I used to be unable to leave the house. Then lockdown happened and nothing changed.

The Beginning

Peter Ruppert grew up in London. At university, he developed panic disorder and agoraphobia severe enough that his housemates asked him to leave. He dropped out. For a period, he couldn't shower without panicking. He couldn't leave his flat. He tried breathing exercises, avoidance, and every kind of safety behaviour he could think of. None of it worked.

When lockdown arrived in 2020, it made no difference to his daily life. He was already doing it. That realisation, that his world had contracted to almost nothing, became the turning point.

The Rule

Peter gave himself a simple instruction: whenever he faced a choice between the comfortable option and the uncomfortable one, he had to choose discomfort. Not because he wanted to feel awful, but because avoiding anxiety was making his life smaller.

One of the first uncomfortable things he did was set up a camera and start sharing. He documented the things that scared him, talked honestly about panic, and showed what it actually felt like to live inside anxiety rather than just survive it. People recognised themselves in what he was saying.

The Community

What started as one person being honest grew into a community of 1.6 million people across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and more. Peter became one of the UK's most followed mental health creators, not as a clinician, but as someone who had lived it and kept going.

The community became something Peter had never had access to when he was at his worst: a place where people could find honest, evidence-based information about anxiety without being sold a cure, and without feeling alone in it.