Living With Wolfram Syndrome – Adam Zwan
Self-confidence
Having confidence in one’s self is as important in life as breathing. Without an adequate amount of confidence a person suffers throughout life dealing with mental health. Having a lack of confidence may make it difficult to finish tasks, create new goals, initiate relationships, and can make a person feel severely depressed. One must be satisfied with one’s self before he or she can enjoy life.
As a Wolfram patient, I have struggled to increase and maintain self-confidence most of my life. Psychology claims that a child’s confidence is first developed in middle school (5th-8th grade). When I was a middle school student I was overweight, payed too much attention to what other students would say or do to me, and did not have an outgoing personality that initiated relationships. The next stepping stone took place in high school. I started eating right, becoming more physically active, and worked on my personality, which all helped me to boost my confidence. While helping out the baseball team and socializing more with peer students, I was feeling better about myself and my surroundings.
My level of confidence was decent while in high school and college but after graduating with a bachelor’s degree a few things changed. Transferring through three different colleges before graduating made it tough to develop a network of friends and contacts. Wolfram Syndrome began taking a toll and sending me to the emergency room for various reasons. With worsening vision, I lost the luxury of driving and independent travel. After numerous twists and turns, my confidence was again shattered.
Fortunately, I am too strong to just break down and quit. I continue to exercise everyday to clear my head of any negativity and jumpstart each day relaxed and refreshed. If I begin a task I make sure that I finish it and finish it well to emphasize the feelings of accomplishment. The next step in becoming satisfied with myself is to live in an area with a system of public transportation so that I may live and travel independently. Like most things in life, having a high level of confidence and perseverance will lead to great outcomes.