Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time on my own so I got used to it. I'd just be sat there on my computer either playing video games or reading articles online. I became rather withdrawn. I had an extra no friends. I started to gain almost a fear of people I suppose.

Speaker 2: I couldn't really speak to people properly. I couldn't, I didn't have any confidence. I couldn't articulate my thoughts very well. I was very quiet and I was quite like paranoid about the people around me. When we were playing team games they'd pick me last. That was an awful experience. I felt like there was something very wrong with me and I couldn't figure out what it was.

Speaker 1: There's so much peer pressure. Oh have you got this new bag or this new phone or have you heard of this or you seen that? And obviously I'm still not into half the things that normal teenagers are into today. So I felt that pressure of I'm a complete outsider. Interacting with people was very difficult. I hadn't really had experience with just having a normal conversation with someone. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. I am constantly thinking do they think I'm an idiot? Do they think I'm weird? Do they think I'm strange? All sorts of

Speaker 2: things. When I moved to the grammar school I found that I wasn't actually at the top. I was more towards the bottom. I wasn't as good as them. They were so much better than me and it brought on a lot of anxiety. I described it like the reactions inside the Sun because it was so intense and I didn't know what it was. It was very scary and I remember being with my friends. I just wanted to escape. I just wanted to walk out the room. Detaching myself from the environment and everything going in slow motion. Finding it hard to breathe sometimes. I was in my maths lesson and I was sitting in the middle of two or three people. I couldn't hear the things around me anymore. I could hear them but I didn't feel like I could process anything. I was looking down at my paper and looking up and looking down again. It was like everything was just quite far away. I think one of the worst times that

Speaker 1: I felt most anxious was in English class. So having to stand up and read this book felt so anxious I just completely froze and I just couldn't get the words out physically. Like they were on the end of my tongue but they were stuck. So I stood there for about two minutes. So I just sat down and for the next half an hour of that lesson I was just stuck in my own head in that classroom. I physically felt sick. I felt like I was in a sauna as well. I started sweating. My heart was going 70,000 miles an hour. It physically hurt.

Speaker 2: At first it started happening like maybe once every so often and then it started increasing to once a week until I got to the point where it was happening every day. I was feeling like that all the time. Actually a lot of people didn't believe me or they thought I was just being a teenager and this is normal. It got worse after that and I withdrew from my GCSEs and didn't do them due to like the severity of my mental health.

Speaker 1: So I just had this overwhelming feeling of I'm really alone right now. This is absolutely awful and it all just built up and built up. It physically wound me up. I almost felt like a jack-in-the-box sometimes and have someone slowly winding the handle slowly and slowly and slowly until I'm just gonna pop. And I thought

Speaker 2: that I don't really deserve to live because I felt stressed out when I just looked at the books. I feel like a terrible human being and then I took an overdose. I got a fast track into CAMHS and then things started changing for the better. First I saw a key worker who I think did an assessment on me and then I got to see a psychiatrist and then for over the next few months I got to see both of them. At first it was weekly then it was once every two weeks and then it was once every month or so. That actually helped a lot because I felt supported. I felt like I could talk about things like I could just letting things out you know it just a release of emotions. People were listening to me. I felt like I was allowed to be unwell and they got me to a state where I could start doing things again or could start making my own choices and helping

Speaker 1: myself get better. It helped just to be able to talk to somebody. I could sit there and talk for the hour. I was just trying to explain to her how hard it was. I have very few friends. I feel like I'm near enough terrified of people and it's incredibly hard. All the emotions and all the thoughts and everything constantly whirling around. At some points I just felt near enough physically dizzy. While I was talking those normal fears of being scared and being worried about people I didn't feel any of that anymore. I could let all this out because there was someone that not only was there but wanted to be there.