Dear Ishita,

If you want I can tell you when exactly all this began or atleast I ll try to

yes please do, I think it’s important to know when and in what context it began. You wrote that the anxiety around your studies and your performance began when you were around 17, during your entrance preparation training, when you couldn’t perform well due to a fierce competition, bullying by your batch mates, and lack of support by your teachers and coaches.

What seems to me so far is that as a child, you were rather withdrawn and anxious and didn’t have many close friends (I have always felt that I am someone who is an extremely anxious person and I feel I am a difficult person as well because I dont easily make close friends although I have a lot of just friends. )

But school was your forte, you excelled at school and it was a source of pride and self-confidence for you (this used to define me, being the smartest kid in the class, being really fast).

When you experienced problems with your studies at 17, you lost the main source of self-confidence: you being a good student, excelling academically. Without it, you started feeling lost, you didn’t know who you are and what you want any more:

since the past two to three years I have been finding it very hard to see things clearly . Honestly, if not X, I always require someone or the other to make me see the solutions of anything that tenses me, in a clearer way at times.

You lost confidence in yourself as an excellent student. And with that, you lost confidence in yourself altogether. Do you think this is accurate?

If so, it would mean that in the past, you based your self-worth and self-esteem on your academic performance, and with that threatened, you feel worthless, and not special. Would that be accurate?

X made you feel special again, not for your academic performance but for you as a person (or so you believed). Perhaps you’ve never really felt special before for simply being you? This was the first time, and that’s why it hurts so much?