Training Module for University & College Staff
You might not have started your higher education career intending to become a student counsellor, although you may often feel like one! As someone working on the front line, who students look up to and trust, it’s perhaps unsurprising that you’re often their first port of call when they need support.
This module has been adapted from our online peer support training, which we use to train students to support other students on the TalkCampus platform. TalkCampus is an online 24/7 peer support community that students can access from anywhere in the world.
Peer support means bringing people together with shared experiences to help each other. The concept of peer support may not feel like it fits with the type of support a member of staff can offer a student. You may feel that you don’t have any common experiences to share, or indeed you are not sure if it would be appropriate to do so.
However, anybody can use the skills of a peer supporter and it doesn’t require making any personal disclosures. All you need to do is provide a space for a student to feel accepted and understood. Taking on this role can feel daunting. You might enjoy it when students open up or you might fear it. Either way, this short module is designed to help.
This module will help you to build on a range of skills and strategies, including the below:
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Listening
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Open Questions, Affirmations, Reflective Listening, & Summarising (OARS)
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Clarifying
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Demonstrating Empathy
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Non-Judgmental Approach
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Exploring Options
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Setting Boundaries and Looking After Yourself
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Tips for Communicating Online
How To Support a Student Who Is Struggling
Our training offers guidance on how you can listen to, support and confidently signpost students who are struggling. You don’t need to be a mental health expert or professionally trained to be able to help a student. The skills involved in peer support can be used by anyone. They are useful tools to develop and can be applied to anyone both online and offline.
An Introduction to Peer Support
1. Listening
You may be worried about what to say if a student approaches you for support. Try not to focus on what you are going to say. Instead focus on listening, which is the cornerstone of peer support. Listening helps us feel connected, it helps us feel heard and it helps us to know when someone needs our support. It keeps us plugged into the world. But more than that, listening to someone who is in real need of support can literally save lives. Enabling someone to open up, talk to you and share how they are feeling, rather than keeping it inside or hidden, is one of the best ways of preventing difficult feelings and emotions from spiralling.
Often when someone starts telling us that they aren’t doing so well, we feel pressured to talk and say something that will help. This can make us feel unqualified to respond, unable to find the right words, anxious about whether we’re saying the right thing, and generally out of our depth. This fear can stop us from listening.
If someone starts talking to you about how they are feeling and their struggles, the best thing you can do at that moment is listen. Really listen. Listening instantly removes the pressure on you to talk or to know the answer. And it is also one of the most supportive and helpful things you can do for someone.
The following will give you a framework for listening to and supporting someone. It should take away some of the fear of not knowing what to say and it will also give you some structure to help you steer a conversation.
2. Open Questions, Affirmations, Reflective Listening & Summarising (OARS)
Open Questions
Open questions are a great way to encourage someone to open up and talk more about how they are feeling. Asking open questions gives someone the freedom to express what is going on for them and gives them time and space to talk. An open question is one that doesn’t lend itself to a yes or no answer...‘how are you feeling today?’, ‘what is that like for you?’ or ‘can you tell me more about that?’ are all open questions.
Closed questions are when you ask someone something that is more likely to get a yes or no answer. Asking someone, ‘are you ok?’ is more likely to get a yes or no answer! So is ‘are you feeling sad?’ Whilst it’s ok to ask these types of questions, it’s a good idea to try and stick to open questions as much as possible, especially when you’re supporting someone to start talking about something.
Asking open questions will help a student to open up. They show someone that you want to hear what they have to say. They give them the space to say what they are feeling out loud, which in itself can be really helpful for the person. It might be the first time they have talked about how they’re feeling. Listening to them open up and giving them the time they need, without interruption, can help them to make sense of and start to understand their feelings.
Keep asking questions as they talk and try to choose open questions that gently encourage them to keep talking. ‘Can you tell me more about that?’ or ‘how does that make you feel?’
Remember, a closed question naturally lends itself to someone saying yes or no, for example ‘is everything feeling too much?’ Closed questions don’t give someone the space to elaborate and say how it’s going for them. Yes and no answers can sometimes close the conversation down, whereas open questions help people to open up, ‘how are you feeling?’
Affirmations
Affirmations are supportive statements that recognise and emphasise a student’s existing strengths and abilities, for example ‘it sounds like you are really good at....’ Using affirmations to highlight something positive that a student has done, or a good decision they have made, can help to build their confidence in managing any problems they might be experiencing. Other examples of affirmations include;
‘It sounds like you have really thought this through.’
‘It sounds like you are trying really hard to....’
‘That's a good suggestion.’
‘I’m so glad you came to speak to me today, it isn’t always easy to talk about these things.’
Remember affirmations are supportive statements, for example ‘you handled yourself really well in that situation.’ They are intended to recognise a student's strengths and build their confidence. They are not open questions, ‘can you tell me more about that?’, empathic reflections, ‘that sounds like it’s really heavy for you right now’, or ways to find solutions, ‘let's talk about some ways you can cope.’
Reflective Listening
One of the best ways of making sure you’re really hearing someone is to try and reflect back to them what they have said using your own words.
‘It sounds like you’re really struggling with your workload at the moment and feeling that it is all getting on top of you, is that right?’
By reflecting back, you’ve shown someone that you understand them and really get what they are saying. This can be comforting and a real release. It’s also a great way of giving someone a different perspective, which can be very impactful.
Remember, reflecting is repeating back what someone has said to you in your own words, to help them feel heard and understood. It is not about finding solutions ‘can we talk about the next steps?’
Summarising
Sometimes people’s thoughts and feelings can be jumbled and it’s hard for them to make sense of it all. Summarising what someone has been saying can be a great way of providing some structure to a conversation, slowing someone down a little, and letting them take a breath.
You could say, ‘I just wanted to summarise what I have heard from you...’ You could also ask someone if they would mind if you checked your understanding or you might just want to pause for a moment and spend a bit of time going over what has been said already. If someone is struggling, slowing the pace and checking in like this can really help ground them and give structure to your support.
This is different from reflecting as you are summing up sections of a conversation or the entire conversation. It can help someone get their thoughts in order. This is especially helpful if someone is feeling confused, very fraught, and anxious. When our minds are full of thoughts it can get very overwhelming. Hearing someone calmly summarise what is going on can be very calming.
A summary is a great way of focusing a conversation, bringing things together, taking stock of what has been said, and also checking that you understand.
Remember, summarising is offering someone a summary of a whole conversation or sections of a conversation in order to slow things down, give some structure and check you have understood the most important things. It is not about offering or finding solutions ‘have you thought about reaching out to our wellbeing team’ or ‘what kind of steps can we take?’
Example:
‘I am so stressed out right now and work is piling on top of me. Everyone is so focused on my diagnosis and my doctor doesn’t want to stop prescribing my medication even though the side effects are making me feel worse. It feels like I’m not allowed to have a problem like everyone else. It always has to come back to the past and what happened before Uni even started.'
Reflecting
‘It sounds like you are feeling frustrated and that people aren’t hearing you.’
Reflecting
‘It sounds like you are feeling frus‘It sounds like you are feeling stressed out with work and that other people are really focusing on your previous diagnosis rather than what’s going on right now. It also sounds like you would like a review of your medication, is that right?’trated and that people aren’t hearing you.’
Additional Skills
Aside from the OARS model, there are some additional skills that can help when offering peer support to your students.
3. Clarifying
Clarifying is a great way of checking you have heard correctly and allowing the person to set you straight or consider whether that feels right for them.
Never be afraid to clarify. If you aren’t sure what someone means or haven’t heard correctly you can always ask them to clarify.
‘Sorry, can I just check that I've got that right?’
This is another way of affirming someone. It helps you to know that you’ve understood and helps someone else know that you’ve heard them.
4. Demonstrating Empathy
A key tool for supporting someone is demonstrating empathy. Empathy is the practice of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Empathetic statements are powerful ways of showing someone you really care and validating their feelings; letting them know it’s ok to feel the way they are feeling. By just saying something like ‘that sounds really tough’ or ‘that must feel really exhausting and I can see that you feel so worried’, you can help someone to feel affirmed. Often, we beat ourselves up for feeling the way that we do and hearing from someone else that yes, it’s reasonable and understandable that you feel that way, can help.
Try to avoid the statement ‘I know how you feel’ as the likelihood is you don’t know exactly how a student feels. We are all individuals shaped by our own beliefs and experiences. Even if you have experienced a similar situation, it is probably best to avoid this particular statement as, no matter how well intended, it may be inflammatory. It can be helpful to say something like, ‘I can see that was really distressing for you’ or ‘I can see how upset you are.'
Try not to be tempted to tell someone it’s all going to be o.k. We can’t know what might happen and offering this type of reassurance can be unhelpful. Demonstrating empathy for the person is enough to show that you care.
5. Non-Judgmental Approach
Don't Judge. Don't Overreact. Stay Calm.
It takes great courage to open up. Do your best to remain neutral, and don’t judge. You don’t know someone’s experience and what has happened to them thus far in life. Whatever they have done, or however they are feeling, try to listen and take the role of a calm force, being there in that moment as they open up. If you hear something shocking try not to overreact, just listen and give them space. For example, if a student discloses that they are using illegal substances, don’t panic. Just take a moment and calmly start to explore.
6. Exploring Options
As hard as it can sometimes be, try not to give direct advice. What works for you might not work for someone else and it’s often better to let someone find their own solutions. That doesn’t mean you can’t help them to work things through but try to keep an open mind and avoid steering someone towards what you think would be the best solution.
Instead, you could explore options and look at what someone has or hasn’t thought about. It is important that you know what support exists at your university or who you can call on if you have concerns about the safety of a student. This will help you to feel calm if you find yourself talking to someone who needs help. You can also signpost someone to TalkCampus. You can find out more information about TalkCampus by clicking on the link at the end of this training.
Trust Yourself
The most important thing to remember when you are listening and supporting someone is that you have the potential to make a difference to someone just by being you. You don’t need to have any special training or qualifications. You as a person are perfectly positioned to care for someone else. There is such power in listening and talking and whilst it can be scary and we often feel worried about getting it wrong, simply being there for someone else is an incredible first step.
7. Setting Boundaries & Looking After Yourself
Boundaries determine what is and what is not okay in your interactions with students. It may be hard sometimes to know where your responsibility as a member of faculty begins and ends. Boundaries will be personal for each individual, there is no one size fits all. Supporting students with their studies inevitably means that, at times, you will become closely associated with students’ emotional and overall well-being. If you do not consider or enforce healthy boundaries then you risk compromising your own emotional well-being and this can easily lead to exhaustion and/ or impact on your energy levels, sleep patterns and home life.
While it is important to always lead with empathy, this doesn’t mean empathy only towards the student. It also means empathy for yourself, and part of this is looking after your own mental health and making sure you are feeling resilient enough to provide emotional support to others. If a student has shared something with you that has caused you distress, you can share with colleagues how you are feeling, even if you aren’t able to disclose details.
If you are feeling unable to support a student, you might say,
'It sounds like you need a space to have a confidential conversation, and I may not be the best person to help you because I’m not trained as a _______ (therapist/crisis counsellor/financial aid specialist, etc.). Do you know how to connect with the _______ on campus (insert appropriate support service)?'
8. Tips for Communicating Online
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Be sure you are speaking to the right person before you start.
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If you are chatting with a student back and forth online, try to write nice short responses and include lots of prompts so the student feels heard, you can use the OARS model and additional skills from this training to help.
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Make sure you know where the student is currently located in case you need to get help for them.
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Make sure that you are free of distractions when speaking to the student, for example turn your phone on silent, shut the door and turn off the radio. You may want to consider using a headset for privacy.
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If you are speaking via video conferencing, make sure the student is in a safe and confidential space to talk and that you have an alternative way of contacting them should the call fail, for example a mobile phone number (try to agree this in advance or at the start of the call). It can also be helpful to agree on a word or phrase that a student can say if someone comes into earshot and they want to end the call without disclosing who they are speaking to.
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If you are using text message or email to communicate, make it clear and empathic and set out how the communication will work, for example let them know when you will check your emails or messages and how long it might take you to reply. Consider using an automatic reply showing your normal working hours and putting crisis contact numbers in your electronic signature.
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You might want to agree with the student if you are happy for screenshots or recordings to be taken and whether you are happy for these to be shared.
You can signpost students to TalkCampus, who are partnered with your institution. TalkCampus is an online peer support community for students that provides support anytime of day, anywhere in the world via the TalkCampus app or the web. TalkCampus is an online 24/7 peer support community for students that can be accessed from anywhere in the world.
Create the Right Environment
If someone has approached you, make sure you have enough time to have a conversation with them. A quiet space where you will be uninterrupted will help. If you need to find a different time or take a few moments to get set up, that’s okay. Take your time. It’s okay to ask a student to hold that thought whilst you get yourself in a position to be able to really listen to them.
Try to bench anything that is going on for you. If you have a meeting or lecture shortly, let the student know how much time you have before then so there is an expectation of when you will need to draw the conversation to a close. Try to put ‘your stuff’ to the side temporarily and focus your attention on the person you are talking to.