Before I started the programme, I was very quiet and kept myself to myself. I didn’t want my camera or microphone on and I found it hard to communicate with people. I’ve been diagnosed with anxiety and that really affects how confident I feel around others. I wanted a job, but I didn’t know what I wanted to do or how to even start thinking about it. Most of the time, I stayed in my room, gaming, with very little routine around sleeping or eating.
I’d had therapy before, but I couldn’t really remember anything useful from it, and I didn’t feel like talking about myself helped much. Even so, I committed to writing in the chat. That felt like something I could manage.
When the course started, I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Parts of it pushed me in ways that felt uncomfortable, but I could also see that it was addressing things that actually matter to me. I don’t like being called out in front of people, but I agreed to answer yes, no, or don’t know, and I said I was okay with being challenged in one to ones. That was hard, but it felt fair.
During the course, motivation was still a big struggle. I knew I wanted to get on with things and fit in with people my age, especially because most of them have jobs. That made not working feel worse. Talking about passions was nerve wracking, but once I did it, it was okay. It helped me realise that sharing feelings doesn’t always end badly.
A lot of what came up for me was around confidence. My automatic thought when I think about not having a job is that I’m not a confident person and that I can’t do it. That leads to feeling nervous and avoiding applying for anything. When we looked at that more closely, I realised my core belief is that I’m incapable. That I can’t do things.
Challenging that belief was uncomfortable. My evidence was that I hadn’t passed things and that I don’t do much now. But when I was pushed to look again, I could see that it’s probably not true. I have done GCSEs. I enjoyed German. There are things I can do, even if I don’t feel confident about them. I’m opening up a tiny bit more, even if it doesn’t always look like it from the outside.
The course hasn’t been easy for me. Sometimes the one to ones felt too fast, and there were moments where I felt like I had no choice but to be there, like not attending would make me a failure. Those conversations were tough. But even then, I got something from it. I’ve taken away the idea of being more positive, even in a small way.
My goals are still simple and basic, but they matter. I want to get into a proper routine with sleeping and eating, because at the moment that’s not good. I know that without that foundation, everything else feels harder. I’m not suddenly confident and I don’t have everything figured out, but I’ve started to see that my beliefs about myself aren’t fixed, and that matters.