Helping Julie to believe in herself

Julie was unemployed and her confidence was at a low ebb due to social anxiety. She had been working full-time as a receptionist but lost her job after Covid struck. Like so many others affected by the pandemic, she became locked in a daily routine of searching for a suitable job.

“My typical day was getting up in the morning, having breakfast, going into every job site there was, to try and find employment,” says Julie. “Some days were successful, some days weren’t.” 

For Julie, joining Triage for tailored employability support was a ‘cry for help’. She needed to find a way to move forward through her anxiety and build her confidence if she was to succeed in her search for work.

“What interested me about Triage was to go somewhere where people would understand what I was going through, they would know what circumstances I was in, and basically to cry out for help,” she explains.

Julie’s Triage adviser Elaine Bovill signposted her to a DPS Social Anxiety course to help her find strategies to improve her confidence. Julie struck up a good rapport with her Triage adviser, which helped allay fears and doubts she was feeling about whether the course was the right step for her.

Julie says: “We had a chat on the phone about a lot of things, she made me feel very at ease. That put my mind at rest to definitely go to this course, which I had doubts about.

“But not only that, my Triage adviser let me know how important I was because I had no faith in myself. She told me to look in the mirror and say, ‘Do you know what? You can do this,’ which I’ll always be grateful to her for.”

Since completing the course, Julie has secured a job as an administrator for a bathroom company and is feeling much brighter about the future.

“My goal now is to be happy in life and to be able to look in the mirror and say to myself, ‘You know what, Julie, you can do what you want to do.’ I’m not going to lie and say yes, I’m 100 per cent there yet, I’m not. But by God, I’m 80 per cent there now, where I was 20 per cent before I met my Triage coach.” 

Now that her anxiety is much more under control, Julie is planning to save up for a holiday abroad next year, and says her goal is to find happiness again:

“I feel as though I’m ready for that because Triage gave me the confidence to try and find happiness in my life again, which I didn’t have before.”