**TW: Mentions of self-harm, distorted body image and panic attacks!**

Over the past years, I've been having problems with anxiety, body dysmorphia, panic attacks, sleep paralysis, intense nightmares and self-harm.

This summer has been a particularly difficult one. An overload of just about anything, meeting new people, volunteering at a festival with 30 000 visitors on daily average, having to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life, or at least the next four years of it. The consequences would follow soon after, with me developing severe agoraphobia due to intense panic attacks that would happen in the middle of my shift, or as I'm walking back home.

I've been looking for a way to get through to my mother (the typical 'it's-all-in-your-head' one) with all of these problems and she finally agreed to look for professional help, specifically at a psychiatrist's office at the local Mental Health Department. As I'm counting down to our first visit, I've been pondering on a simple question:

*Where do I even begin?*

Should it depend on the topic that the Dr leads me to or is more stuff revealed in a kind of a venting session? There are some things I wouldn't want my mother to hear, so I'm also worried about confidentiality and such. Is the doctor going to look for something to diagnose based on what I came to talk about? Would my notes about every single anxiety and panic attack for the past year be a useful guide for both of us?

And I know, I know it's not at all like the movies, and that every patient has their tempo and methods. As far as I'm concerned, there's also a high possibility of therapy failing and me not being able to connect with the doctor or vice-versa. When you were first starting out therapy, how hard was it to actually start opening up, if at all? There's just so many things I'm worried about at the moment that even this might seem like senseless rambling. Please let me know if you've got any piece of advice!