You wouldn’t know it if you met me (though you will now), but I haven’t slept properly since I was a child.

Not only do I take forever to get to sleep, but I wake about 10 times a night, worrying whether I’ve locked the back door or even if my friend is annoyed that I didn’t reply to her text. Every night is the same: I lie awake staring into the darkness as my thoughts race and I struggle to calm my short, shallow breaths. So ingrained is this nightly routine, that even if nothing immediately bothers me, I find my mind scrabbling around for something to worry about.

Sometimes I even have nightmares about my A-level exams that were over a decade ago. It always plays out the same way: I realise I haven’t done any revision for my maths A-level and I have an ever-expanding text book which I know I won’t be able to read in time, so failure is inevitable. I dropped my maths A-level just weeks after starting it. Clearly my subconscious hasn’t forgiven me.

I’ve lived with this nagging, low-level panic all my life. It’s even become a bit of a family joke. So much so that when my brother gave me a copy of Scott Stossel’s study into the condition and vivid memoir My Age Of Anxiety, I laughed it off. Doesn’t everyone feel like this? After all, my friends, outwardly successful, smart young women who you’d assume wouldn’t be phased by much, all confess to living in fear of everything from missed meetings to the safety of loved ones.

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