Sometimes growing up is scary, hard, and frustrating. As I look at this past year of my life there were a lot of changes, and fears that came with it. To me, growing up meant letting go of certain relationships, learning how to start saying no, dealing with issues in my life that I hadn’t dealt with before, and learning how to put myself first. It was a slow process and I am still learning every day, but you could imagine how overwhelming “growing up” can be while in college. Dealing with all of these growing pains while trying to perfect my GPA, working long hours, and having some sort of social life. If it wasn’t for CAPS, I don’t know how I would have dealt with all of these challenges that life brought my way this year.
It wasn’t until my anxiety became overwhelming that my parents sat me down and we had a real discussion about finally going to CAPS at FIU. I had my reservations about going in the past, even though my tuition covered the services completely, I really thought I could handle everything by myself and I even felt like my problems weren’t as important as other people’s. I thought others needed it way more than I did, so I didn’t want to waste anyone’s time. Let me tell you that I had the completely wrong mindset. I didn’t enjoy it right away, it definitely took time, but I didn’t let myself give up because I knew that this was a tool that would help me over all. I finally agreed to go and since then, it has been such a gift in my life.
Not only does CAPS help you deal with personal challenges but it also helps you come up with ways to become a better student as well. In CAPS, I’ve discussed how to have better time management skills and how to break my bad study habits; I’ve even talked about my sleeping habits and how sleep benefits my life as a whole.
We hear it all the time, but there really is such a stigma over mental health. After visiting CAPS I really believe that everyone should seek out therapy at least a couple times in their life. We are all human and we all have challenges we go through. I believe that especially since we are at an age where we are figuring ourselves out, counseling can be really vital in that process.
Counseling doesn’t give you a bunch of answers of how to live your life, and all of your life questions, it’s just a tool that sets you on the right path in finding your own answers. So if you are like the old me, the one afraid to seek help, and thinking about going just to try it out, use this as a sign to go!
You don’t know what you’re missing out on.