I was first diagnosed with a mental illness in 2011 during my first year of university. The diagnosis was Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD).
At the time, I had passed all my modules. I hadn’t failed a single one. Yet, beneath the surface of those results, I was quietly drowning in fear - fear of failure, fear of not belonging, fear that somehow I wouldn’t make it even though I was doing well.
It was strange to me then: how you can have every resource available, every support system within reach and still feel deeply unsafe inside your own mind. Anxiety doesn’t always announce itself loudly. Sometimes it whispers - What if you don’t make it this time? What if you’re not enough? - until those whispers start to shape your reality.
What changed everything for me was deciding to seek help through my university’s free campus psychological services. I started with individual one-on-one therapy sessions with the campus psychologist, where I was gently guided through my thought patterns, fears and coping mechanisms. Over time, as my condition improved, my psychologist suggested that I join group therapy sessions.
Every week, I would meet with other students from different faculties and years. We sat together in a small circle and talked about our feelings, our fears and the pressures we each carried. It became one of the most transformative experiences of my early adulthood. In that safe, professional space, I realised that I wasn’t alone - that so many of us were quietly trying to keep it together while silently struggling inside.
From those sessions, genuine friendships were formed - bonds that have lasted to this day. Many of us have since gone on to build meaningful, successful careers, but what connects us still is that shared space of vulnerability and growth that was created on campus over a decade ago that I remain deeply grateful for.
That experience was my first real introduction to the power of talk therapy - not the kind we have casually with friends, but the guided, professional kind that helps you name what you’re feeling, understand its roots and build tools to manage it.
Through consistent sessions, I began to see that what I was feeling wasn’t a personal weakness. It was anxiety - and anxiety could be understood, treated and managed.
Therapy helped me learn how to navigate the pressures of my academic life at my prestigious university in a healthier, more grounded way. It also became a form of protection later on. When I began to struggle emotionally and academically as my studies progressed, there was already a trace of support - an evidence that I had sought help before things fell apart. This history played a meaningful role in preventing me from being academically excluded the following year when I experienced failure for the first time in my life.
That experience taught me something profound: we don’t only seek mental health care when things fall apart - we seek it so that they don’t.
It’s in the moments when life feels manageable, when we think we have it all under control, that investing in our mental well-being matters most. Those are the times when we can build resilience, strengthen our coping tools and learn to care for our minds before crisis sets in.
If I could speak to my younger self, I’d tell her that strength is not pretending everything is fine - it’s having the courage to say, “I need help,” and following through with that.
We often underestimate how deeply therapy, safe community and early intervention can shape our futures. While not everyone has access to private care, many universities, clinics and workplaces today offer free or low-cost counselling services - quiet doorways of healing waiting for us to walk through.
If you’re reading this, I hope you remember: you don’t have to wait until you’re falling apart to take care of your mental health. Start while things are still good.
Because prevention is healing, too.