Unhappy Freshman

Midwest67
Fri, 27 Apr 2018 18:11:18 +0000

@Okigirl

If your daughter is willing to see a therapist, a good therapist can be enormously helpful in making some sense of confusing emotions.

IMO, there is a lot of pressure on young adults to have college be “the best years of their lives”. A therapist can help your daughter tease through her expectations, conscious and unconscious, about her college experience and relationships with friends.

Perhaps your daughter had expected to have a BFF by now, or a core group of buddies. Maybe she has a lot of people she could do things with, but doesn’t see them as close friends and therefore feels lonely. Maybe the dating scene isn’t what she had hoped. She might not even know the answers to those questions.

If she says she really doesn’t want to go back, she can use the summer to start therapy and come up with another plan. She can re-invent herself and start fresh at another school. It might be important that she feels like she has choices and to feel empowered to build a life she wants.

A good friend of mine, her son took a gap year after freshman year because the year had gone so spectacularly bad for him. He did not want to go back to that school but wasn’t sure his options were. Just one year at home, & working with a therapist, he was ready to apply to a different school with a new plan and purpose.

Keep us updated? Good luck!