College counseling has entered an era that promises to be radically different than any time in its previous 100-year history. College students in this 21st century are more technologically advanced than previous generations and more likely to take virtual classes than previous generations of college students. Traditional services provided by the college counseling center are: individual and group counseling, psychoeducational groups, evaluation and assessment, career counseling, consultation to faculty and staff, medication management and resident advisor (RA) training. Nontraditional services are defined as virtual counseling, advising, and related services offered via distance technology. College counseling centers have long offered types of self-instructional services. They will need to address social media in ways that are both ethically sound and also able to effectively engage college students in seeking counseling services. The counselor can administer the Dimensions of a Healthy Lifestyle Scale (DHLS) to the client and then discuss the findings.

This chapter considers specific abnormal grief reactions that would require grief therapy. It is important to understand why people fail to grieve. The chapter examines the types of abnormal or complicated grief and sees how the clinician can diagnose and determine these cases. Complicated mourning manifests in several forms and has been given different labels. It is sometimes called pathological grief, unresolved grief, complicated grief, chronic grief, prolonged grief, delayed grief, or exaggerated grief. The chapter lists two principal reasons for the continuing dialogue and debate about complicated mourning: financial support for research and reimbursement from third-party payers for treatment. It describes four clinical manifestations of complicated mourning. There are a number of clues to an unresolved grief reaction. The chapter describes 12 clues for identifying complicated mourning.

The Wedging or Strengthening Technique has been modified in Germany and is called the Absorption Technique to create resources to deal with what the client is concerned about in the future, or having stress about working with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) in the future, a present trigger or even an intrusive memory. Having clients imagine a strength or skill that would help them during the problem often helps them to reduce their anxiety. Focusing on a specific strength or coping skill may create a wedge of safety or control that will assist clients with the difficult situation in the future. During the Future Phase of the Inverted Protocol for Unstable complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD) use the Absorption or Wedging Technique to develop as many different resources for the different issues about which the client might be concerned.

The Absorption Technique for Children is a protocol that was derived from the work of Arne Hofmann who based his work on an adaptation of “The Wedging Technique”. The absorption technique for children is a resource technique that supports children in creating resources for present issues and future challenges such as dealing with a difficult teacher or handling a disagreement with a classmate and so forth. This chapter uses resource installation for stressful situations. It includes summary sheets to facilitate gathering information, client documentation, and quick retrieval of salient information while formulating a treatment plan. The absorption technique, and the constant installation of present orientation and safety (CIPOS) technique, are excellent ways to encourage children to work with eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) step-by-step even if they are not prepared to work with the worst issue in the beginning.

This chapter focuses on consideration of two kinds of abuse: abuse that takes place within a church and abuse that takes the place of a church. In the first, the pastor is usually unaware of the abuser, and in the second, the pastor often is the abuser. The spiritual ramifications when trusted religious leaders use people for sexual gratification are enormous. Gartner described how children abused by spiritual leaders can develop a crisis of faith, believing that somehow they have betrayed God. There is also a problem of the heterosexual abuse of children and adults by clergy of all denominations. Psychotherapists can perform preventative and even ameliorative work in churches by meeting with church leadership to help train them in identifying and dealing appropriately with sex abuse in the church. With regard to spirituality and religion, it’s important that the abused person is treated psychologically and also spiritually.

As best friends in a small Midwestern town, Jon and Stephen, both extremely bright and inquisitive, often talked with each other about their dreams of jobs they would have as adults. Throughout childhood, made alive through imaginative play, their wide-ranging ideas about careers were inspired largely by television and movie characters. They were enthralled with the idea of “special powers” to save the universe, but soon realized that “superhero” wasn’t a career. A few years later, they considered becoming crime scene investigators, lawyers, emergency room doctors, and, briefly, even astronauts. Jon and Stephen were inseparable and were regarded by the elementary school’s Gifted and Talented (G/T) coordinator as the most academically advanced students in her memory. They loved to learn, had vivid imaginations, and inspired their classmates and each other to “dream big” about the future. They were big fish in a little pond (e.g., Marsh, 1987; Salchegger, 2016).

Then Jon’s family relocated to an affluent suburban neighborhood on the West Coast after his father took a position in Silicon Valley. Jon, in middle school, had to adjust to a new set of expectations and found the adjustment quite challenging—in fact, far more so than he had imagined. Surrounded by a large group of intense and extremely driven students, who all seemed to aspire to top-tier universities, and struck by the harsh realization that he was no longer one of the very best students, Jon now felt as if he were a fish out of water. He was plagued with self-doubt about his abilities and future educational and career prospects. Compared to the other students, who had long positioned themselves to earn coveted spots in the local STEM-oriented magnet high school, Jon felt inadequately prepared to compete and felt his excitement for learning fading quickly. Once a confident and enthusiastic student, Jon was immobilized by his fear of making mistakes, especially in the presence of his new peers, and he began to retreat from others both at school and at home. He had difficulty dealing with even minor setbacks and grew to resent the students who seemed ambitious and competitive. Adopting a defensive posture, Jon downplayed the importance of thinking about future goals; in his own words, it was “stupid” to worry too much about college and career. Although he generally maintained respectable grades (mainly to make his parents happy and to keep their anxieties at bay), he refused to take the most challenging courses at school and stopped taking academic risks. Since he was getting mostly As and Bs and an occasional C on his report card, Jon’s parents were not alarmed by the changes in his behavior and failed to notice that he had turned away from learning. His academic self-concept had taken a major hit.

In contrast to Jon, Stephen remained in the same small Midwestern school district for the remainder of his precollege years and continued to feel passionate—about everything! Stephen’s parents encouraged him to indulge his intellectual curiosity and explore every subject that captured his interest. But Stephen had difficulty narrowing his interests for the sake of establishing career direction. When he was first exposed to chemistry, for instance, he quickly memorized the periodic table and spent many nights at the dinner table teaching his younger brother everything he had learned about each element. Later, when introduced to physics, he could hardly contain his excitement about quantum field theory, cosmic inflation, fluid dynamics, and a host of other topics. Of course, he also loved math and was eager to learn computer languages. Adept not only in STEM subjects, Stephen also excelled in and enjoyed writing, history, and politics. However, because the school district was small and lacked resources, he often learned advanced content on his own by reading books and searching the Internet. The local public high school he attended offered few Advanced Placement (AP) courses, and school officials believed they could not justify offering additional AP courses just for him. Without his friend Jon, he had no intellectual peer with whom he could share ideas and interact meaningfully. As his precollege years progressed, Stephen did not gain sufficient clarity about educational and career direction to focus his efforts on developing any particular interest to a high level outside of the classroom.

One of the primary functions of the K–12 education system is to prepare children to be ready for college or a career. Central to college and career readiness is students’ proficiency in three key academic skill areas: reading, writing, and mathematics. Given the importance of academic skills, a core skill for school psychologists is the ability to collect and use assessment data that inform an intervention targeting students’ academic skills. This chapter introduces readers to the importance of evaluating the environment in which a student is receiving instruction, assessment instruments used within schools for identifying and monitoring the progress of students with academic intervention needs, and the three tiers of multi-tiered system of support (MTSS). This chapter reviews the essential components of academic assessment and intervention as well as couches them within a MTSS. It describes the relevance of social justice in implementing academic MTSS.

This chapter describes maneuvers to access the internal system of the patient as well as means to accelerate or decelerate the work in that process of accessing the self-system. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR), ego state therapy, and somatic therapy fit together like hand and glove. An extended preparation phase is often necessary before trauma processing in complex traumatic stress presentations and attachment-related syndromes, particularly when dealing with the sequelae of chronic early trauma. Clinical practice suggests that the adjunctive use of body therapy and ego state interventions can be useful, during stabilization and later on in increasing the treatment response to EMDR. Traditional treatment of complex posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and dissociative disorders has usually included hypnoanalytic interventions, during which abreaction is considered an important part of treatment.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) is a behavioral intervention designed to increase and improve psychological flexibility. Psychological flexibility, from the ACT perspective, is defined as contacting the present moment fully, as a conscious human being, experiencing what is there to be experienced and working to change behavior such that it is in the service of chosen values. The therapeutic work explored in ACT counters the problem solving approach. Clients are taught to be aware of their thoughts and emotional experiences. An important feature of the therapy is that the therapist approaches these issues with humility and compassion for the client’s experience. Many clients who have experienced military sexual trauma (MST) have limited their lives in a number of ways in an effort to control or prevent fear or fear-related experiences such as anxiety or difficult memories.

This chapter explores the key concepts, tools, and strategies for coaching people toward improved health, well-being, and performance using Acceptance and Commitment coaching (AC coaching), a holistic and multi-component coaching version of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). AC coaching is a pragmatic form of coaching, underpinned by functional contextualism and relational frame theory. The chapter introduces the ramp model of AC coaching, emphasizing the need for clients to expend effort and take the time to practice (both within and between sessions), and to develop and regularly apply the skills that enable psychological flexibility and improved health, well-being, functioning, quality of life, and flourishing. Coaching theory and practice revolve around helping motivate clients to achieve their values-based goals and live purposeful lives. Coaching theory assumes that clients are whole, functioning people who are looking to improve their lives.