Instructors and staff persons are often the first persons a student will turn to when a problem threatens to overwhelm them, particularly someone they have worked with over a long period of time. When the student shares something heavy and asks for your help, what should you do?

When you are involved in “compassionate listening,” there is a very fine line between offering advice and “counseling.” On one hand you do not want to reject the plea for help; on the other hand, you may not feel that you have adequate skills to help with the problem.

When faced with this dilemma, the best solution is to listen, then encourage the student to share the problem with the school counselor. By acknowledging that the problem is real and that it is serious, you are validating to the student that their feelings are legitimate. They may have heard “oh, you shouldn’t feel that way” from parents or friends, and that is not helpful. They do feel that way, and feelings are neither right nor wrong, they just are. To have feelings validated is one of the most helpful things that you can do for a person in distress.

You are not going to be able to solve the problem for the student. What you can do is help normalize what the person is going through (the way they feel is legitimate for the problem at hand), and then either WALK THEM OVER to the counselor’s office (north end of the Learning Resource Center) or call and have the counselor come to your office if the student is too distraught or afraid to leave your office. The counselor can’t fix the problem for the student either, but she can listen for themes, patterns of behaviors, etc. and help the student see different ways of looking at the problems. Often counseling is simply a process of discovering what the student already has figured out as a way to work on the issue (and they do have ideas about what they want to do once you get past the emotionality!) If the student needs a referral, the counselor knows community resources to help.

Students will resist leaving someone they trust (instructor) and going to another person because of shame, their need for independence, fear of being labeled as crazy if they have to see a counselor, low self-esteem, and the fear of vulnerability. It is helpful to point out that everyone has problems, but sometimes when too many pop up at once, or the problem is severe, it’s hard to handle it in the usual ways. Counseling is not fixing someone who is crazy. It is merely pointing out to the person in distress alternative ways they can look at the problem and come up with their own solutions.

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