Childhood abuse led to adult depression for YouTuber The Anxiety Guy. How he overcame it
Now that mental health influencer Dennis Simsek has learned to live with anxiety, he feels like he’s ‘living the childhood I never enjoyed’
Popular podcaster and social media mental health influencer The Anxiety Guy comes by his hashtag honestly.
Dennis Simsek’s anxiety symptoms used to be so severe he would seek help at the emergency department at his local hospital, sometimes as often as twice a week.
“I’d go there in a panic, because I struggled to catch a full breath, experienced heart palpitations and felt like I was being strangled,” says the 44-year-old former tennis coach and professional tennis player, who was born in the Netherlands and grew up in Canada.
To calm him down, doctors gave him the anti-anxiety medicine lorazepam, a benzodiazepine – a class of drugs that slow brain and nervous system activity.
Each time, Simsek hoped that the doctors would find something physically wrong with him, so that he could get surgery or medication to treat it. He was disappointed when his tests came back fine.
His home environment growing up was “challenging”, he says, as his father pressured him to excel in tennis and was emotionally, mentally – and sometimes physically – abusive.
