Watch our videos

Counselling Services at the University of Wolverhampton have created a series of videos to introduce you to the services they offer.

Counselling can help you move forward How counselling can help you deal with difficulties in your life so you can get it moving again.

University can be hard for anyone You are not alone. Real student experiences and how counselling helped them.

What is counselling and how can it help?

Counsellor Jenny Leeder on counselling services available to University of Wolverhampton students (Streaming WMV/video file - opens in a new window).

Counsellor Jenny Leeder describes the services on offer to students from Counselling Services.

Every year in the Counselling Service, we see students who decide to take up our offer of help to steady themselves as they make their way through University

Not all things that can go wrong at University are of a purely academic nature. You may experience personal difficulties too, which sometimes impact on your ability to study, about which you may feel you want to talk to someone in confidence and at depth

Difficulties can arise for anyone at any time, and it is not a failing (as some think) to seek support to get through emotionally tough times.

In the past students have chosen to bring lots of different issues to counselling. Here are just a few to give you an idea: feelings of stress and anxiety; relationship break-ups; lack of motivation; lack of confidence; difficulties at home, cultural problems; depression, and many more…Any one of these problems can make it really hard to get the most out of being a student

We hear many times from our clients that it’s hard to face some of these problems, and it often seems easier to ‘bury’ them. Some problems just don’t seem to disappear, however, and often clients wish they had come to see us sooner.

Our Service offers free, confidential counselling sessions with a qualified and professional counsellor who can support you in sorting difficulties out. We welcome all students, whether you are part-time or full-time, home, EU or international, postgraduate or undergraduate, mature or a school/college leaver.

What happens in counselling though? Sharing your feelings and being listened to can help enormously. The act of trying to put something into words can help us think more deeply about a situation and get it into perspective. Counsellors don’t give advice, although often we will have some useful information. Sometimes just the very fact that somebody has tried to understand can help.

Students tell us that they particularly appreciate us because we don’t judge them; and we are independent from their problem and take a neutral stance; and also the way we really listen and enable them to focus on what’s going wrong. Our clients generally feel accepted and valued for who they are in counselling, which can help give them the confidence to make the changes they want to make in their lives. Some of our former clients say here how counselling helped them:

• "[It helped me] to organise and collect my thoughts, to see my progress and make me feel looked after."
• "I have been able to open up and discuss my thoughts and feelings without fear of being judged or saying the wrong things."
• "I feel it has […] allowed me to address my problems head on, rather than avoiding them."

We understand you may feel a bit nervous about first meeting with a counsellor, but it’s very easy to get an appointment at City, Walsall, Telford or Compton campuses. We also have a drop-in hour each day (12.30pm to 1.30pm) and are open later one day a week at City campus.

The Counselling team sends you their very best wishes for this academic year!