A regional daily journalist has broken her silence about her mental health battle in a candid first-person piece for her newspaper.

Amelia Shaw, left, a multimedia journalist for the North Wales Daily Post, has written a forthright account about “fighting a losing battle” with anxiety.

Amelia reveals that she  has lived with anxiety since childhood, but only sought medical help for the disorder in 2012.

In the piece for the Daily Post, she spoke of needing to “paint on her happy face” each day in order to hide what she called the “constant war” inside her head.

Wrote Amelia:  “I’m in a relationship, I have a happy and healthy little boy and the job I’ve always wanted. There are few people who know the ‘real’ me – they don’t know that like 25pc of the population, I struggle with mental health issues.

“Every day I put on a brave face and paint on a smile that I don’t believe while inside I am fighting a losing battle with my anxiety disorder. I have never dealt with anything more difficult than the constant war inside my head but despite this, I’ve become an expert at hiding it.

“I can look you in the eye and have a normal conversation with you while my brain goes in to overdrive, and you’d never be able to tell. I’ve always said I wish I could take my brain out and put it on the side for a while, just to find some sort of relief.

“It’s exhausting being my own worst enemy and it’s terrifying knowing that I don’t have the ability to shut down this emotion. I worry that I’m letting people down because I am not a good enough mother, a good enough girlfriend or a good enough journalist.”

Amelia says she is “hypersensitive to disarray, chaos and any sort of change”, and that feeling overwhelmed can cause her to “lash out” at those closest to her.

Over the last four years she has changed medication four times, although she stopped while pregnant with her son.

Amelia added: “The pills are great at numbing the pain and they make painting on my happy face that little bit easier. They make it a little bit easier to deal with mess or loud noises or a change of plans, but they don’t get to the route of the problem.

“I’ve come a long way, but I’ve also got a long way to go, and one thing I will tell those who struggle every day is don’t hide how you feel. There is no shame in admitting that you’re not OK.”

Amelia told HTTFP people from across the UK had contacted her about their own experiences since the piece was published.

She said: “I’m really lucky and grateful to have been given this platform to talk about my anxiety disorder, but to be honest I’ve barely scratched the surface.

“There will always be people who don’t understand, and you can’t expect them to if they’ve never experienced it, but knowing that I’ve helped just a handful of people is enough for me.

“It’s comforting to know that I’m not the only one who feels this way, but it’s definitely worrying to see how many people struggle to be inside their own head. I urge them to seek help, it was the best thing I ever did.”