My Experience With On-Campus Mental Health Services

Before I came to university, I never struggled with my mental health. After some of the things that I went through, my parents worried at times if it would affect me later on, if I was burying my emotions and would later explode. But I was fine. I did well in school; I had great friends and a great after-school job; I had a good home life. Things were good. My life was good.

Before I came to university, I thought that only people who had clinically diagnosed mental illnesses could struggle with their mental health. I was never taught that being mentally well didn’t just involve the absence of a mental illness. It never occurred to me that people could have mental health issues without having a diagnosable disorder.

Even now, I don’t always feel comfortable talking about my own mental health story. I don’t feel like I have the right to talk about my struggles when so many other people have it so much worse than I do. Those people have doctor’s notes to “prove” that their mental illness is real. And all I have is what I feel.

I’ve said it many times: university is not at all what I thought it was going to be. I thought I would get here and immediately make so many new friends and feel right at home. When that didn’t happen right away, I hit the lowest low that I had ever experienced.

In first year, I was crying on the phone to my mom every single day, wanting to go home, wanting to stick it out here, wanting to drop out of school, just wanting it to get better. My mom kept telling me that I should make an appointment to talk with someone. She remembered hearing about the residence counselling services on campus and clung to that, and pushed me to reach out to them, as if it was the answer to all my problems.

But I didn’t feel like I was at that point. I wasn’t “bad enough” that I actually needed to talk to a therapist. My mental health education (or lack thereof) taught me that therapists were for people with serious issues and I didn’t have serious issues. I was just having a hard time adjusting to a new environment. If I just waited a few more days or weeks, I would feel better and everything would be fine again.

Surprise, surprise: that didn’t happen. By the time Thanksgiving break rolled around, I was feeling worse than ever and was dreading having to go back to school. I had never felt so trapped and helpless. I had never experienced these feelings before and had no idea what to do with them. I was doing everything right, and yet it was most certainly not getting better.

I decided that I had nothing to lose at this point. Maybe I was doing poorly enough to need to talk to someone. So, I contacted residence counseling and they got me an appointment for the end of the week. Every day leading up to my appointment, I thought about cancelling it. Do I really need to see a counsellor? Am I just being dramatic? What will we talk about? Does this mean there is something wrong with me? Am I taking an appointment away from someone else who needs it more?

All of these thoughts, and more, kept popping up in my head, even after I stepped into the counsellor’s office. Long story short: the counsellor and I did not connect. She asked questions that didn’t seem to be relevant to why I was there, questions that just seemed to make me feel worse. All I wanted was a solution, something – anything – to make life here bearable. Breathing exercises and gratitude journals were not what I was looking for.

But, if I got nothing else out of my counselling experience, at least it was a safe place for me to cry without feeling guilty or ashamed. I knew it was exhausting for my mom to listen to me sob every night and not be able to do anything to help me, and the other people on my floor just wouldn’t get it. They were all friends and having a great time in university; how could they possibly understand what I was going through when I couldn’t even understand it myself? So, I left the counsellor’s office that day, after having a good cry, not feeling totally discouraged, but also not feeling like anything had been resolved.

And for the next couple of weeks, I did well. I was still crying all the time – annoying myself, even, because how much can one person possibly cry? – but I had made a few acquaintances and I was putting all my energy into my classes (and trying not to burst into tears for absolutely no reason in those classes). I would wake up some mornings and be totally fine; I’d get breakfast, get dressed, and go to class. It wasn’t perfect, but I was managing. And then other mornings I would wake up with a knot in my stomach and a lump in my throat for no other reason than I wasn’t in my own bed at home. I hated living like this, and the constant back and forth, never knowing what I would wake up to, feeling betrayed by my own body and emotions, exhausted me more than anything.

So, I decided to book another appointment with residence counselling. It had made me “better” for a few weeks the last time; maybe if I just went and talked for an hour every couple of weeks, I could make it through this year. Not the ideal situation, but I needed any ounce of hope that I could get.

This time, I requested to see a different counsellor. I had nothing against the one I saw the first time – a friend of mine went to talk with her as well, and said she helped her a lot – we just weren’t meant for each other. The office had only one other option for me, and I couldn’t get in to see her for over a month. I wasn’t thrilled, but I took the appointment and prayed I would get through the next month on my own.

Luckily, she had a cancellation and I got an appointment in about two weeks. It was hard having to repeat my entire story all over again to a new counsellor, having to talk about things that I thought I had put behind me already. But I felt so much better after talking with this counsellor; she just seemed to get it. I went to see her a few times over the next couple of months, even when I wasn’t feeling sad. When she eventually told me that she didn’t think I needed to keep coming every two weeks, but would be happy to see me if I decided that I wanted to come back, I was both relieved and terrified. Was I “cured?” I didn’t feel a hundred percent better every day, but I also wasn’t calling my mom crying every night.

I think what made me “better,” or at least better enough to live day-to-day, was something she said to me during our first appointment together: “You can always go home. The distance, the money, it will all work itself out, if you need to go. If you need to go home for the weekend, go. If you need to go home permanently, go. When’s the next train leaving? Get on it, if you need to.” Even now, two years in, I still wake up some mornings just sad, with an ache in my chest, and I have no idea why. But I am not trapped here. I am choosing to be here. And, just as I chose to move to a city five hundred kilometres from home, I can choose to leave, if I need to, if I want to.

At a mental health conference I went to last year, one of the speakers said something that has stuck with me to this day: “If it is a crisis to you, it is a crisis.” You don’t need to compete with everyone else, to be doing worse than anyone else, before you reach out for help. If you are struggling, in any capacity, you have just as much right as anyone else to find support. I am allowed to feel sad and lonely and scared and nervous, and I am allowed to seek help for that. I am not taking away resources from someone who needs them more than I do; I am allowed to need them too.

My point of this very long story is that I do not have a mental illness, but I have struggled with my mental health. And that is something I didn’t know was possible until it happened to me.