Social Anxiety to the Spotlight: How Pageantry Helped Me Find Confidence

Social Anxiety to the Spotlight: How Pageantry Helped Me Find Confidence

Hi! I’m Katelyn Storey, a National Finalist for Miss Galaxy Australia 2025, and I’m here to share my story of social anxiety and how I used pageantry to rebuild my confidence! 

I was homeschooled from Year 2 to Year 8 and started attending high school in Year 9, which was a pretty rough transition. I ended up in a toxic friendship who prevented me from making any other friends, so I felt pretty isolated. Everything was a competition with this friend, and constant one-upping made me anxious. This led to me developing pretty bad social anxiety. I struggled to speak up in class or make friends due to my quietness, and I often wondered if it was gonna be like this forever. 

I continued to struggle with social anxiety all through out the rest of high school. Once I started studying drama at uni I got a lot better but it was still there, coming out at the most inconvenient times. In my last year of uni I applied to enter a pageant, thinking “It’s not like I’ll actually be accepted, right?”. Nope! I got in! On the finals night I was incredibly nervous. I loved being on stage, but I’d never done a pageant before. I still struggled with insecurity and didn’t expect to place. Luckily I’ve developed a much more healthy mindset now! Despite the nerves, I had a fun time and made friends with amazing women who were encouraging uplifting. I enjoyed it so much that I decided to keep going, and here I am today! 

I’m so excited to return to Pageant Land in May to compete for Miss Galaxy Australia 2025 alongside my sash sisters. Pageantry has allowed me to grow into myself and tell the world who I am with anxiety getting in the way. I can’t wait! 

 

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