- Peer support is centered around being an active listener. One thing that I learned during peer support training is that being an active listener is actually really difficult. It requires you to be fully present in the moment, and to try to absorb the nuances of the conversation. Since conversations around mental health (and life in general) can be complex, being an active listener takes up a lot of brain space. When you’re actively listening, there’s not much time or brain space to “judge” the other person.
- If there’s any judgment going on, it’s the peer support volunteer evaluating themselves as a peer support volunteer. The peer support volunteers have undergone 40+ hours of training to be having that conversation with you during peer support hours. We get evaluated twice, once by other peer support volunteers, and once by our mentor at the Student Wellness Center. We really believe in the value of peer support, and are invested in constantly improving as peer support volunteers.
- We know that judging doesn’t help anyone. We’ve all had the experience of opening up to someone about something personal, and then feeling shut down because that person makes unhelpful judgments. All the peer support volunteers have been on the other end of peer support themselves, because we practice with each other during training. We’ve personally experienced during training how unproductive it is for a peer support volunteer to be judging us, so we actively strive not to do it ourselves.
The bottom line is that we’re not judging you because judging isn’t helpful to anyone.
~Amanda V. Chen ’21
Recent Comments