Does being diagnosed with anxiety ruin your life?

It almost has. If I didn't try to understand it and take a hold of it, anxiety would have controlled me. It's important to be self aware and understand what is going on with yourself to help yourself.

To be honest I think that one one hand, a diagnosis can be a relief, because you can go about your day knowing it's not 'your fault' you are the way you are, it's that you have a mental ilness and you can almost put the blame on 'it', rather than yourself. But on the other hand, saying out in the open that you have such a thing can affect the way people think of you a great deal. But of course with treatment and finding yourself after a while, if you then say you 'had' a problem, and a genuinely severe issue with anxiety or depression or whatever it may be, but now you've got the better of it and risen above such inner demons, it says something about your perserverance and you're maybe held in higher regard than someone who's never been through such problems.

I actually found that diagnosis to be incredibly helpful as it affirmed what I had been feeling, and it was great to hear that someone had heard and understood me. It gave me a wonderful start point to begin to work on the way my anxiety presented itself, and it helped me feel that it was a legitimate problem, and not just 'all in my head'.