Student Jem smiling

UofG Student Jem Crawley talks about being a student as well as part time fundraiser for Healing for the Heart, a mental health charity offering affordable counselling and community development across Glasgow.

What I love about university culture is the wide acceptance of mental health. We are encouraged from day one to speak out if we need to.

It is not perfect, and there are still environments and cultures that need to change, but my experience of mental health awareness at university was good.

In my first year of university, I went to counselling for the first time. I had begun to process my childhood trauma. I had a community that encouraged me, a family who loved me the way I needed and friends who were there for me.

I Learned About Myself

Still, for what I needed to process, I needed professional help on top of what I already had. In my first-year halls accommodation,

I looked up “counselling near me”. A couple of suggestions popped up, but one caught my eye, Healing for the Heart (formerly Whiteinch Transformation). I got in touch and asked for help. Over the next four years, I went back to Healing for the Heart for counselling a handful of times.

I learned a lot about myself, a lot about my trauma, and a lot about my future. After I began counselling, I decided I wanted to become a counsellor.

I even started working for Healing for the Heart as their fundraiser to gain experience in the mental health field while I do my part-time study to become a counsellor.

Transformative

Receiving counselling was a powerful experience that transformed my life. It taught me that healing is not linear but circular. The lies I had believed turned and transformed, moulding and hiding as I walked through life.

You may find that it is the same lie that you discovered the first time you go for counselling that is the same lie coming up again in the 10th time you go for counselling.

However, it has a new face. What I learned was how to identify it. How to bring that lie to the forefront of my mind, understand it and name it for what it is—a lie. Over time, I got faster and faster at identifying these lies.

Over time counselling can help you become more resilient. Resilience is often understood through the image of an elastic band. Being resilient is the ability to be stretched, pulled, strained, and thrown around and still reform your shape. Having counselling helped me become resilient.

Pay What You Can Afford

Many people are worried about going to counselling because of how expensive it can be. Often £50 is a ‘reasonable’ cost, and as a student, money is not always something we have in abundance.

At Healing for the Heart, we recognise that the financial side of therapy can lead to inaccessibility. We offer counselling on a sliding scale.

We ask for you to pay what you can afford. Then, because of our sliding scale, we can provide mental health support to those from low-income backgrounds without money hindering receiving the help needed.

We have highly skilled, experienced, and expert counsellors, and we can offer up to 12 sessions per person. And right now, we currently have around 100 people in our counselling service every week.

Additional Information

We want to share two important things from this article. One, if you need help, we are here for you. Please get in touch through our email, enquiries@healingfortheheart.co.uk. We guarantee that you have your assessment session within two weeks of contacting us.

From there, our team will decide which one of our 17 counsellors is best suited for you. Two, because of our sliding scale, we are constantly looking for funds to cover the cost of those who need proper mental health support.

If you are willing and able to contribute to our work, we are so grateful for everything you can give. We invite you to become a regular donor. Even if it is just £3 a month, it will make a difference to the lives of people like myself. And if you would like to fundraise on behalf of us, get in contact with me at jem@healingfortheheart.co.uk.

 

UofG Support and Wellbeing Services  

If you would like to speak to someone, there are a number of  UofG support services available:  

 

First published: 31 March 2022

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