Jake gained independence, empowering him to reach and achieve his goals.

“I was referred to Young Gloucestershire for help with stress and social anxiety as part of my Disability Student Allowance assessment when I started at the University of Gloucestershire. My stress had got so bad that I had developed a habit of rubbing my eyes which was causing sight loss.

My family have a history of mental health challenges, autism, OCD, and depression. We have become a bit of a well-oiled machine over the years as we have learned to cope and support one another, but this has meant I feel limited as I am caught between staying where I feel safe with my family, wanting to support them, but also wanting to see a future for myself outside of my family.

I am autistic, as are my two brothers. When I was younger, I was hot-headed, getting into lots of fights and being bullied. I’m not proud of my behaviour, I don’t want to be an aggressive person, but my autism means I can often go very quickly from being withdrawn to high-functioning, and excitable

I have a phobia of public transport, the only reason I was able to give YG’s support a go was because the counsellor was able to offer our sessions online my youth worker met me in the community near my house.

so, I arranged with my counsellor to do our session over teams. I also struggled with my vocabulary with expressing my emotions, so we worked on being able to express and communicate how I had been feeling, compared to now I never used to talk about it as in-depth as I used to because it was always that kind of adage that, you grip your teeth and get on with it. The counselling has allowed me to find a way to start tackling problems. I learned some meditation with my counsellor at YG, to manage my stress and control aggression.

I wanted to grow and be able to be someone who can move out of the family and finally become my own person. Still helping them, but also finally being able to live my own life I looked at how I could grow my independence, driving was one of them. We looked at how I could start learning to drive. I’m Moving towards is being able to be someone who Can be more Stable and someone who can be more sustainable and stable with my family. When I’m ready to move on with my life having that independence. I can’t drive but it is something that I’m learning. It’s a big step for me starting to learn to drive. I started my first few lessons and practicing with my parents.

I’m certainly much more reflective now. I’m not a person who tends to be very self-loving or self-respecting, but now I don’t think that critically of myself as much anymore because I’m able to look at things and pick up the reasons why something happens and come up with solutions.

I hope to graduate and pursue palaeontology despite challenges, I tried to apply to Bristol, and I got rejected 3 times, so hopefully once I’ve completed this university course, I can then go on to what I really want to do. The Independence I gained through has enabled me to reach and achieve my goals.