Prepare For Your Visit

We recommend printing and completing the required forms BEFORE your appointment, or arrive 20-30 minutes early. This will ensure you have more time with your counseling intern during your first session.

For teletherapy appointments, return the forms via email to [email protected].

Session Structure: The first sessions are structured, and your Counseling Intern will ask many questions to explore with you the concerns or issues that bring you to counseling to determine how they can help you meet your goals. They will work with you to set counseling goals and explain the limitations, risks, and benefits of counseling. Once a counseling plan is formed, your counseling intern will not ask quite so many questions. You also have the right and responsibility to ask questions and discuss your expectations and progress throughout your sessions.

You may be requested to complete a set of assessments within sessions, including the Brief Symptom Inventory (BSI) and the Schwartz Outcome Scale (SOS), at a few points over the course of your experience at the CCSC. These instruments, based on a rating scale, are scored by your counselor intern and reviewed to gain greater insight into how you are feeling and thinking within recent weeks. The use of these instruments is for training purposes only and may or may not be shared with you.

Ensuring the Right Fit: If it becomes apparent that the CCSC is not the place that can really help you, your counseling intern will explain this. In consultation with their supervisor, they will provide you with information on where you can get the right kind of mental health care, taking into account your resources and preferences. If at any time you do not feel the services meets your needs or if the match with the counseling intern is not a good fit, you may request another intern or assistance with a referral to other community resources. If you have any questions or comments, please contact the CCSC.

Counselor Intern Supervision & Recording of Sessions: Our counseling interns are supervised by faculty members and supervisors in individual and small group settings. We use a secure taping system to record all counseling sessions. This allows supervisors to ensure that you are getting quality counseling. It also allows them guide counseling interns to develop their skills. The recordings are security stored and destroyed at the conclusion of the student’s internship.

Consultation is one of the learning tools we ask our counseling interns to use. At some point during a counseling session, your counseling intern may step out of the room to consult briefly with a supervisor. Sometimes the CCSC will require this of the intern, and at others times, the intern may decide that a brief consultation will enhance their ability to conduct the therapy session. Either way, the intern will return to the counseling room quickly.

Release of Information: If you have worked with another helping professional (a therapist, counselor, psychologist, social worker, psychiatrist and/or psychiatric nurse practitioner), your counselor will ask you to sign a Release of Information giving the CCSC permission to ask for information about your work with these providers. Learning what has helped in the past can make counseling more effective for you now.

Ethics and Policies: All CCSC counseling interns and personnel are guided by and instructed to follow the professional ethical standards set forth by the American Counseling Association and National Board of Certified Counselors. You will read more about our strict security policies, along with limitations, in the 'Informed Consent' document you must read and sign before your first session.

Ensuring Your Safety: If you experience symptoms that could endanger your safety and well-being such as suicidal or homicidal urges or plans, highly risky use of alcohol or other drugs of abuse, re-emergence of disordered eating, or other severe psychiatric symptoms, your counselor intern, in consultation with supervisors and clinic staff, will help you find immediate help, which could include hospitalization, and/or longer term mental health care in a more specialized setting.

Counseling Session Schedule: Counseling sessions are scheduled on the same day and time each week. If a session is cancelled, the session will be rescheduled for the following week. Counseling sessions last 50 minutes. If you are late in joining a session, the session cannot be extended. If you will be more than 30 minutes late, the session should be rescheduled for the following week. To cancel a session, call the CCSC (Alexandria: 703-299-9148, Foggy Bottom: 202-994-8645). If appointments are not cancelled at least 24 hours before the session would start, you will be responsible for paying a late cancellation fee, equal to the cost of one session.

The CCSC closes for one week each semester and three to five weeks between semesters. Counseling sessions typically do not take place when the CCSC is closed.

Counseling interns spend two semesters in the CCSC. When you meet your counseling intern, the intern will let you know when they will be completing their time in the CCSC. Your counseling intern may conclude their work in the CCSC before you conclude your therapy. In that case, you may be able to work with another intern, or we can help you find other counselors in the community.