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.
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