50 The Professional Counselor | Volume 13, Issue 1 developing social supports, and improving social networks (Yalom & Leszcz, 2020). For example, personal growth groups (e.g., social support groups or interpersonal process groups) are focused on both the personal and social development of members and can be used as interventions to address insecure attachment and loneliness. Additionally, these groups help members to develop selfawareness and insight while also learning new skills to enhance their interpersonal attractiveness. In short, groups like these have the potential to address members’ interpersonal challenges and disrupt behaviors that impede the building and maintaining of healthy relationships while also enhancing group members’ social self-efficacy. Ultimately, the focus is on relationship building and helping members to feel more connected with each other (Reese, 2011). Additional ways in which counselors could support students experiencing loneliness is through collaboration with residence life, other social clubs, and groups to help students find connections and learn how to foster and maintain healthy relationships. These approaches support the work of Moeller and Seehuus (2019), reiterating the need to build and enhance college students’ social skills (thereby enhancing social self-efficacy) and facilitating opportunities for greater engagement to reduce loneliness and increase retention (Thomas et al., 2020). It is noteworthy, but not surprising, that higher anxious and avoidant attachments correlated to higher levels of loneliness in our study. Given this knowledge that students may have negative working models of self and/or others, counselors may need to expand the ways in which they develop rapport and provide supportive spaces for risk-taking where clients may be more willing to explore issues surrounding their insecure attachment. Exploring the impact of the insecure attachment on their sense of self and how it presents as a barrier to initiating and/or maintaining quality social connections could be helpful, in addition to teaching strategies and skills to increase their sense of safety and self-efficacy. Having conversations about initiating and maintaining meaningful relationships can also allow the counselor to address the risk of rejection and vulnerability inherent in relationships and help the clients develop coping skills to deal with these experiences rather than internalizing negative results. The counseling relationship can serve as a model and as evidence to the students that they have the ability to connect with others. Wei et al. (2005) noted that counselors could help students with high avoidant attachment understand how their reluctance to self-disclose prevents them from developing deeper or emotionally fulfilling relationships. Counselors can help clients with high anxious attachment examine how self-doubts may contribute to their perceptions of loneliness and other mental health challenges and learn strategies to increase self-confidence. Moreover, the counseling relationship can serve as a model to evaluate the impact of self-doubt and lack of self-disclosure on the relationship and help with insight and self-awareness. As counseling progresses and students begin to address the self-doubt or begin to self-disclose, they will also be able to see how these changes shift the dynamics of the relationship and can lead to a more satisfying relationship. Counselors can incorporate strategies from different modalities, including using cognitive behavioral therapy and narrative therapy to address maladaptive thinking, and can help students explore unique outcomes congruent with their goals. E. D. Bennett et al. (2017) recommended some creative strategies that could be employed (e.g., talk meter, the paper bag story, using music, or modeling interventions using social media models). It is hoped that as students increase their selfawareness and social self-efficacy, they will transfer and integrate these new behaviors in establishing and maintaining relationships outside of the counseling room, thereby strengthening their social networks and decreasing loneliness.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDU5MTM1