Removing Barriers for Breakthrough

The first time I went to therapy, I didn’t really want to go. A friend of mine was worried about me and had suggested it, but I’d never been before and wasn’t interested. At the time, I lived on campus as an undergrad at Auburn University, and when she posed the question, “would you go to the counseling center on campus?,” my reply came quickly: “No.” To her credit, she offered a follow-up: “Would you go if I helped make the appointment and then I came with you?”

The next day, we met in the parking lot where we hopped in my car. I drove us to the counseling center, I filled out the paperwork, and I went back into the meeting room with the counselor by myself.

As a therapist who often finds himself having conversations about how the church can impact the mental health of individuals and communities, I think about this experience every time someone asks a variation of the question, “How do we help?”

Although there’s no neat or clean answer to that question, the most obvious starting point for me is removing barriers. How do we make it more possible for people to access treatment? How do we come alongside those while they do? How do we care for our own mental health, both in the places we’re hurting and proactively to help us navigate the world around us with the people around us in healthy ways?

That idea, the idea of removing barriers, is why I’m so excited to be writing this as the new Site Director for Cumberland Counseling at Northside Church in Buckhead. Cumberland Counseling Centers is a non-profit that partners with churches to launch and run clinical counseling centers within their walls. That means that a church doesn’t have to hire one therapist, figure out all the logistics of a therapy practice, and then hire more therapists once that first one has too many clients to see in a week. Our model allows for faith communities to provide a trusted referral to licensed clinicians they know, often within the building, along with options for affordable care. Not only that, but churches can provide those things for its own congregants and for the community around it, serving as an essential resource for the well-being of that larger community.

I’m excited for our Buckhead site and how it will grow in the coming months and years: listening to what the surrounding community needs, offering trainings/seminars to provide resources, and (of course) offering clinical counseling that we believe ripples outward from the people in the room to impact everyone they encounter.

But for today, I think back to my friend who researched the hours the counseling center was open. My friend who figured out the steps needed for me to get a first appointment, who didn’t drive (I wanted to), didn’t pay for it (it was covered by tuition), didn’t go into the session (not allowed), but who did ride with me, did sit with me in the waiting room, and did stay in that waiting room the full length of the session, knowing I’d need a friendly face when I came back out. That’s what we’re here to do: to offer high-quality, clinically-trained, as-accessible-as-possible- because-we’ve-removed-as-many- barriers-as-we-can mental health treatment. For you. For your family. For your neighbor. For anyone in our communities that might need it.

Robert Vore, LPC

Buckhead Site Director