Caroline Foran

And that is why now with this book, I've rearranged everything that I did, arseways basically, I rearranged into what actually would have made a huge difference and would have drastically reduced suffering.

What starts as anxiety that might be containable in and of itself,

you add on shame, you add on social comparison, you add on being hard on yourself, self-criticism, and it grows and grows and it becomes so much harder and so unnecessary, bigger than it ever needed to be.

So I've gone back and I've restructured what, like back to that day, what would have made a difference in this moment?

What was I getting wrong?

How was I thinking about myself?

How was I relating to the anxiety?

Even just not having a clue of

the physiology of it and how actually it makes sense.

Like when you look at the sequence of events in your brain in an overwrought nervous system, how understandable it is that you would wind up feeling like you're living your life through these fear goggles.

And that's not a personal failing.

That's just your nervous system has worked itself into this thing and it needs a lot of support to get out of that.

But it's not your doing.

You have not willed this upon yourself.

But when I didn't know all of that, like all that self-critique piled on and I felt this, as much as anxiety feels like you're up here trying to come down, depression is like this gravitational pull to the ground.

And I was alone all day.

Like my husband had to, or he wasn't my husband then, he had to go to work.

You weren't working at this stage?

No, I was on illness benefit.

I couldn't work.