How To Reduce Anxiety and Build True Confidence From Your Core

I had to learn tactics to cope with uncertainty, instead of being constantly triggered into “fight or flight” mode

Photo by Blake Weyland on Unsplash

Growing up, I was probably the “most confident person” in my cohort. I aced everything, won awards, got articles published… I thought there was nothing I couldn’t achieve.

Then, in the last year of college, I started to have massive anxiety attacks. I lost a bunch of hair, couldn’t have more than three hours of sleep for over three months, and relaxation didn’t exist in my dictionary.

I was still not getting what I wanted. And the more I wanted it, the harder I tried, the more anxious I felt. I kept running on the hamster wheel until I was ordered to stay home and rest for two weeks by my doctor.

At the rock bottom of my life, I was thinking: What’s the point of living, if I had to live my entire life with such efforts and pain?

It took me years to realize I had low self-esteem.

I built my self-worth on my achievement. If something didn’t go my way, it’d trigger my brain’s survival alarm and got me into “fight or flight” mode.

That’s why I couldn’t relax.