. Dr. Manning acted as a motivator to get the students to come a step closer to an acute sense of self-awareness.
A large part of the career decision workshop, led by Mygdal, is a battery of tests designed specifically for each student. He uses intelligence, aptitude, interest and personality tests. The other major part of the workshop is teaching students where to find necessary information about possible careers. Students are encouraged to talk to professors and sit in on classes in fields which interest them. Mygdal tries to bring information to the students as well as to teach them how to find it on their own.
The interpersonal relationships group, under the leadership of John Preston, has the broadest scope. Students sign up because they are dissatisfied with some aspect of themselves and their relationships with others and they are willing to step out to try to change. Problems range anywhere from clashes with roommates to pressures from parental expectations: anything that disturbs a person about interpersonal relationships.
John Preston says that “an increasing understanding of one’s own impact upon other people” is the type of self- awareness most valuable to this group. For this workshop students are screened before admittance to keep the dropout rate to a minimum. The Lariat ads for the Counseling Center workshops describe this one as “open ended.” Each group “matures” at a different rate, according to Preston. For this reason, it is impossible to predict the exact length of time the group will meet. Dropouts are discouraged because they hinder the development of the group.
The counselors are strong in their praise of the workshop approach to students’ problems. The group experience can often be more effective than individual sessions would be. Take, for instance, the soft-spoken coed who has always had trouble expressing her opinions to her parents. The fact that she has opened up to the workshop group and explained her problem may be a catalyst to further action. Often a student’s load is considerably lightened when he simply finds that others have similar problems and that he truly is not alone.
The center offers workshops on exam tension, weight control, assertiveness, career decisions, and interpersonal relationships
And the group of overweight students inevitably arrives at a we’re-all- in-this-together feeling. The obstacle of those extra pounds becomes a common denominator, a common goal and a common bond.
The workshop approach also allows the counselors to help more students. As it stands, “No counselor has an extra hour,” said Mygdal.
Like the other counselors, Dr. Brunn, for an example, sees students privately in addition to those she counsels in the two weight workshops. The twelve she advises privately follow the same basic program as the students in the workshops. But each week she explains new material once to each group, plus twelve other times in the individual sessions. The group saves time in situations where it is an effective approach.
Variations of the group therapy idea have been tried several times since counseling services were first offered Baylor students in the 1950s. But this series of workshops, begun last fall, has been the first that has been considered successful. It appears now that it will develop into a regular part of the counseling program.
With the two Health Center physicians, Dr. Manning teaches a Science of Living course for one credit hour in the home economics department. Dr. Manning says this course, which is a variation of the workshop approach, is an example of what the counselors would like to see increase in the future. “I would like for us to be able to incorporate more of our workshops into the academic structure.”
And his wish may be fulfilled. The need for this type of counseling has been recognized and Baylor students have accepted it.
