Relationships

CAPS offers both couples and roommate counseling. 

Couples relationships are defined by the student, and CAPS is inclusive of all types of couples (polyamory, LGBTQ+, etc.). Only one person needs to be an enrolled student.

Discover components of healthy and unhealthy relationships.

If you’re concerned about a friend’s recent behaviors, emotions, or statements, here’s how you can help.

Essential foundations for the art of empathy and courageous conversations. The goal of this workshop is to build positive self-love, empathy, understanding, connection and communication skills through relationship education and interactive dialogue and activities. Find out more and/or request a presentation.

Critical Components To Navigating Relationships Include:

• Nurturing positive self-love is vital to navigating healthy relationships with others
  • Though it sounds cliché, it proves true, that before you can have a positive relationship with another you must have one with yourself. To experience positive self-love, one should come from a place of inner wealth and strong self-esteem. Here you become and maintain, your authentic “true self.” You are genuine with others. You respect your boundaries and are committed to your values. When you seek out others you do so in order to “belong” and not to “fit in,” making sure your values are not compromised.
• You are an individual before you get into a relationship and remain an individual when in a relationship.
  • A person with positive self-love demonstrates a comfort with being an individual. They balance a want for independence with a desire to be a part of something. So, when it comes to their relationships with others, they maintain a sense of themselves as distinct from their platonic, romantic, sexual partners, co-workers and others. And, in doing so, they become closer to them without blurring boundary lines.
• Expressing empathy and compassion are critical to understanding and connecting with others.
  • Empathy provides a pathway to openness, compassion, and connection by developing the ability, as much is humanly possible, to feel what another feels, from their perspective. An empathetic person respects another’s “true self.” Compassion is our ability to not only sense the suffering of others but to put our altruism into action. Together, empathy and compassion help us see and navigate our shared humanity; everyone’s equal capacity for joy and pain.
• Self-regulation means you are self-aware and choose your actions thoughtfully.
  • Self-regulation is the ability to control one’s destiny, take purposeful action, and live your life with thoughtful integrity. The empowering dynamic about self-regulation is that YOU oversee your own behaviors. This encourages you to be present in your interactions, meaning you respond to others instead of reacting, over-reacting, or ghosting. Those who develop good self-regulation skills act with composure, civility, commitment, and character.
• Engaging in honest conversations builds the foundation for meaningful and satisfying connections
  • It is through dialogue that we express our authentic self to another, stay open to the other, reflect on what we hear and experience, gain insight, and then, take purposeful action. An honest conversation takes courage and character.
• Knowing and nurturing the elements of a healthy relationship; recognizing and avoiding the elements of an unhealthy relationship.
  • Components of healthy and unhealthy relationships

Our Survivor Support services provide advocacy, support, therapy, and outreach to those impacted by sexual violence.