In mid-May of 2020, the UTRGV Counseling and Training Clinic recently had to halt all office appointments temporarily in order to observe the required social distancing. Consequently, our graduate intern counselors were unable to see clients and earn the hours required for their practicum and internship courses. In response to a request from the UTRGV Department chair, Dr. Suzanne Maniss, I created DreamStar Free Online Counseling Services (DFOC) in response to the need for counseling and community support spawned by the coronavirus pandemic.
We hoped that DFOC would 1) serve the counseling and dream sharing needs of a community in crisis, and 2) permit UTRGV student interns to earn their direct hours by leading dream sharing groups, and counseling individuals who are willing to receive services in an online format. Not only was DFOC a resounding success, but it has already served over 400 clients, and supervised over 2500 hours of counseling work.
DFOC continues to offer individual counseling, as well as a variety of counseling services, including:
- Standard counseling for individuals, couples, and families
- Dreamwork-assisted individual counseling
- Dream sharing groups utilizing the FiveStar Method
- General therapy groups (upon availability)
All counseling sessions have employed Zoom videoconferencing, which is end-to-end encrypted, and HIPAA compliant.
DFOC maintains a MOU with UTRGV. All counselors working through this site are current students in the UTRGV masters degree counseling program. As unlicensed counselors in training, they are supervised by their UTRGV Internship professors, as well as by me. Their supervisors, on occasion, visit the group as an observer, in order to ensure the highest level of professionalism and skillfulness from our students.
If you wish to obtain DFOC services, please be aware that DFOC counselors are not experienced in dream analysis. They are in training, but cannot provide the level of expertise that some who is Certified can provide. Nonetheless, if you are interested in standard counselor or dreamwork-assisted counseling with graduate students under my supervision, go to www.onlinecounselinggroups.net. Once you submit the Client Intake Form, one of our counselors will contact you shortly thereafter with further instructions.