I find comfort in knowing that my anxiety, stress, fears and regrets are not something I’m suffering alone. Millions of people, including those close to me, are going through the same things.

Fear of losing a job, a house or a loved one. Stressing over not being ‘enough’, not achieving enough yet or being on the ‘wrong’ path. Being afraid of death or sickness or aging. Regretting drinking the stuff, doing the thing, kissing them, not kissing them.

If we could see them, these thoughts would form a massive cloud over the head of society, and that cloud would gain power with silence because that’s how pain works — it feeds on inner turmoil.

I’ve found that as I try to ‘process’ a feeling it gets worse. I’m focusing on the pain and finding ways to justify it: I’m not good enough, I’m too old, I made too many mistakes and I got myself here in the first place.

When I talk about how I’m feeling with someone (anyone), the response is almost always the same.

‘Oh yeah, I feel that way all the time.’

Somehow, that feeling loses some of its sting when it’s normalised. When I talk about it, a valve is released and the pressure goes down. It’s still there, but I can see it properly now. I can handle it. I can sit with it.

I’ll give you an example. I have this intrusive thought that I’m going to get fired. I have a great boss and work for a brilliant company that puts up with my nonsense. I’ve only ever been encouraged and supported and we have loads of fun at work.

But my brain decided that everyone was being nice to me because I’m getting fired after Christmas. That my bosses are being ‘nice’ to me by letting me get through the festivities with my dignity intact before destroying me in the New Year. No performance issues or problems have been raised, but in my head, that makes perfect sense.

So I spoke to some of my colleagues about it. We laughed at me for a while and then one of them said, ‘I always think I’m getting fired. It keeps me awake at night.’ Another one (who you would NEVER suspect) said, ‘I have panic attacks before my weekly meeting because I think I’m getting sacked.’

There’s a solid argument here for an end to capitalism and hierarchy, but that isn’t what we’re talking about right now. The point is that once the feeling is shared and normalised, I’m able — to a certain extent — to laugh it off as a societal issue, not a personal one.

Side note: if the end of a hierarchical society resonates with you, I highly recommend Murray Bookchin . His books on Anarchism and Social Ecology are beautiful and eye-opening.

Once I see my anxiety as ‘normal’, I can deal with it. Even embrace it and be curious about it. Once it’s small enough that I can sit with it and feel it, I find that it loses all of it’s power. To me, it feels like it ‘burns off.’ It's a weird way to describe it, but it’s like a candle that’s at the end of the wick, and it sputters for a while and then…stops.

The more we can normalise all those ‘weird’ feelings the better. The more we talk about fears that feel unique to us, the more we’ll discover that we’re all very similar and it’s not us — it’s the way our society is structured. It’s designed to be competitive and to encourage action through fear.