Lyn goes to NIU to counsel
Blaine Hubbard - April 17th, 2008Two days before students at Northern Illinois University (NIU) returned to class after the tragic shooting on the campus last month, psychologists and counselors traveled from all over the country to help ease students back into the first week of class.
Dr. Laura Lyn, psychologist and training coordinator at NAU’s Counseling and Testing Center, was one of the professionals who went to provide her therapeutic skills in the long and difficult recovery process.
On Saturday, March 23 she flew from Phoenix to Chicago and made the nearly two-hour drive over to DeKalb, Ill., where NIU is located. This was the hub for hundreds of volunteer counselors who would provide their counseling abilities to NIU students before returning to their respective homes that Wednesday.
Upon arrival, Lyn said DeKalb, a town with a population of just over 42,000, was still very subdued, a little eerie and quiet with very few cars on the road.
“I was not sure what I was going to encounter there and not completely sure what my role was going to be other than being told my professional skills, my therapy skills, would be utilized,” Lyn said.
Lyn soon realized her responsibility would not be one with specific guidelines, but one where she was placed wherever she was needed.
“I put myself in my crisis-response mode, which was basically ‘I have therapeutic skills, I don’t know exactly how, when or where I am going to use them, but I am ready to go and I am very flexible—whatever they need me to do, that is what I am going to be there to do.’”
That Sunday, the NIU campus held a memorial service before welcoming students and faculty back to class the next day.
During the service, John G. Peters, president of NIU, made a speech about how the community responded after the tragedy.
“The enormous outpouring of love we have experienced this past week reminds us that this community, this state, this nation, this world are connected to each other in fundamental, unchanging ways,” Peters said.
Peters expressed his thanks to the volunteer counselors, as well as members of the DeKalb and NIU communities with a reference to John Donne’s famous quote, “No man is an island.”
Lyn has been a practicing psychologist for 20 years on four university campuses, including Southern Illinois University, the University of Illinois, St. Louis University and currently here at NAU.
“I am good at listening to people and figuring out what makes them tick,” Lyn said. “It is a very rewarding profession to watch people grow or to figure out who they are inside.”
Dr. Micky Sharma, director of the NIU Counseling and Student Development Center, also showed his appreciation for Lyn and the rest of the volunteer counselors.
“We would not have made it without the unbelievable outpouring of support,” Sharma said. “We had 500 plus volunteer clinicians join us for the first two days on campus.”
Lyn explained how the atmosphere on the NIU campus was both controlled and edgy at the same time. On an overcast day that laid down a couple inches of snow, there were police officers, media and counselors everywhere.
“Monday and Tuesday were very predictably tentative,” Lyn said. “Nobody was sure as each hour went by how it was going to go, but I think it went very well, that they managed the volunteer effort very well, and that campus did probably the best job that any campus could have done in that situation.”
Lyn explained some of the difficulties that come with her job as a counselor and the hardships people are faced with during recovery.
“As much as you can talk with somebody and encourage them to reach the goals they are looking for, you have no control over whether they are going to do that or not,” Lyn said. “It is very difficult to sit and listen to people who are in pain. You cannot just say, ‘If you have a headache then go take an aspirin;’ emotional pain is something difficult to work with, and to help people find ways to let go of things that are difficult and to change their behavior.”
By the time Lyn left on Wednesday, she had already begun to notice the campus beginning to get back into rhythm, and she gave credit to those faculty and staff members responsible for the recovery process.
“They really put a tremendous effort into receiving their students back and, in my experience, the students really appreciated that,” Lyn said.
In his speech during the memorial service, Peters addressed the higher concepts that were affecting the DeKalb community, particularly the hardships of recovery.
“Our tragedy has touched people in all walks of life and in all corners of our world,” Peters said. “The massive outpouring of concern, countless offers of assistance and unstoppable movement of people wanting to join in our grief and healing remind us that we are members of a larger community that has been forever changed.”