"I started working earlier, staying later and writing lists for my lists. I put reminders everywhere, colour-coded my calendar and kept notebooks beside my computer. I stopped asking for help because I didn't want management thinking I couldn't handle my job."

"For the first time, someone wasn't simply telling me that I needed to change. She showed me that there could actually be something worth changing for."

"I was always a troubled child. I was angry a lot. I could throw one sweet fit, and believe me, I did too. When I heard the word “NO”, it instantly triggered a fit. I was always being grounded or whatever was needed. If I didn’t get what I wanted, I’d scream and cry."

"I was the one people called when there was a problem, and I was proud of that. What I didn't realise was that underneath all of the responsibility, I was becoming exhausted and frightened, and because I didn't know what to do with those feelings, they started coming out as anger."

"At first, I noticed I was getting annoyed more easily. Little things at work that wouldn't normally bother me started getting under my skin. I'd come home and snap at the kids, then feel terrible about it afterwards. I wasn't sleeping particularly well, but I was drinking more coffee and telling myself I'd catch up on sleep at the weekend."

"For a couple of years after finishing school, I thought I was getting better, but really, I had just withdrawn from life and pushed everything down. Eventually, all of that pain began to catch up with me."

"I eventually reached out to my therapist because I was scared of what I might do. She wasn't immediately available, so I called a crisis hotline instead. I talked to a woman there for about 20 minutes, but I still didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. "

"It was a very traumatic time for me because I was dealing with the death of my best friend, everything that had happened to me, and the huge move that had just taken place."

"I'd lie in bed at night and go over conversations I'd had during the day, wondering whether I'd sounded weird or whether someone had been annoyed with me. Sometimes I'd start worrying about something that hadn't even happened yet, and before I knew it, I'd imagined about ten different ways it could go wrong."

"Sometimes I'd lie on my bed and scroll through my phone, watching everyone else making plans, going places and doing things together. I'd see photos from nights I hadn't been invited to, or conversations I wasn't part of, and I'd tell myself that it didn't matter."