Her writing regularly appears in The Times, Daily Mail, The i Paper and The Telegraph. She has appeared on BBC Radio 4 and Times Radio. She is the author of How to Eat an Elephant (2026).
You’ve probably noticed that terms once used only within the confines of a therapist’s office are now deployed unthinkingly to describe experiences that are merely uncomfortable. A car backfires and someone says it has ‘given them anxiety’. Spilling a round of drinks in front of others results in ‘PTSD’ – or ‘OCD’ until they are cleared up.
On TikTok, I’ve seen someone’s ‘ponytail era’ or syrup stains on a hardwood floor being described as severely traumatic. Likewise, the everyday use of language that surrounds anxiety conditions – words like ‘worry’, ‘fear’, ‘rumination’, ‘panic’, and ‘anxiety’ itself – makes it easy to underestimate just how debilitating anxiety-related illnesses can be. As a journalist, I’ve spent years interviewing experts and people living with anxiety for my book How to Eat an Elephant (2026).
I also have my own personal experience with anxiety. In 2019, I was diagnosed with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and chronic insomnia, which I have since rowed back from, over months and years. My hope is for more people to recognise just how serious anxiety can become, not least so they know when to get the help they need – but also to appreciate that it’s an essential, unavoidable part of life.
It’s normal to feel anxiety during challenging life moments or periods of intense change. To sweep mild and transient issues into the language of disorder helps no one, and particularly not those who really are struggling with mental ill health. Nerves help us make decisions quickly, weigh up risk, and compete at the top of our game.
The professional golfer Tiger Woods put it well in an interview in 2015: ‘I care about what I do and when I’m not nervous is the day I quit … I want to feel the rush, I want to feel the nerves.’ So we need some anxiety in our lives, but we also need to know when it has outstayed its welcome or grown to unhelpful and life-altering proportions. Anxiety conditions are the most common form of mental illness, affecting a third of us in our lifetime, according to best estimates. Data from the NHS in England suggest that 7.5 per cent of adults are currently living with GAD, the most common anxiety disorder.
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