[Testimonial] Knowing how to handle my anxiety better

Knowing how to handle my anxiety better

I came to SCC during my darkest period of time when I was 17. I was afraid of judgment from my social group of friends and I felt I was not good enough to express any of my opinions and felt that everyone was out to get and hurt me. I also had many judgmental thoughts about people who I should have trusted due to insecurities. This caused my life to go into a downward spiral, making me not want to attend school and always getting easily agitated all the time with my friends. As I knew this was not who I wanted to be and this was someone who I am not, I called the help of SCC and they introduced me to my counsellor.

My counsellor is an excellent and observant counselor. When I first entered and described to him the issues I was facing, he identified many things about me that I didn’t know I had (such as my generalized and social anxiety and many other things) due to a limited knowledge of these kinds of things in the past. After identifying these psychological issues, he took me through the process of how to handle it well, step-by-step. This was done over a range of sessions with each of these sessions being more fulfilling than the one before.

I started to gain knowledge of what I was experiencing and started to come to terms with it while using my counsellor’s techniques to handle the anxiety effectively. I have now become a much calmer and opinionated person who is able to voice out when I feel uncomfortable with a situation or if I feel someone has done something wrong to me. Instead of aggression which I previously used as a defense mechanism, I have learned how my opinions matter and how I should use assertion instead (which is to not raise your voice but express your point in a much-civilized manner). This is only one of the many thousands of things my counsellor has taught me through all the sessions I have had with him.

 Throughout this 1-year journey with him, he has not only been a counselor, but also a fatherly figure to me who is there to help and console me when I am feeling down. He is an extremely open guy who has the ability to empathize with his clients as he has experienced many hardships before becoming a counselor, which gives him an insight into the many psychological problems his clients, such as me, have and thus has the ability to also provide a solution to many of them as he has used these techniques to tackle his own problems.

 Overall, I would like to thank him for this entire year. For guiding, teaching and nurturing me into becoming a better person and providing me with a plethora of life skills I will be able to use in the future to handle my anxiety well. He has not only helped me but my sister as well, to be able to manage anxiety and keep it at bay. Thank you!

– Client C, 2018