A Chat About Anxiety and Growing My Self Confidence

I've mentioned a few times here on my blog about how I suffer with anxiety and sometimes a rather annoying lack of self-confidence. I've suffered with anxiety for a long time now and whilst it's something that I'm comfortable talking about and sharing with others, it's something that I sometimes find hard to explain. Part of my anxiety, sees me having trouble speaking clearly a lot of the time. I think sometimes I can come across as a confident speaker, as someone who believes in what they are saying most of the time. But a lot of the time, I have this doubt in the back of my head when I'm speaking out loud, I stumble, stutter and fall over my words a lot of the time and whilst I know this is amplified in my head, it bugs the hell out of me.

I'm open about the fact that I'm a introvert and that big groups are just not my thing. I prefer to stick to my own company or the company of just one other. I like things that way and I always have. But I'm also very aware of the fact that being an introvert and having anxiety can and is holding me back from doing some of the things that I want to do in life. 
Looking at my blogging (just purely as an example).. There's things that I'd like to be able to have the confidence to be able to feel that I could do, such as saying yes to attending events. I often find exciting event invitations in my inbox, but not once have I ever said yes to attending any of these events (apart from BritMums Live, which took a whole load of will-power and for Adam to travel to London with me!). In fact, I'm so used to saying no, I often won't finish reading the email before I've moved on to the next. I've also wanted to try my hand at vlogging for a while now and there are many reasons as to why, but one of the main reasons is to grow that confidence that I know I lack. Part of the reason I applied to Channel Mum, was to give me a reason to HAVE to sit down and make videos.. sort of a reason to force myself to stop hiding behind my computer screen and show others who may feel similarly to myself that really - it's not who you are that holds you back, it's who you think you're not. 
[source: pinterest]
It took me a while and a bit of an emotional battle to do it, but I actually filmed a video over the weekend where I talk a little more about my anxiety and how I intend to grow my self-confidence. If you'd be interested in watching, you can find the video below. 


 
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