Paddy, 20, from Worcestershire, says that whilst sitting his A-levels, his anxiety was “massively heightened” by his obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD).<\/p>\n
He is passionate about politics and volunteers for mental health charity Young Minds, now sharing his experience to help others.<\/p>\n
“All my focus turned to these exams, and I just couldn’t enjoy anything else, if I wasn’t studying,” he says.<\/p>\n
“And then any time anything went wrong, I would catastrophise and think, ‘That’s my whole life ruined because of the exams.’ And this kind of built up and built up.”<\/p>\n
Paddy says his parents were “incredibly worried” about him at the time, and before one of his exams he broke down crying “uncontrollably”.<\/p>\n
The pressure of exams affected his sleep and eating, and heightened his OCD symptoms, he says.<\/p>\n
On the day itself, he made sure he had plans, so whatever the results were, he wouldn’t have to sit at home and worry.<\/p>\n
Now Paddy says he looks back with “so much pride”, because “whatever happened, whatever my grades were, I survived a really, really difficult period of my life”.<\/p>\n
He was very happy with his final A-level grades – two A*s and an A – but now wonders at what cost.<\/p>\n
He says he wishes he had taken more time to relax and be “kinder to myself”, which he thinks may have put him in a calmer position.<\/p>\n
Having been through it with his counsellor, he wants others to remember that “you’re so much more than some numbers on a piece of paper”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paddy, 20, from Worcestershire, says that whilst sitting his A-levels, his anxiety was “massively heightened” by his obsessive-compulsive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93790,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[97,259,260],"class_list":{"0":"post-93789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93790"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}