If you suffer from anxiety, you will be in good company. Many people struggle with the condition and many aspects of modern life can add to the strain.
Should you need any encouragement to see an anxiety therapist, one man whose endorsement is worth considering is Simon Cowell. Normally the super-confident music mogul who takes centre stage in talent shows and can make or break aspiring careers, he suffered a huge bout of anxiety when the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
Telling his tale to the Daily Mirror, Cowell revealed that he entered an extreme state of continuous anxiety in 2020 after several of his friends became very ill with the virus. “I didn’t know what was true or not, I just didn’t have a clue other than I was petrified about catching it. Just petrified.”
His fortunes took a further nosedive that year after he fell off an e-bike and required back surgery, and it was after this that he finally sought therapy for the first time at the age of 63, based on the advice of friends.
Noting that he had carefully looked after his body but not his mind, he discovered that it had a “super positive” impact on him. He remarked: “I wish I had done this ten or 20 years ago… It’s like a weight has lifted off my shoulders.”
Indeed, Mr Cowell is no longer a man who frets and stresses about issues like TV show viewing figures as he used to, which indicates that it is more than just his Covid-induced anxiety that the therapy has helped tackle.
However, the fact is that many people saw their mental health deteriorate during the worst days of the pandemic, amid fears of infection, loved ones getting infected, social isolation and uncertainty about the future.
Research by mental health charity Mind produced in April 2021 found that those whose mental health was hit hardest by the pandemic were the same people who had the most struggles with it before the crisis emerged. That chimes with Simon Cowell’s comment that he wished he had sought therapy many years sooner than he did.
There were several ways in which the pandemic made matters worse for many.
For example, a third of adults and young people said their mental health had got a lot worse since March 2020, 88 per cent of young people said loneliness made their mental health worse and one in five did not seek help because they thought their problem was not serious enough.
While some of these statistics focused on young people, Simon Cowell’s testimony shows that therapy can help people in middle age and older. What both the stats and his story indicated was that Covid was not usually the catalyst for mental health issues, but it did make matters worse.
For many people, it could be that Covid has shown up problems they were previously willing to overlook or try to battle through. If that applies to you, it could be that you may also find therapy not only highly effective, but something you wished you had done many years ago.