Mat Voyce

Yeah, it's definitely been gradual and it's as...

gotten worse as I don't want it to sound odd or bad but as I've got more responsibility in life especially with pets and children having those extra layers of stress and tiredness have definitely enhanced the anxiety I was always pretty anxious even from being like a young teenager

Always quite have a nervous disposition.

That was always just me, quite introverted and quiet and being nervous about things.

And I don't know, I always, I guess I always used to blow things out of proportion and get overly nervous about things that were beyond my control.

I don't know where it would have started, but I remember being always like nervous that...

If one of my parents was out for hours, if something felt like they were out for too long, like I was worried, like, where are they?

Are they okay?

Are they coming back okay?

And I don't know where that initial stress and worry came from or that anxiety, but I know it's that...

anxiety about things that have yet to come is still and has been the main kind of trigger or the main worry and anxiety point for me so that echoing through to having a pet and having a child more importantly and are they going to be okay is how are they going to be how are they going to grow up are they going to be unwell there's all these kind of those levels and those factors where most people

you don't even think that far ahead.

Like, why would you just focus on the here and the now?

Whereas for me, if I get an inkling or a sense of something that could then trigger that feeling of I could worry about this in the future, that's where the worry and anxiety starts and I'll worry about it now.

And I go down what I call rabbit holes.

So this is better now.

But if I started to get anxious, I would think about the idea and then advance it and make it worse in my head and go down the worst possible route.

And that's when it would like spiral and spiral and spiral.

And that would then follow through to negative emotion.

For a long time, before I went more public with the anxiety posts, it was only really my close family and my wife that really knew that I was that anxious and having that many kind of worries about things.