CAPS Groups | Fall 2025
Reducing Social Anxiety with Board Games | Christopher Perriatt, LPC
Starts September 16, 2025
Tuesdays, 3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
@ Uptown CAPS, Conference Room
8-week program | weekly, 90-minute sessions
Overview: Board games are a social activity designed for people to have fun while interacting with each other. This group plans to utilize this to the fullest to help students tackle social anxiety by practicing social skills with other members using board games as a medium. The group will also help students build resilience to stressful situations that they may not have complete control over since you never know who is going to do well in a game. Students will then process the feeling of interactions with each other and how they can use what they experienced outside of the group. This group is meant to have a casual atmosphere and is an open group. Max participants – 4 students
Skills Covered:
- Mindfulness: Learn to stay present and fully engage in the moment, reducing anxiety and improving focus.
- Building Resilience: Develop strategies to cope with and tolerate stressful situations while processing them.
- Building Confidence: Seeing and processing the progress being made as interactions take place and strategies for the games are built and practiced.
- Practicing Social Skills: Practice communication skills to express thoughts and feelings to others and help build stronger relationships.
Who Should Join? This group is ideal for college students who:
- Are dealing with mild to moderate social anxiety
- Struggling with staying in the moment
- Wanting to improve their confidence and communication skills
Deepening Emotional Intelligence | Christopher Jones, LPC-S
Starts September 3, 2025
Wednesdays, 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm
@ Uptown CAPS
8-week program | weekly, 90-minute sessions
Overview: Navigating college life can be challenging, with academic pressures, social dynamics, and the transition to adulthood. Our Deepening Emotional Intelligence Group is an open, skill-building group designed to equip college students with practical tools to manage stress, regulate emotions, and build healthy relationships. It focuses on four key areas: Mindfulness, Distress Tolerance, Emotion Regulation, and Interpersonal Effectiveness.
Skills Covered:
- Mindfulness: Learn to stay present and fully engage in the moment, reducing anxiety and improving focus.
- Distress Tolerance: Develop strategies to cope with crises and tolerate distress without making things worse.
- Emotion Regulation: Understand and manage intense emotions, leading to more stable moods and better decision-making.
- Interpersonal Effectiveness: Enhance communication skills, set healthy boundaries, and build meaningful relationships.
Who Should Join? This group is ideal for college students who:
- Feel overwhelmed by academic and social pressures
- Struggle with managing emotions or stress
- Want to improve their relationships and communication skills
Benefits:
- Gain practical skills to handle life’s challenges
- Improve emotional well-being and resilience
- Connect with peers facing similar experiences
- Receive guidance from trained DBT facilitators
How to Join: Interested students can sign up through CAPS at 504-314-2277. Spaces are limited, so early registration is encouraged.
Mindful Mondays | Maria Vazquez, PhD
Mondays, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
@ Uptown CAPS
drop-in sessions
Overview: Mindful Mondays is a mindfulness skills-based group designed to introduce students to mindful breathing, movement, and meditation practices as a way of reducing stress and anxiety, increase body and mind-awareness, and develop emotional regulation skills. No experience in mindfulness is required to participate.
Skills Covered: mindfulness, breathing exercises, anxiety/stress management, meditation, mindful movement
Who Should Join? This group is ideal for students struggling with stress, anxiety, or those that are simply looking for ways to relax and cultivate a deeper connection with themselves. This will be an open group facilitated by Dr. Maria D. Vazquez and students can attend as many or as few sessions as they would like.
Benefits: Students who attend this group will learn mindfulness skills that they can add to their emotion regulation toolbox.
How to Join: Interested students can sign up through CAPS at 504-314-2277 to schedule an initial consultation (30 min appt) to express interest in group or, if they are already connected to CAPS, can let their clinician know that they would like to be added to roster.
Survivors | Maria Vazquez, PhD
Thursdays, 2:30 pm - 4:00 pm
@ Uptown CAPS
10-week program | weekly, 90-minute sessions
Overview: This weekly group will provide a space for survivors of sexual trauma to process the individual and relational impacts of trauma. Group participants will have opportunities in group to learn more about sexual trauma and the impacts on views of self and relationships with others, process experiences, learn helpful skills for navigating trauma reactivity in everyday life, and explore how to build and sustain positive, nourishing, and empowering relationships to self and others after trauma. Group will be facilitated by Dr. Maria D. Vazquez and will incorporate an intersectional, culturally-sensitive, and LGBTQ+ affirming framework. All are welcome.
Skills Covered: psychoeducation about the emotional and relational impacts of trauma; emotion regulation; boundary awareness and communication; assertive communication skills
Who Should Join? This group is ideal for college students who are looking for a space to process the impacts of their trauma experience and learn helpful skills for how to navigate life with trauma.
Benefits: Students will gain knowledge about trauma and trauma reactivity, learn helpful skills to navigate life with trauma, and learn the building blocks for how to build and sustain positive and empowering relationships with themselves and others after trauma.
How to Join: Interested students can sign up through CAPS at 504-314-2277, request an initial consultation (30 min appt) to be screened by the group facilitator (30 min appt).
First Year Transition | Jinaki Flint, PsyD
Starts September 12, 2025
Fridays, 11:00 am - 12:00 pm
@ Uptown CAPS
drop-in sessions
Overview: Designed for first year students, the First Year Transition Group provides a safe space and support for students to help ease their transition to campus life. Students will learn helpful tools as they explore adjustment-related issues—social concerns, loneliness, academic difficulties, managing sleep and other first year challenges. The First Year Transition group helps students build capacity to fully participate in their campus experience with a sense of curiosity, self-compassion, and self-efficacy.
Skills Covered: navigating campus resources for stress reduction, sleep hygiene, breathing practices, anxiety/stress management, distress tolerance, mindfulness, mindful voice and movement, and more!
Who Should Join? This group is ideal for students struggling with first year transition to college and feeling isolation/loneliness, stress, anxiety, or those that are simply looking for ways to relax, cultivate connections, build community with other students, and gain support. Especially great for students who don’t even know what they don’t know! This will be an open group facilitated by Dr. Jinaki Flint and students can attend as many or as few sessions as they would like.
Benefits: Students who attend this group will learn skills to help them navigate their first year of college mindfully, build emotional competence and reduce stress/anxiety through practices that they can utilize for support during their first year and beyond.
How to Join: Interested students should contact CAPS at 504-314-2277 and request to be added to the group. Students already connected to CAPS should inform their provider that they would like to be added to the group.
