Hello everyone ! I don’t know if this is the right place / the right flair, but I just wanted to share my victory story so that you guys know that it does get better !

A couple of years ago I was diagnosed with severe anxiety, along with severe insomnia, depression and PTSD (which only exacerbated my anxiety). For most of my life, I was more in a perpetual state of more or less severe anxiety, and didn’t even know it. 

I went to see a wonderful therapist, who worked with me to get better and, since then it’s been slowly getting better - it was strange feeling “normal”, I got anxious about my lack of anxiety because I was so used to it that I felt like something was missing and that it was “too good to be true”. 

One thing I was terribly anxious about was my future - I was having trouble in university, didn’t really know what I wanted to do, and was completely lost. 

Then, through a stroke of luck, being at the right place at the right time and talking to the right person, I was taken on for an internship in a law firm. I was lucky to be surrounding by caring people who taught me so much and valued me, but most of all made sure I knew I was valued, and I finally felt useful, I finally was able to take initiatives. Things as simple as answering the phone at work, contacting clients, being confident in the work I was doing, I’d never felt like that before. 

Then, the internship sadly ended. My exams went badly. Anxiety got the better of me. I needed to find a job. Oh, the return of the nausea, sharp stomach pains, my heart felt as if someone was playing bobbing apples with it. 

And, through a stroke of luck / coincidence, I applied for a job I didn’t really think I’d get, but I’d applied because I had used the software of this company. And I got a callback: it turned out it was to work with the software I had used. Two interviews. And I was hired. I couldn’t believe it. For a couple of weeks I was anxious that I had perhaps imagined it, even though it sounds ridiculous. 

It’s been nearly three months and I can hardly feel my anxiety cropping up anymore. I am incredibly lucky to again be working with people who are caring, who take the time to teach me, who don’t berate me for mistakes and who make sure I know I am valued, and it honestly makes all the difference in the world. 

My career path is not the one I thought I would have but I am the happiest and the least anxious I have been in my whole life. Starting to get better made me able to grab opportunities, and even if I’ve been throwing myself into unknown situations, the little shot of anxiety isn’t even comparable to the crippling bog of anxiety I felt I couldn’t come out of. 

A couple of years ago I couldn’t even answer a phone at work, and today I finished a whole project where I had to interview clients and present my findings to a team of my bosses. If someone had told me this two years ago I would never have believed them. 

There are things I need to work on (26 and have intense anxiety driving / calling up my driving school to start classes again, I still don’t have my licence for example ...) but I hope this gives you guys a bit of hope ! Stay safe xx