Make ANXIETY Your superpower

Embracing worrying thoughts might be more beneficial than suppressing them, says Samantha Wood

How would you feel,' said the therapist at our first meeting, 'if all that anxiety you have on a daily basis completely vanished?' What followed was about four minutes of awkward silence as she patiently waited and I searched my inner self (it's what you do at therapy, right?) for the answer. And there it was; lonely, incomplete and no longer like me. Which was strange, because getting rid of the anxiety was why I was paying for the therapist in the first place.

Here's the thing; I've known worry my entire life. For as long as I can remember, she's been part of me. First thing in the morning she'll give me a nudge to suggest that the reason my cat hasn't woken me in the night is because he's dead on a road somewhere. At dinner she'll remind me of everything I ate at lunch, and therefore what I shouldn't eat to avoid dying of diabetes. And on the walk home after dark, she'll flag up the youth who is almost definitely going to violently mug and attack me - with knives! - if I'm not super vigilant. This level of anxiety has been a part of my daily life for what seems like forever, and with over eight million people in the UK also currently living with feelings of anxiety, I know I'm not unusual. But I hadn't ever really thought about what being totally free of it would mean.