and met other people who suffered in similar ways to me as their anxiety took control of their emotions and behaviours. The group sessions allowed me to discuss my issues and thoughts in a safe space, it allowed me to open up myself and realise that mental health problems can be overcome with strength, community and – most importantly – friendship. It will certainly be a rocky road: I split up with my boyfriend at the time and sometimes worried that the process would not work for me. But you have to keep going, as eventually you pull through and realise you can overcome this and that the stigma will not beat you. One thing, however, strikes me more than anything else and that was that all the worries I had faded away. I didn’t feel judged differently, or like ‘that’ guy; people never made me feel different and were only ever supportive. The stigma, I realised, is as much in our own heads as it is in society itself. The stigma, really, comes from the fact we don’t talk about mental health and then we build up these preconceptions about how we would be treated if we revealed how we felt. Rather we feel like we must adopt the British manta of having a ‘stiff upper lip’, and then being able to talk about mental health difficulties becomes itself problematic and traumatic for so
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many people. But from my own experience, I can say the most difficult bit was building up the courage to seek help and realise that I would not be treated differently. The difficulty was building up the determination to come out the anxiety closet but once I did it was like a weight was lifted off me and I was able to get the help which has now allowed me to improve so much. We need to talk about anxiety, so that we can remove the need for trauma surrounding “coming out the closet”, as once people can be open and honest, half the battle is already won.
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It allowed me to open up myself and realise that mental health problems can be overcome with strength, community and – most importantly – friendship.
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