How Photography Helped Me with Anxiety

Michael Persson
4 min readNov 9, 2019
Photo by Fernando @dearferdo on Unsplash

During the spring and summer of 2018, I was suffering from long periods of sickness. I had colds, influenza and coughs over and over again. Just bad luck, my doctor told me. Even on my vacation when traveling I was sick. I just had to ride it through I thought. And so I did.

Unfortunately, I developed other more long term symptoms that affected breathing through my nose and swallowing. Nothing serious at all, but my mind got stuck on it. I became more anxious as a result.

My mind spiraled thinking of the symptoms and possible solutions. What if it’s a serious illness? How will the doctors fix that?

To examine my symptoms I had to go to a doctor specialized in the throat, ear and nose area. My appointment was three months away and knew that the examination would include putting a small camera through my nose and down my throat.

My mind painted the most horrific scenes related to this, to such extent that I couldn’t focus at work and had to work from home some days to get anything done.

Photo by Harli Marten on Unsplash

I found a very good therapist to discuss my anxiety. At first, I felt ashamed to contact her. I wasn’t sick, I was just a bit…

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Michael Persson

Software test engineer, hobby photographer and gamer. As an introvert I love to communicate by written word.