SCCC’s School-Based program: counselor Dimitrios Gatsiounis’ persepctive

Each year, SCCC sends counselors to six nearby LAUSD schools to provide free on-site counseling to struggling students. In addition, an invitation is extended to come to SCCC where the entire family can engage in counseling at the Center — also for free. This service is made possible by the support of generous donors and grants.

In the post below, Dimitrios Gatsiounis tells us a bit about his experience during his time as a counselor in SCCC’s School-Based program.

“In my 10-plus years training in the field of mental health, few experiences have better challenged or shaped me clinically than my time in SCCC’s School-Based Program.

This September will mark my third academic year of seeing students at Fairfax High School and my work there has put me in touch with a terrifically vast array of students. And while each one is coming from (and moving on) a unique journey, there are some common threads. Each student I have worked with longs for—often fights for!—a sense of independence. Yet by working closely with these students every week I have come to know well that they also yearn for a periodic return to the familiar—some version (actual or symbolic) of the familial.

Our interaction provides an opportunity to work through these divergent interests, and offers a place for valuable interpersonal connection—regardless of life’s troubling circumstances. As a supervisor of mine at the Center explained to me, my duty is not to “fix” them per se but rather to provide them with a connective experience that they might not have had otherwise—goodness knows they have given that to me.”