Caroline Foran

But I never felt well.

It was always gut issues.

Very, very sensitive tummy.

Still to this day, it's like the bane of my existence.

But as a kid, I would have always been like, oh.

I don't feel well and now like when my friends whose kids are a bit older and maybe they're arriving at the school gates and the kid says in the back of the car oh the pain in my tummy the parent knows it's not something they ate they know it's a bit of anxiety registering in that way because that's often how it shows up for kids but this is in the 90s like we didn't have a clue

Mental health, anxiety, those words were never connected between what I was feeling and what was going on because it would have been like, well, you've nothing to be anxious about.

But like, again, like with my son, it doesn't matter if you think I've nothing to be anxious about.

If my nervous system is just tweaked in that way.

And I need more to feel safe and secure that I'm going to experience anxiety.

So, yeah, I was as a kid, I was I went in and out of waves where I would just be like, oh, she's just a bit sensitive.

And then as a teenager, I was like flying high for the first few years of that.

I was

I mean, every bit the typical teenager, you know, drinking when I shouldn't have been drinking and having all of the experiences.

And then when I was 16, going on 17, I went away with my friends and a set of parents of one of them.

And I hadn't felt well for the few weeks before it.

And it's just, it wasn't going away.

And then when we arrived in this countryside in Italy...

I was like, I really don't feel well.

And I just, that was almost like my first breakdown, which I never even wrote about in my first book because I didn't even think of it as anxiety.