Following my post on rebuilding confidence after having a seizure in public, I wanted to make a post about rebuilding confidence following diagnosis. Because being diagnosed with a potentially chronic condition can change how you feel about yourself. Your capabilities, your independence, your ambitions, the list goes on. We evolve over time, confidence isn’t static. Epilepsy can also be so unpredictable, but owning the label and focusing on what I can control has helped me fe

Like many people, I struggled with denial after being diagnosed with a long-term/chronic condition. For years, I was told: “you need to learn to accept epilepsy”. So I focused on destroying denial. I thought if I could just stop pretending everything was okay, stop wishing epilepsy would disappear, stop pretending that I’d never have a seizure again... Then maybe I’d finally have accepted it. But the more I pushed it away, the less achievable acceptance became. It’s only rece

For years, I believed that if I did everything "right", I'd stop having seizures. That’s what the doctors told me. That’s what my family thought too. Sleep well. Eat well. Exercise. Take my medication. Avoid alcohol. When I still had seizures, it felt like I'd failed. I felt like I’d maybe not complied with that equation. What I eventually realised was that I'd been measuring success by the wrong outcome. Those habits didn't guarantee seizure freedom, but they changed how I f