Uckfield Counselling

Struggling with thoughts of su***de?

HOPELINE247 offers confidential support, 24/7. Whether you need someone to talk to or guidance on how to help a friend, our advisers are here for you. Your wellbeing is important to us - don't hesitate to get in touch.💜

SANE responds to NHS 111 offering crisis mental health support NHS England has announced that NHS 111 will be offering crisis mental health support for the first time. Marjorie Wallace, chief executive of mental health charity SANE, welcomed the move but issued a warning over the lack of wider resources to ease the pressure on waiting lists for mental healthc...

I hated myself. Unbridled, unbearable self-loathing. Because all I'd experienced was hate. So to experience unconditional positive regard and compassion in the therapy room was life-transforming.

Read more in my book 'Unshame': https://www.carolynspring.com/books/

We are recruiting volunteers to support survivors of sexual violence at our in-person and online groups and on our helpline & email service.

💜 We are looking for a wide range of people of different ages, genders and backgrounds to join our fantastic team.
💜 No experience necessary, full training is given.
💜 Volunteers must be aged 21 or above.
💜 We are currently prioritising applicants who can volunteer at our Mon evening and Wed lunchtime helpline.
💜 Closing date: Friday October 25th
💜 Interviews: Tues November 5th in person in central Brighton
💜 Training in-person in Brighton: Nov 15th, 21st, 22nd, 28th, 29th

Visit our website to learn more and apply!

https://survivorsnetwork.org.uk/get-involved/volunteer-with-us/volunteer-recruitment/

Looking after yourself when you or someone you love is going through a hard time can be challenging and it can be difficult to know where to start. 💜

Our self-help guides for survivors of sexual violence and those supporting them can be found to read or download via the resource library on our website. 📱📚💻

*Self-help guide is available in Polish, Urdu, Chinese, Arabic, Somali and Easy-Read versions.

GCSE results day can bring a lot of emotions. If today has left you feeling overwhelmed or hopeless, please reach out.

Our HOPELINE247 advisers are here to listen and help you through it.

We are here for you, day and night.💜

Join the Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP), where you'll amplify lived experience perspectives to drive strategic decisions within the Survivors' Network community!

💜 What is the LEAP?

As a member of LEAP, you will play a key role in shaping Survivors’ Network strategic direction.

You will be able to develop your leadership, communication, and strategic thinking skills while ensuring that the voices of those with lived experiences are heard and valued in decision-making processes.

You will connect with like-minded individuals and contribute to a supportive community.

*Remuneration is offered or expenses are covered to ensure no one is out of pocket for taking part.

💜 Who can apply?

Current or former service users are welcome to apply. To ensure the group is diverse and representative, we especially encourage applications from individuals aged 16 to 24, self-identifying men, and residents of East and West Sussex.

💜 When and Where?

We meet online or in person (at a Brighton location) every six weeks.

💜 How to apply?

Fill out our online form via the link, and we'll get in touch.

If you have any questions, please email [email protected]

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1496YzmE5OOckAhKOA1K0q9YirRYpFrYDcVzGSir356Q/viewform?edit_requested=true

🌱Our volunteer and student counselling placements are now open! 🌱

Are you a qualified counsellor, or currently working towards a counselling qualification? Do you have experience of helping people experiencing high levels of distress improve their life and wellbeing? If so, we want to hear from you!

We have placements available for experienced student and volunteer counsellors to join our team to provide counselling sessions to boys, men and non-binary people who have experienced sexual assault or abuse.

Perhaps you're a final year counselling student looking to gain experience, or a qualified counsellor who wants to volunteer your time. Either way, these placements are a great opportunity to gain new skills and work in a supportive team, helping survivors of abuse on their healing journey.

Explore and apply for our counselling placements at www.survivorsuk.org/careers ✍️

SurvivorsUK encourage applications from people who share some of the identities of our service users (men and non-binary people), and from people from communities experiencing structural oppression (including Black and Asian, trans and disabled people), even if you don’t meet all the criteria. We value lived experience as well as professional experience.

Our application window is now open for the next members of our 'Trauma Recovery Community'. Exclusively for professionals working with complex trauma, we're a learning and development group where we figure out how to work ethically and effectively with complex trauma via weekly live Zoom sessions, discussion forums, pre-recorded training, and resources – all for a low monthly membership fee (with no long-term commitment).

Follow the link to find out what it's all about, including an intro video by me and also a sneak-peek. It's not just CPD – it's also a supportive community where we learn together and grow together, so that you're not on your own.

Go to http://www.carolynspring.com/community to find out more.

Shame is a central experience of child sexual abuse. For me, part of my struggle was to recognise that blaming myself – either for the abuse or for the shame afterwards – really wasn't helping.

Read more at: https://www.carolynspring.com/blog/shame-and-child-sexual-abuse

isn't a mystery – there are clear neurobiological underpinnings for it, and it's an evolutionary response that has helped us face for millions of years. What's a mystery is why more people don't know about it.

More: https://www.carolynspring.com/shop/dissociation-and-did-the-fundamentals-online-training

When happens, our nervous systems can't process it. The evolutionary response is to shut down emotions and thoughts to help us survive via instincts. But that makes it difficult for us even to believe ourselves.

Read more: https://www.carolynspring.com/books

It is evident that it is time to address the issue of sexual misconduct in UK universities. With numerous reports such as “Higher education after ”, it is impossible to overlook the call for support from university students nationwide who are demanding more from higher education institutions.

Recent studies unequivocally demonstrate that 20% of students have encountered unwanted sexual behavior while at university. This statistic is unsurprising to us at Survivors’ Network as we consistently engage with our local universities and facilitate peer support groups for students at Sussex University.

This week, the Office for Students (OfS) will enforce new requirements for universities to ensure the protection of students from harassment and sexual misconduct. This will be done by introducing a “condition of registration” specifically aimed at addressing this critical issue.

We’re committed to moving things forward in this area, and as such, we offer low-cost, essential training, designed to support compliance with these changes. Our expertise in this sector ensure that the training is not just informative, but engaging and sensitively delivered – because these topics deserve a nuanced approach.

What We Provide:

💜 We already work closely with Universities to provide personalised training packages meaning that we are able to offer “off-the-shelf” ready-to-go training that can fit around you.
💜 We also offer a downloadable “Consent For Universities” webinar content that you can purchase for each student and team member to complete remotely in their own time.
💜 If you have a more specific requirement we are well-equipped to create specialised content that suits your needs.
Furthermore, any funds raised through our expert-led training delivery go back into our frontline services, thereby supporting survivors of sexual violence and abuse.

If this is of interest to you, get in touch with us on [email protected] and we can take you through the options; including personalising sessions to your specific teams and context.

It's so easy to pathologise – to think there's something wrong with our brain when it behaves 'differently'. But during and after trauma our brain does exactly what it's evolved to do, which is geared around keeping us safe.

Read more: http://www.carolynspring.com/blog/trauma-and-the-bears

I don't need my experiences to be pathologised or medicalised. I just need to be treated as a human being in distress. We have evolved to respond to compassion and empathy as the basis for feeling safe after .

Find out more: https://www.carolynspring.com/trauma-webinar

What makes a good therapist? Who are we as clients most comfortable working with? What are the red flags? What are the shout-out signs of commendation? Who would YOU work with?

Read my blog post suggesting some key issues at https://www.carolynspring.com/blog/who-would-you-work-with

Therapy can feel impossibly scary if we feel we need to talk about 'what happened' – before we're ready. But trauma therapy is about retraining our neurobiology to feel safe again – with or without a narrative. Read more: https://www.carolynspring.com/blog/why-do-we-avoid

We don't learn self-soothing intellectually. For sure, it can help to understand how it works, what to do, and how it impacts our neurobiology. But it's a right-brain dynamic which we learn through experience.

Find out more: https://www.carolynspring.com/trauma-webinar/

It would be so much simpler if we started therapy and then made steady progress each week. But it doesn’t work like that. Sometimes we make quick progress, but a lot of the time – for me at least – it can be frustratingly slow. Many times I seemed to take one step forward and two steps back. And there were long periods when nothing seemed to be happening at all: times of ‘winter’.

In this short video I explain that, just because it’s ‘winter’, it doesn’t mean to say that there’s nothing happening under the surface …

Watch this 2-minute video to find out more:
https://youtu.be/-HV1MnG5f7A

In trying to resolve , I frequently became stuck. A little progress in therapy, and then the brakes went back on again. It happened again and again. What was wrong with me?!

Find out more on my trauma webinar series: https://www.carolynspring.com/trauma-webinar/

Secure attachment, mentalising, affect regulation, reflection ... these can all happen in the therapy room when the therapist is solid and secure, robust enough to deal with whatever comes up for the client.

webinar series: https://www.carolynspring.com/trauma-webinar/

We don't become stuck with because we're not trying hard enough to recover, or don't want to recover (!), or because there's no way to recover. We become stuck because stuckness is part of the nature of trauma.

Find out more: http://www.carolynspring.com/trauma-webinar.

One of the things we most often beat ourselves up for after is simply the fact that we are traumatised. We believe inherently that we should be able to control our reactions, and feel that we cannot.

Listen now at https://www.carolynspring.com/podcast/trauma-is-not-just-a-distressing-event

It's easy to think there's something wrong with us for struggling to trust people. But what if it's just our brain trying to keep us safe from more harm?
Find out more in this episode at http://www.carolynspring.com/podcasts or on Spotify etc.

After , our brains don't process memory in the normal way, so we're left with triggers and flashbacks. But not all triggers are created equal – and to resolve them, it's a good idea to understand the different types.
Read more: https://is.gd/SgWDWB

When we heard the word 'recovery' we can often as survivors feel pressured: into the impossible, and into putting up and shutting up, just to keep other people happy. But that's really not what I mean.
Listen to my podcast: https://is.gd/m3dI0Q

The issue is not whether we 'have' or or or or anxiety or depression or bipolar or OCD or ... or ... or ... The issue is that we are human beings in pain, with unresolved . Let's start from there.
Listen: https://is.gd/86HqjL

Being negative gets a bad rap, as if we're just being deliberately perverse. But it's our best attempt to survive a negative world. We need to understand what we're fundamentally trying to achieve by being negative.

Read more: https://www.carolynspring.com/books/