11 minute read
Empowering Therapists, Strengthening Connections
Inside FSU's Center for Couple and Family Therapy
By Melissa Powell
Nestled on the corner of West Jefferson and South Copeland streets is a quaint blue house that’s home to a unique intersection of research, teaching, training, and learning. It’s where doctoral students hone their skills and provide high-quality counseling to Florida State students and the Tallahassee community.
The FSU Center for Couple and Family Therapy (CCFT), affectionately known as “the clinic,” provides low-cost counseling services through the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences’ Marriage and Family Therapy program. The program has been offering its services in some capacity for more than 40 years, making it one of the oldest accredited couple and family therapy programs in the country.
With a waitlist of clients spanning more than eight weeks out, its services are quite popular.
The therapists at CCFT are highly qualified doctoral students in the marriage and family therapy program. Students enter the program with 500 client contact hours from their master’s education, preparing them to transition seamlessly into seeing clients at the CCFT to continue their training.
Common perceptions of marriage and family therapy often focus solely on couples and relationships, but marriage and family therapists and the CCFT alike see a diverse clientele ranging from children to older adults, and from individuals to entire families.
Kristen Greene, director of the CCFT since 2015 and an alumna of the program, explains, “I think because we’re marriage and family therapists, there’s always been a misconception that we only deal with couples and divorce, or relationship issues, and that isn’t the case.”
While similar to mental health counselors, marriage and family therapists are trained to view clients within the context of their relationships, recognizing the interconnectedness of individuals and their environments. In addition to partners and spouses, some clients bring a parent, child, sibling, or even friends and roommates to sessions as part of their therapy.
“We’re systems thinkers, which means when an individual client comes into your office, you’re very aware that they’re part of a larger system,” Greene said. “They have a family, work, and friends, so we look at it from that systemic lens.”
The robust learning environment at CCFT enables doctoral students to welcome clients from all walks of life. On average, more than half of the CCFT’s clients are students from FSU, Tallahassee Community College, and Florida A&M University. The rest are community members.
“In general, a lot of individual college students are coming into the clinic and a lot of them thought that wasn’t a place they could go because of the name of it,” said Dania Tawfiq, a marriage and family therapy doctoral student. But clients’ relationships inform their well-being just as much as the individual factors of their mental health, she says. “And that also becomes a thing that we look for in terms of wanting progress and change for individual clients – how do we see improvements in their relationships?”
In addition to therapists who specialize in premarital counseling, couple therapy, work- and school-related stress, communication and conflict resolution skill-building, grief, loss, and others, the clinic has doctoral students seeking certification in play therapy for children and parent-child interaction therapy.
Greene’s voice exudes passion as she speaks about the impact of CCFT’s offerings. “We do so much here in such a tiny little space that it always amazes me,” she reflects. The clinic’s services also branch into specialized areas such as victim advocacy. As the primary referral for FSU’s Victim Advocate Program, CCFT provides a safe haven for survivors of sexual assault and other crimes, offering both individual and group trauma support that’s free for FSU students through the Victim Advocate Program. Some therapists at CCFT have a special research focus, or want to focus on a certain clinical population, but they’re also encouraged to be as diverse as possible, added Greene. “The level of supervision they can get here is not going to be like anything else they can get outside a university training clinic, so this is the time to try different treatment modalities and experience different types of presenting problems.”
When I was in my master’s program [at University of Holy Cross] and met the clinic director there, I knew almost immediately that’s who I want to be when I grow up... I’ve got the clinical portion, the teaching I get to do, the administration portion, I feel like I have the best of all of it.
A Multifaceted Learning Environment
In addition to doctoral students, CCFT’s dynamic learning environment is a melting pot of undergraduate and master’s students. While FSU doesn’t have a marriage and family therapy master’s program, many master’s students from the college’s clinical mental health counseling program conduct their practicum and internship hours at CCFT. The clinic’s success stories include Tawfiq, a clinical mental health counseling graduate who entered the marriage and family therapy program due to CCFT’s influence.
“I was at the point in my master’s where I needed an internship site to gain clinical skills. Kristy [Greene] came to one of our classes and gave a talk on the CCFT, and I felt like it was the perfect fit for me,” said Tawfiq, who earned her master’s degree in 2020. “It was then that I fell in love with marriage and family therapy as a profession. I decided to keep going for the doctorate and it was really the best decision I’ve made for myself in terms of my career path.”
Undergraduate students can also apply to do their practicum or Directed Individual Study (DIS) hours at the clinic, said Greene. “It creates this whole multifaceted learning environment because our front desk is staffed by undergraduate students who are interested in the mental health field, and it’s a thorough and competitive interview process to select those students,” she said. “They get the opportunity to sit in on some of the supervision sessions and practicum classes with the graduate students to help them figure out if they want to pursue this.”
As doctoral students fine-tune their skills, they receive specialized guidance from more experienced peers and faculty supervisors. Doctoral students are often paired one-on-one with master’s students to provide guidance and gain supervisory experience.
“You’re assigned to a student who’s had more experience than you to really shepherd you into identifying who you are as a clinician,” said Tawfiq. “The goal is to help you figure out who you are and nurture it along the way while also learning all the skills you need. It’s something that’s really valued here.”
Moving forward, my dream is to be involved in helping the generations of therapists that come after me, especially since my experience at CCFT as a supervisee was so positive, then when I transitioned into being a supervisor I fell in love with it even more.
Behind the Scenes: Supervision and Training
CCFT’s commitment to student growth is evident in its innovative supervision practices.
All rooms are equipped with state-of-the-art audio and visual recording equipment, allowing therapists to receive real-time supervision, rewatch their sessions, and learn from their peers. Faculty at the clinic supervise live sessions and watch sessions with other doctoral students as a learning opportunity. Therapists can also seek feedback or assistance with challenging cases and review their own sessions alongside their supervisor.
“In terms of learning to do something, it’s oftentimes just through your own eyes or through feedback from another person. But at the clinic, you get this weird experience of watching yourself do something,” said Tawfiq. “Trying to adapt a new skill is wild; it has you thinking of yourself in a new way. I remember looking at sessions of myself and thinking, ‘I can’t believe I was so quiet, I felt so talkative when I was in there.’ It’s just really cool to have a bird’s eye view and learn from yourself.”
While the experience may be odd at first for therapists and clients, Assistant Director of CCFT Spencer Youngberg notes that once sessions begin, the awareness of cameras and recording equipment quickly leaves their minds.
“I tell a lot of students, ‘I know this can be a little nerve wracking to do therapy in front of other people and have us watch you, but you will miss this, I promise you.’ Just being able to turn to somebody or find somebody walking down the hall and say, ‘Hey, can you chat for a second?’ is so great,” said Youngberg.
CCFT provides a unique space where the clinical aspects, teaching, supervision, and research all overlap. It’s been a huge part of my development as a professional and I’ve truly loved it.
Home Away From Home
The clinic’s physical environment also plays a pivotal role in fostering comfort and connection. With a living room feel, it creates an inviting atmosphere that puts both therapists and clients at ease.
“It truly was born from an old house. We get comments from clients all the time about how homey, quiet, and calm it is,” said Youngberg. “They gutted the building, put new flooring and furniture in, even redid all the trim. Dr. Greene has worked hard to make the space inviting, and I think it helps tremendously for people to feel comfortable.”
The warmth of the clinic and sense of community among therapists adds an extra layer of support, empowering students to navigate the emotional challenges of their roles.
“It’s so cathartic to go back into the common area and sit with the other therapists because there are times when you lead a session and you just feel heavy, or maybe you feel super excited because things went well. It’s hard to exist alone with those feelings,” said Tawfiq.
Navigating the emotional terrain of therapy, particularly in a fastpaced academic setting, poses its share of challenges. Greene acknowledges the emotional toll that therapists may experience while balancing their clinical work with academic commitments. “Our therapists are coming in to see clients, and then they’re going to class or vice versa, and it can be a lot especially if they have a more difficult or emotional session,” she explained.
“We have always tried to help our therapists transition, and it’s something we really try to balance.”
And balancing those elements is something the clinic does well, says Tawfiq. “It can be super stressful to deal with everything in the program, like classes and research and teaching,” she said. “But then you go into the clinic and it just feels lighter. The environment is different, the connection with your coworkers feels different. It has really been an important aspect of my grad experience to have this home away from home.”
"When clients were waiting for their sessions, they could come up and paint. It was a paint-by-numbers type situation so anyone could jump in. Our therapists could do it too, and it really helped balance the emotional work of being a therapist,” said Greene
A Bright Future Ahead
The clinic’s success and integration of various student populations and disciplines sets the stage for multifaceted growth.
“The clinic is just a really, really cool place and a great thing to have in the community,” said Youngberg. “We’re always thinking, how can we hold on to all these wonderful things it does and expand it to fit some other areas of need? Being cross-disciplinary is important, so can we grow and do more with our students and programs in a way that would be sustainable?
“The next step is continuing to see as many people as we can on our waitlist and moving things forward because there’s a need and a real want there.”
With each session and client who walks through its doors, the CCFT cements its place as a vital and affordable resource for students, the university, and the greater Tallahassee community.
To learn more about CCFT and watch the video feature, visit cehhs.fsu.edu/ccft.
