To the Entrepreneur or Business Owner Living With Anxiety

You are not alone. You can be successful.

If you’ve just started your journey running your own business, don’t panic when the honeymoon stage is over. You’ve created a website and started emailing companies you think need your help. You’ve inhaled every business book and blog in the market.

Then, suddenly, everything feels like it’s falling apart.

No one is replying to your emails.

No one is following you on social media, and you’ve practically shouted from your e-rooftops who you are.

Needing some inspiration, you dig around the web and become bombarded with business coaches and gurus who say:

Accept rejection and move on. To you that means, you’ll have to somehow stop your brain from ruminating about what went wrong, if something could have been done better or if you could be better.

Be mentally tough to make it as a business owner. Now you start to roll your eyes. You click around from site to site, seeing the same well-dressed and perfectly manicured gurus saying to be strong.

Ha — I’m sure it’s pretty simple for you to stay strong when you don’t have to take a sedative every night just to fall asleep.

And the toughie: You finally make your mental fragility known — you tell a colleague or mentor. They tell you: Never talk about anxiety or any kind of mental illness when you’re an entrepreneur online. Potential clients could read it and decide not to work with you.

As a black woman with an unusual name, chances are people will click away from my website with bigoted and negative assumptions about my work ethic, attitude and intellect. I certainly can’t hide those parts of me.

So why should I hide my story?

Not to say you need to have “Freelance Writer With Anxiety For Hire” written on your business cards, but the beauty of entrepreneurship is that you don’t have to explain your bad days with a supervisor. You can have them and keep pushing forward. I’m open about my anxiety (and I’m actually writing a book about entrepreneurs with anxiety) because placing this mental illness within something tangible makes me feel as though I’m owning it. I’m not letting it get in the way of my dreams as a writer and virtual assistant.

Having anxiety is one part of who you are. It doesn’t lessen your business savvy or creativity. Everything the average entrepreneur possess for success, you have it, too.

You may have to overcome some larger hills because of your condition, but the destination is the same as everyone else. Looking backward, you can congratulate yourself even more for what you’ve accomplished. What you’ve been through will seem extraordinary.

You are not alone. And you are successful.

Follow this journey on Nerdy Thirty Something.

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