‘Exercising has helped me to overcome severe social anxiety and build long-lasting confidence in myself’ — World Mental Health Day article for PureGym

My name’s Lynchie, I’m 27 and I have been a member of Pure Gym for the best part of two years. Before then I’d been a member of other gyms for around five years where I had trained with much less focus and purpose than I do now.

Exercising at Pure Gym has helped me substantially in several ways, particularly in pushing me outside of my comfort zone to overcome severe social anxiety and to build long-lasting confidence in myself that was previously lacking.

When I was a teenager I was quite introverted and withdrawn in most situations, very anxious about expressing myself and speaking to people. All of which of course left me very frustrated.

From time to time I’ve also had to have counselling for depression arising from a very poor self-esteem.

After graduating from university and managing to get a good job in my field I was still experiencing this frustration and paralysing feeling that I couldn’t be myself. But this began to turn round when I discovered there was a gym close-by to my office and the tube station at Victoria.