Caroline Foran

And that's why I wrote this book was because I really did overcome it and get to the other side of it.

And so much of what was required there was how little I understood about it, how frightened of it I was, all the perceptions that we have about of what it means to feel anxiety.

But at the time, I

I remember having to go to the doctor and say I tried and I was in therapy for a long time.

I was doing the walks and the talks and there was nothing I wasn't doing.

I was so desperate to feel better, but I was completely missing the point of what anxiety, how it worked in the body, you know, why I was feeling it, how normal that was.

I launched this internal attack on myself, like get a grip.

This is not OK.

Look at how much worse off other people have it.

Like you are ridiculous.

And of course, all of that, as I know now,

just pumps more as fuel to the fire yeah and like there was not at the time you know I wouldn't have understood that if I could actually just pause and react to myself compassionately here that not only is that like a nice thing to do but it actually pumps the brakes on that sequence of stress

in your body and it will just slow things down and it will actually interrupt that cycle.

I didn't know any of that.

So I thought that like really almost hating myself would motivate me out the other side.

And I was just getting worse and worse and worse.

And nobody understood it and nobody knew why.

And when I went to the doctor, I had moved somewhere new not long before, which maybe also was part of it.

And the doctor, I didn't really know.

And honestly, she looked at me like I had two heads.