Helpful tips and personal stories. Exploring challenges and successes in education when you’re feeling socially anxious, shy and not good enough. You are not alone.
At 7 years old, I felt so terrified when doing a ‘weather forecast’ at school, I nervously farted in front of my class. At 26, I froze during a 3-minute presentation whilst on a ‘Projecting Professional Confidence’ workshop; feeling unable to finish I ran back to my seat and held back tears as my body […]
I’ve come to the point in my life where I realise that what I did one day does not epitomise who I am; but it epitomised who I was that day. I look back to things I’ve done even in the last week and cannot understand how I did them -it becomes unrecognisable to me […]
Stretching my comfort zone at university It’s been a while since I’ve shared a blog post here, and whilst I do have an explanation as to why, I’ve still missed it massively. I started university in September, and acclimatising to that has taken up quite a lot of my time and energy. There have been […]
I lay in bed, staring at my white and boring bedroom ceiling in an attempt to ignore the alarm on my phone that is growing louder with each passing second. I know as soon as I shift my gaze and turn off that alarm, that I will have to deal with the fact that I […]
Coping Strategy I know that worrying is really a waste of my time but I know, for me, uncertainty can lead to worry anyway. Since my last post, there’s been some uncertain times for me. I started university. The very first challenge I knew I’d have to face was collecting the key and I felt a little unclear of […]
Remember how it felt at school, when a teacher would ask a question that you had no clue how to answer? So many of us have felt the sinking feeling of being picked despite our best efforts to appear invisible. (I’m talking shrinking down in seats, avoiding eye contact with the teacher- the best avoidance […]
It’s fair to assume that if I have something coming up that I’m worrying about, I’ll be thinking of a thousand different ways things could go wrong. Because of this, situations often seem like they’re going to be worse than they realistically could ever be. Like a vicious cycle, the anxious thoughts can increase. However, […]
One girl, a gap year, a university, and a whole lot of fear. That’s the run down of things right now. Let me explain… Things don’t always go to plan My intention was to start university last year, straight from college as most of my friends were doing. I was a mix of excitement and fear. […]
Challenging exams As part of my Sustainability and Environmental Management course at university, I took a module for those who hadn’t done maths as an A-Level. I passed all the modules, except for maths as I’d struggled with the exam. An hour into the re-take of my exam, I was only on question 3. Given how long it […]
Breathing. Pfft!! How could breathing possibly help with anxiety? I used to feel so annoyed that anyone would even suggest the idea of using breathing techniques. “This isn’t something I have any control over!” I’d think with a roll of my eyes, “Don’t people know how paralysing the fear is for me?” It’s going to take […]
Thinking back to infant school, I don’t remember having many problems. I didn’t feel unconfident, but there were times where I felt like the attention was on me. It was like what I was doing was wrong and people were judging me. I felt different. There were incidences in infant school where I was made […]
Anxiety can take lots of different forms, but I think one common theme is that it can be extremely overwhelming. I’ve found that in the moment, it’s hard to focus on anything except how anxious I feel, like when I’m about to order a drink in a cafe, or meet a new group of people, […]