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This Is Me: Anxiety Edition

Posting date: 19/05/23

This Is Me: Anxiety

Six of our colleagues have shown remarkable bravery by sharing their personal journey with anxiety. Take a look at each story below.

Anita

"My name is Anita Ubhi, and I am a Client Relationship Manager for Private Shopping. My journey with anxiety started back in 2019 and I think it was more so just the level of expectation I've set for myself in general. So when I first started having symptoms, it would be anything from heart palpitations to almost physical shaking because it was almost like a panic."

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Hayri

"My name is Hayri Volkan. I am the General Retail Manager for Signature, Seasonal and Arcade. The first time I realised that I had anxiety, was probably around the time that I started secondary school. There was a lot of change in my life at the time. I suffered from a lack of confidence and I found it very hard to make friends. I realised it was sort of building up, this anxiety thinking about what I said and why I said it, and I wanted to do better. But just at the time, I just didn't understand why I was feeling that way."

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Matthew

“My name is Matthew Shepherd. I am a Resourcing Partner at Harrods. My anxiety started when I was younger. My Mum and Dad split up when I was really young, and my Mum was very poorly. And because she was poorly, there was always a fear of getting too close to her, which caused me kind of a lot of anxiety and worry. It tended to be that I overthought situations and catastrophised things. And I just felt like I was a little bit different to everyone else.”

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Michael

“My name is Michael Grant. I'm a Stylist and I work in the Studio. My anxiety surfaced when I was young. I was probably six or seven, and I realised I couldn't do the things that other kids around me could do, I couldn't play games with them confidently, and I couldn't speak up for myself without feeling like it was silly or stupid. When I realised it was anxiety, it was a lot easier for me to just work through it a little bit more. Everyone deals with it and sometimes you need a little bit of extra help with it."

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Neil

"I’m Neil Thornton, and I'm the Group Content Manager here at Harrods. My journey with anxiety actually only kind of makes sense now that I'm kind of at a pace where I understand it and I look back and I kind of connect the dots. I was kind of like, oh, these don't feel like that should be my usual reaction to things. And I found that my kind of generalised worry about things was increasing, and that led me to a diagnosis of Generalised Anxiety Disorder."

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Roísín

"My name is Roísín, and I'm an Image Co-ordinator at the Photo Studio. I realised that I had anxiety or some form of anxiety condition when I was 17. And it surfaced, I guess, from some family trauma. At the time, it looked like a sort of panic attack difficulty shorting my thoughts out and a lot of guilt and decision-making. If I made a decision about one thing would feel guilty about the decision that I didn't make."

harrods building
play video by Harrods