A couple of years ago, I was addicted to my own anxiety. The realisation came when my therapist asked me what life would be like if I didn’t end each day with a montage-style audit of all the stupid and embarrassing things I’d said and done that day.

“Well, if I didn’t, how would I ever get better?” I replied. In my mind, I had to stay vigilant, monitoring my behaviour and admonishing myself accordingly for any slip-ups, lest they happen again. It was the only coping mechanism I had for my debilitating social anxiety and the idea of letting go of this hyper-vigilance was terrifying.

In the sense that I thought it was the only thing keeping me ‘safe’, I was completely addicted to anxiety – thanks largely to years of building these habitual negative thought patterns into my everyday life.

“When we look at addiction in the broader context, it comes with a promise: ‘I’m going to soothe you. I’m going to make you feel better. I’m going to help you escape,’” says Owen O’Kane, a specialist psychotherapist with 30 years of clinical experience in physical and mental health. “Just like drugs or alcohol, anxiety comes with a big promise: ‘I’m going to keep you safe. I’m going to protect you.’ There’s something quite alluring about a mechanism that’s promising to keep you safe, so it’s easy to become attached to it and then letting it go seems like a tall order.”

O’Kane is a former NHS mental health clinical lead who has run a successful private practice for years. He’s also the Sunday Times bestselling author of Ten To Zen and How To Be Your Own Therapist. But his latest book, Addicted To Anxiety: How To Break The Habit, might be his most groundbreaking yet, as it takes a revolutionary approach to how we look at and relate to our anxiety.

“People have a bigger role to play in the maintenance of their own anxiety than they realise,” O’Kane says. “You’re always going to have anxiety, but in realising how you feed it, you can create a healthier relationship.”

Anxiety is on the rise across all demographics, with numbers higher than they’ve ever been. The Mental Health Foundation reports that 60% of UK adults experience anxiety on a weekly basis; nearly 40% of women and just under 30% of men report high levels of anxiety in the UK, and 20% of UK adults report feeling anxious most or all of the time.

“I’ve never met anyone who says they like the feeling of anxiety, and yet I’ve never met anyone who’s not let go of it reluctantly,” says O’Kane. “It’s a complicated relationship; just like with any addict, it’s simply people continuing to do something they know doesn’t serve them well.”

After years of working with anxious patients, O’Kane believes we’ve been looking at anxiety all wrong – while most self-help books talk about anxiety as something that’s happening to us, teaching ways to rid ourselves of anxious symptoms, O’Kane believes our anxiety is something we should be aiming to work with, not against.

“I was addicted to my anxiety – and you probably are too”