On Student Therapy

She arrived fifteen minutes late, a surprise in itself that she showed up at all. She forgets to hand in her slip, and brushes forward the face-framing tendrils of her hair just so-so. She looks gorgeous, of course she does, but her eyes betray the inward struggle of all teenage females.

Sitting down, she asks what assignments she’s missed? The table replies with the usual busy work, the day to day, the bull, the muck, the AP extravaganza! No one asks her why she’s late, it’s become a sacred ritual unto itself. For her to be on time would be as sacrilegious as a lack of presents beneath the Christmas tree.

Eventually someone braves the social minefield and finally asks, what’s up? In a country where spousal murder is as common as candy, it’s not surprising when her answer is ‘relationship stuff’. Then before we know it, all of that teenage suffering begins to spill from her perfectly glossed lips.

Why not go to therapy? Her face remains sarcastically neutral as she answers.

Under my class notes for the day, I write:

Therapy is admitting defeat.
Therapy is for losers.

Sitting down later in counselor Alia Zaro’s office, I brought up this mantra whilst staring at her windowsill of orchids and her circular sandbox.

“There are always people in general who feel like they can’t really, truly go to therapy, because they’re gonna be seen as weak or not being able to take care of their own issues. There’s also cultural aspects of that for sure, which I’ve experienced a lot on my end as counselor with my dad being from the Middle East and growing up in Jordan.”

She becomes a little more serious. “In Jordan, you do not talk about your issues with anybody else. It is nobody’s business but your family’s business.”

We shift legs, the art of the conversation.

“Surprisingly, there’s still some of that influence here. I’ve worked in schools in Floyd and Giles in various situations where parents do not want you to be talking to their kids; they want to hide something or they don’t think it’s any of our business.”

She shrugs. “I think everybody should go to a counselor, just for the sake of having someone to talk to, and to get it off your chest, and to not keep it all inside because that’s when things go…”

Haywire, we say simultaneously.

She laughs and eases back in her chair. “Exactly! Took it right out of my mouth!”

I ask whether or not the choice of your therapist weighs heavily on the experience.

“Could be a huge aspect. Ninety-five percent of it is your relationship, the rest is gravy. It’s all about the connection. For a lot of people they might not have that good first experience, and then they never come back. I like being in schools because of that access to the students; I can make that connection.”

We rattle through the social niceties, the ethos of our conversation, if you will. After learning of a double major in psychology and sociology, and a masters in counseling psychology, I was thoroughly impressed. She lived in the Middle East, speaks perfect Arabic, and she has quite the impressive rap sheet. All of that pales in comparison to the truth of her story, however.

“When I was sixteen, I was having a lot of anxiety, so I went and actually saw a counselor. My mom’s American, so that helped a lot, but my dad was from Egypt. I had a lot of test anxiety and could not take timed tests. I would have qualified for a 504 now but they didn’t have that. So my mom connected me to this counselor in Jordan, which was a rarity at the time. I loved it. That’s when I started looking into what counseling is and what psychology is.”

We divulge in shop talk; yes, confidentiality is upheld by school counselors under HIPAA. No, counselors do not personally handle which mental health terms are flagged, admin does.

“We received a grant this year that allowed us to hire someone full time from Outpatient. You can talk to any counselor and ask for a referral. They can pull you from classes and see you here in school, which is a really good opportunity.”

She leans slightly forward, sitting straighter. “From my understanding it’s a response to what happened last year in the fall, with the murder-suicide situation that we had.”

I never knew Serenity, but I remember standing in a crowd at the flagpole and singing happy birthday to her just days after the tragedy. I also remember the way Mr. Thomas hung his head in class.

“You don’t go throughout a teaching career without having a few of these.” He had said.

Matthew Repass, econ teacher, and my dad, withdrew for a time. He remembered Serenity as the girl who finished her work early and sat near the front with a few friends, laughing and having fun. He remembered her full of life. A lot of people did.

While many would still choose to continue such criticisms regarding their inability to stop such a tragedy, I applaud Montgomery County for its ability to change. It couldn’t save two lives, but it might just save the next group of troubled teens. The question is whether it can save this generation of teens.

One quote from Zaro stood out among the rest.

“There will always be a need for counselors.”

I’d go so far as to say the need is rising. As annoying as it is to admit, since Covid the need for therapists, psychologists, nutritionists, and psychiatrists has exponentially increased. High school students have begun to experience bouts of depression and mental distress over simple things that before Covid would have been benign. 504 accommodations seem to be distributed like candy, and the need for assistance has never been greater.

It is a question of common sense and the future of the modern generation, where we scarcely could imagine these kids leaving their amenable classrooms and attempting survival in the modern world. It’s improbable, impossible even, for their mental health and physical world to coincide. No wonder we feel so disconnected, so unneeded. We learn to believe in the power of insatiability, in the loneliness of a crowded room, in the desire for escape, and the burden of our own existence. Who then can deny us our suffering?

“One of the most challenging, exhausting, and painful phenomena we do as humans is to live and survive with these changes in our minds,” said Kevin Hines, attempted suicide survivor, when he visited Blacksburg High, “The toll it takes on an individual's body and the people in their lives is, tragically, often too much to bear.”

Being a teenager is nothing if not surviving change. We are half-baked, unfinished, insecure little monsters who often have trouble finding comfort in our schools, our homes, and our lives. So perhaps the question is not an answer, or a solution, but an adaptation. We need to talk, we need to grow, and most of all we need understanding. Mrs. Zaro understood this well,

“I worked in an Outpatient center, Life and Balance. Their goal was, because they realized that rural communities had such issues with the stigmas associated with it, well they created a space that was more accepting. In addition to licensed counselors, they had a nutritionist, and a yoga instructor, and a massage therapist, and so you can come to Life and Balance and sit in the same waiting room without knowing necessarily what anyone else is there for,” she says this whilst grinning at the thought, “I think it helped prevent the stigma, and it was intentionally done. You’ll always face that kind of problem. Still, I think everyone should have someone to talk to.”

We end our interview in rather the same way as a therapy session, with an enhanced belief in human connection as comfort. I say thank you, she says anytime. Then I walk out to the waiting room, finding that many other students might just take her up on that offer.

Written by Thomas Repass