“If you’ve never experienced anxiety, you might find it difficult to understand what that feels like. I can throw any number of clichés and similes at you: it’s like trying to find your way out of a dark and dense forest, only to keep circling back to the same point you started from; it feels like being caught in a washing machine, disorientating and dizzy-making and like you’re always on the precipice of drowning; it’s like a carnival tent full of distorting mirrors, and you’re too terrified to look into any of them because you’re afraid your own reflection might assume a life of its own and start to mock you. It’s like all of these things at once and that’s an easy way to visualise it. But the simple and most universal truth is that anxiety just makes you feel incredibly, desperately alone. I”