Do Worry, Be Happy

Anxious thoughts have defined georgia pritchetts’ life since childhood, but since recognising the ways fretting has made her a better person, she’s quit worrying about worrying and embraced the positives of being perpetually perturbed

- Lucy Hunter Johnston

I was raised in a household of worriers. It’s family legend that my older brother’s first words were an apology to the ground after he’d fallen over. I remember sitting in my buggy, worrying about sitting on the potty. I was known to chew my dummy anxiously. Worrying was a family activity: even the dog joined in, before being prescribed puppy Prozac after a bleak few weeks of staring at the walls and sighing.

As a child, I used to worry about the monsters under my bed. Not whether they existed, obviously there were monsters under the bed. My worry was, were they comfy? How could they sleep on a hard floor surrounded by dust? Sometimes I slept under the bed so that they could have a turn on top.

My mum tried to help with my anxiety by buying me a teddy – someone who I could tell my worries to. But you only had to look at the bear to see that he had some serious issues. His eyebrows were knitted (in both senses), his little mouth was wonky and his ears looked extremely perturbed. I named him Anxious Bear. I tried to help him, but this was a bear with multiple neuroses... Or was that me?