By Sharon Abercrombie
Staff writer

Judith Rohrer, a therapist at St. Bonaventure Parish’s Clayton Valley Counseling Center in Concord, is seeing a climb in the numbers of individuals who are suffering from anxiety and temporary depression due to the loss of job and health care benefits, mortgage foreclosure, fear of losing their home, forced retirement, and other problems stemming from the present economic recession.

Her advice to them? “Try to calm down your mind. When you are under stress, your mind works too fast.” One of the results of a racing brain is the inability to make healthy decisions, Rohrer points out.

So, if her clients are open to religion as an assist, she guides them in the direction of spiritual practices. Centering Prayer, the Rosary, watching one’s breath in meditation and the Jesus prayer will help slow down obsessive worrying, she said. “Quieting the mind through various spiritual practices is a thread that runs through all religions to help people make better decision.”

Rohrer and three therapist colleagues — spouse Phil Rohrer, Mary McManus and Elizabeth Mertens, — make up the Clayton Valley staff. Now in its 12th year, the counseling center began after Father Richard Mangini, newly appointed pastor, issued a call for parishioners who were already counselors or who were studying for their master’s degree in clinical psychology. Six individuals responded and the priest gave them office space in the parish rectory.

Clayton Valley’s ongoing philosophy has been to charge fees one third lower than the market rate for therapy sessions. The counselors offer a sliding scale arrangement to their clients as well.

In addition to Clayton Valley, the four therapists maintain their own private practices outside of the parish.

Clayton Valley’s counseling staff is also trained to offer PREPARE/ENRICH, a program designed to prepare engaged couples for marriage and to enrich the lives of those already married. The Minneapolis-based program offers inventories for three types of couples — unmarried couples who do not have children, unmarried couples who have children, and couples who have lived together two or more years.

The inventory is given to a couple by the parish priest or deacon and then sent to Life Innovations for a computerized “counselor report” based on the couple’s answers to questions on all aspects of their relationship. The therapist then meets with the couple for four private counseling sessions to explore the couple’s strengths and problematic areas, communication skills, conflict resolution, and how their family backgrounds influence their abilities to form healthy relationships.

St. Bonaventure’s is Father Mangini’s second parish counseling center. In the mid 1980’s, as pastor at St. Leander Parish in San Leandro, he initiated a counseling center there, reasoning that parishioners would be “more at ease” coming to a “user friendly” and familiar place for therapy. That center is still functioning, but “is slowly closing,” said Annette Walt, a licensed marriage family therapist. “It was vibrant for 21 years, but today there is a different population, and their needs for counseling are different.”

To make an appointment at Clayton Valley Counseling Center, call (925) 210-6176.

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