Managing Mental Health, Anxiety, and Well-Being as a Young Adult

Anna Vogts, Young Adult Leadership Council Member 

My greatest journey as a person with a learning disability has been discovering how to stop forcing myself to fit into a world that was not designed for me. Everyone with a learning disability experiences this struggle in their own way, but I’ve come to realize that true happiness comes from embracing my differences rather than hiding them. 

I have always struggled with perfectionism as a way to compensate for my learning disability, almost as if I could hide my struggles if I were perfect enough. But this constant pressure also came at a cost to my mental health. I lived with a fear of failure, being exposed for my weakness, not measuring up, and being viewed as incapable.

During the weeks leading up to my freshman year of college, these feelings came to a head. The fear of navigating my learning disability in a new place without my support systems was overwhelming. Back home, people understood and supported me; teachers accommodated me, family encouraged me, and friends saw beyond my learning disability. Once on campus, I felt alone and exposed. No matter how much I tried, I couldn’t imagine a future where success was possible. All I could see were obstacles, setbacks, and inevitable failure.

As classes began, these feelings only intensified. Sitting in my first lecture, I watched my other classmates effortlessly take notes and process information on the course syllabus, whereas I was frozen. Unsure how to keep up, too afraid to ask for help. I could feel the familiar doubt creeping in: What if I wasn’t capable of handling college? What if my disability held me back?

Eventually, the weight of my struggles became unbearable, and I knew something had to change. After much consideration, I determined the best way to care for myself was to withdraw from school and return home to focus on my mental health. At first, this felt like admitting defeat, and I worried about how others would view my decision. However, I soon began to realize that this was far from failure, but instead the first step toward self-acceptance. 

Over the next year, I worked with a therapist who helped me to understand just how much my learning disability and mental health intersected. I began to see how it had impacted my sense of self-worth both in and outside academics. I learned to challenge the belief that my value was tied to my ability to “hide” my learning disability.  More importantly, I learned to see beauty in my learning disability; it gives me a unique perspective on the world, shaping how I think, learn, and engage with others. 

This perspective has now informed how I choose to interact with the world around me. Leadership opportunities, such as NCLD’s Young Adult Leadership Council, give me the ability to advocate for other students who may feel misunderstood. It’s a chance to empower the next generation of students to view their differences as strengths, not obstacles to be ignored. 

In the fall, I will be starting the second year of my PhD in Educational Psychology at the University of Missouri. My experiences with mental health continue to impact me as they have given me the confidence I need to advocate for myself and seek out accommodation beyond the classroom setting. For example, I’ve begun taking on things that I found an obstacle to my disability with confidence, like going to the library desk to ask for the disability services librarian to help me access books not available in PDF format, or working with the ADA office to get specialized software for my on-campus employment. These are steps I wouldn’t have taken in the past, but now I don’t see them as a burden, but more of just an extra step in the process of getting what I need. This has been a big shift in perspective and has empowered me when I think about my disability. As I move into the future, I hope to enter the field of education research because I see it as a way to continue advocacy efforts for students at every level of education.