Let's talk about Anxiety.

Wednesday 2 March 2016


I know that anxiety has been talked about many times on the blogosphere, but I just feel like I needed to write this post, as much for myself as you. I developed social anxiety in 2013 and started to receive treatment at this point, I’ve been told that my anxiety was fuelled by my body dysmorphic disorder, which had stemmed from years of bullying.

After three years of living with anxiety I’ve concluded that it’s like walking through life with yourself as your own worst critic, the meanest bully - you devise the worst ideas about what you could do wrong and then cast this self-doubt as a dark shadow over your day so that it taints everything that you do. I spend a large portion of my day feeling suffocated by my doubts and fears; what if I look stupid? What if I fail? It’s hard to take chances and live your life when you believe that the outcome of all your actions is going to be bad, you begin to stop doing things because you believe your anxiety. You believe that you will make yourself look stupid, that you will fail. The more that you avoid these triggering situations, the more you nourish the anxiety, anxiety feeds on fear and avoidance.

I can manage my anxiety quite well most days, but I do feel like it holds me back from living my life to the fullest and being the happiest that I can be. I hope that one day I will wake up without the suffocating feeling engulfing me.

It’s important that you don’t let the anxiety win. You don’t have to worry about taking a massive jump into the darkness, just concentrate on taking baby steps. Don’t feel pressured into taking medication or having CBT if you don’t want to, choose the treatment that you want and see what works for you. Personally, CBT didn’t work for me, but after trialling different medication I’ve found something that helps me to manage my anxiety to a certain degree.

Shona xx
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