It all started with a panic attack. At the time, I didn't even know it was a panic attack. All I knew was something was seriously wrong. I didn't know if I had a heart issue, if I had a breathing problem, or if I was just going crazy. But I knew something was wrong, and I had to get away. This started my anxiety journey.


I started getting physical symptoms that convinced me something was seriously wrong and that I needed to get this fixed. Otherwise, it was going to be too late. And yet, every time I went to get help, I couldn't get an answer. They didn't really tell me anything. I started getting these intrusive thoughts of, "Am I going crazy? Am I struggling with a mental illness?" Over time, I started feeling disconnected. I started getting these out-of-body experiences. I started getting this feeling of unreality where I began questioning existence. Over time, I was just numb. I was so sad and so depressed, and I just asked myself, "How did this happen? Why did this happen?" It was the darkest time of my life.


But this story isn't about darkness. This story is about hope. My name is Saeed, and this is my anxiety recovery story.



It was the small things when I was struggling. I realized the things I missed the most were the simple things: going for a nice walk, relaxing and having a nice meal, just having fun with friends. I once heard a quote: "A blind man from birth will never know the meaning of darkness because he has never seen light." And for the first time, I saw the light at the end of the tunnel.


Maybe this was anxiety. Maybe this is how anxiety works. Maybe anxiety's job is to convince you that what you're experiencing is not anxiety, to convince you it's anything else but anxiety. For the first time, I had hope. I finally identified the problem, and once I understood this, I was able to focus on long-term freedom.


I felt like something was wrong. I didn't know what it was. And the more I focused on it, the more my heart started palpitating. I started having trouble breathing, and this had never happened before. And while I was at university, I had to step away, and I felt like I couldn't breathe. I felt like I was gonna die. And what I found out was, that was a panic attack. And when I had that panic attack, something became increasingly clear, something I didn't want to admit, which was this could happen to me anywhere.


I went back to class, I was trying to act normal, but I felt like something just wasn't right. I kind of had this fear of "What if it happens again?" So, I went to get help from a friend of mine, I was trying to understand why I was getting such rapid heartbeats, why my blood pressure was up. And all the friends were just looking at me saying, "Everything's fine." And then I went to a doctor, and he said, "Everything was fine." And then I went to a another doctor, and they said, "There's nothing wrong."


This is the point where I started losing a lot of weight, I started feeling a little bit disconnected from the world. I felt like I was almost detached. I didn't know if there was something physically wrong with me, if I had a mental illness. At this point, I called my parents back at home, and I told them something's not right. And my parents told me to come back home; they said we'll figure it out once you get here.


When I called  up my parents and said that I wasn't feeling too good, and they asked me what was going on, and I told them that I was going from one doctor to the other doctor to the other doctor, and that confused them a lot. They said, "Saeed, why are you doing that? They mean to say, why was I going to these different doctors all the time?"

When it came to my recovery journey, I didn't really have the right guidance or even the right information, but one thing was exceptionally clear: I had a very strong support structure around me. I can say confidently looking back that I wouldn't have been able to recover without my family, without their support. But here's the truth: even though they were as supportive as they could be, it's very hard for someone to know what you're going through unless they've experienced it themselves, no matter how empathetically driven they are. Now, my family was able to help me, and out of all the disadvantages I had during my recovery journey, one thing was very clear: my family was a huge advantage.


And so, I wanted to create mentorship that really focused on helping people overcome, I wanted to take that to the next level. I knew how important it was. I knew how important it was to have a support structure to guide you step by step because this wasn't overnight, and this was going to take time. And I thought, why don't we have a community of people who have not only just gone through this, but came out of this so that when individuals see other members who have gone through this earlier and have actually made progress, it not only inspires hope, but it gives them permission to start focusing on recovery as well.


So, what we've done in the mentorship is we've created a community really focused on long-term freedom. This isn't just a community just to say things about being positive, but people that have actually lived through it, but are a couple of steps ahead of you. These people have been experiencing the exact same things, and in fact, now their focus is helping others overcome as well.


My name is Saeed, and I know exactly what you're going through. I know exactly what's keeping you up at night, these what-if thoughts. I know exactly what it is because I went through it myself. Once I found the key to recovery, recovery wasn't overnight, but I noticed one thing for sure: I had made more progress than I ever had before. Surely, my symptoms started disappearing, started falling off one at a time, and over time, I went back to living. I never thought about anxiety. It just wasn't a big deal. I just went back to living, and this was just something that happened, and I finally came out of it.


But I was always upset. I was always irritated and frustrated by the fact that nobody had told me this sooner. Why did I sacrifice so much time, so much suffering? That's when I realized I needed to help other people come out of this as well. But if I could just show people that, in fact, if I can guide people through that, what I could do is have them become their own guides, no longer talking about anxiety, just going back to living freely like they used to be, enjoying life.


And that's exactly what we've done. I've created a mentorship where I'm taking people by the hand and helping them fully overcome this, not cope with this, not manage with this. That's what I was told the key was: to overcome this. The key wasn't to focus on your anxiety forever. The key was to fix this so that you could just go back to living, not dealing with anxiety constantly, not always coping or managing, but to live. And the whole key is to help people overcome this themselves, guiding them step by step so that they no longer need any crutch. Once I understood a few principles, once I stayed consistent, recovery was possible, and in the mentorship, we've seen too many people to be wrong. I've seen too many success stories to be convinced that someone is just unique. The truth is, once you do a few things, recovery is not just possible, it's inevitable.