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‘Anxiety is a relatively new one for me in the scheme of things. I’ve suffered from depression pretty much my entire life, and recently have realised I was dealing with undiagnosed ADHD which I think meant bouts of depression and anxiety were largely a result of that. But my anxiety really developed in my mid 20s. When I was at Uni I masked my depression and fed my ADHD by being very social; I would always be hosting parties, I would be out every night with a different group of people. A lot of my friends loved it because it’s how they all met, but for me it was a technique for burying my depression by being around a lot of people all the time.’

Last year I spent a couple of months living in Leeds. Before heading over, I made sure to ask everyone I knew from Yorkshire to connect me with people still living there to get a bit more familiar with the place. That’s how I met Jess.

Leeds is known largely as a uni town, with people coming and going, arriving and leaving.

‘After Uni, all my best friends went down to live in London. After that, my failsafe technique wasn’t so failsafe anymore, and I started to get massively anxious about social situations. I think that, paired with the fact I probably have abandonment issues from being sent off to boarding school at about 14, meant that everyone leaving definitely triggered the anxiety.’

‘Having never really confronted it for about 7 years I guess the anxiety now manifests itself in a way that never allows anyone too close to me. I keep most people at arm’s length. I get very anxious specifically in large groups of girls - which is ironic because I run a platform, RWTG, that by its nature means I have to be around a lot of girls. But those events and stuff allow me to be involved in the scene without directly having to be in a crew of girls if that makes sense! I’m on the peripheral which I prefer.’

Skateboarding can be great in coping with anxiety, but skate scenes can also get claustrophobic really quickly, especially in smaller cities where by default everyone knows each other.

‘RWTG makes me very anxious. A lot of people love it but you wouldn’t believe the amount of negativity I get off the back of it. I literally debate packing it all in at least once a month. It’s difficult to battle that anxiety and my instinct to move onto the ‘next thing’, which ADHD is constantly telling me to do. And it’s horrible because this thing I started through having a love of something – it’s now one of my major sources of sadness a lot of the time. So I deal with it by skating with only people I know closely, in pretty safe spaces where I know there won’t be a mad amount of people!’

‘‘Anxiety is a relatively new one for me in the scheme of things. I’ve suffered from depression pretty much my entire life, and recently have realised I was dealing with undiagnosed ADHD which I think meant bouts of depression and anxiety were largely a result of that. But my anxiety really developed in my mid 20s. When I was at Uni I masked my depression and fed my ADHD by being very social; I would always be hosting parties, I would be out every night with a different group of people. A lot of my friends loved it because it’s how they all met, but for me it was a technique for burying my depression by being around a lot of people all the time.’

Last year I spent a couple of months living in Leeds. Before heading over, I made sure to ask everyone I knew from Yorkshire to connect me with people still living there to get a bit more familiar with the place. That’s how I met Jess.

Leeds is known largely as a uni town, with people coming and going, arriving and leaving.

‘After Uni, all my best friends went down to live in London. After that, my failsafe technique wasn’t so failsafe anymore, and I started to get massively anxious about social situations. I think that, paired with the fact I probably have abandonment issues from being sent off to boarding school at about 14, meant that everyone leaving definitely triggered the anxiety.’

‘Having never really confronted it for about 7 years I guess the anxiety now manifests itself in a way that never allows anyone too close to me. I keep most people at arm’s length. I get very anxious specifically in large groups of girls - which is ironic because I run a platform, RWTG, that by its nature means I have to be around a lot of girls. But those events and stuff allow me to be involved in the scene without directly having to be in a crew of girls if that makes sense! I’m on the peripheral which I prefer.’

Skateboarding can be great in coping with anxiety, but skate scenes can also get claustrophobic really quickly, especially in smaller cities where by default everyone knows each other.
‘RWTG makes me very anxious. A lot of people love it but you wouldn’t believe the amount of negativity I get off the back of it. I literally debate packing it all in at least once a month. It’s difficult to battle that anxiety and my instinct to move onto the ‘next thing’, which ADHD is constantly telling me to do. And it’s horrible because this thing I started through having a love of something – it’s now one of my major sources of sadness a lot of the time. So I deal with it by skating with only people I know closely, in pretty safe spaces where I know there won’t be a mad amount of people!’