Disclosing an anxiety disorder matters, because a lot of people feel they don’t. And you should tell the people that matter to you, the people that form the everyday backbone of your relationships, whether that's in the form of colleagues or more intimate members of family or friendship circles. Tell them because choosing not to takes something away from those relationships, because an anxiety disorder is a significant part of your life and some of the healing comes in accepting that.

Your body knows how anxious you are, it doesn't need you to think it, analyze or re-frame it. It knows in every cell. It knows secrets you've forgotten and it knows your future. What the body knows is how we move, sense and experience the world. Having an anxiety disorder means being disconnected from that sensate awareness.

The anxious and curious mind What motivates anxiety? In a sense being human is experiencing discomfort, then doing something about it. Whether that's the fear of mice that means a better mousetrap or dissatisfaction with the world that raises great ambition. Anxiety makes me question everything. It forces its way into my head, fills it with future discomfort so that I fear not only probablity, but possibility. Natural questions become difficult to bear and I'm walking on eggshells with the weight of 'why?', 'what if', 'does it have to be this way?',

How do I explain anxiety to my spouse, lover, friends? I really don't think you can do it without first coming to grips with the idea that the people we love may never fully know, and probably won't "get it" the way we hope. But that doesn't mean they can't be valuable allies in managing anxiety issues.

What don't you have if you're struggling with anxiety? Emotional health. Not the most earth-shattering statement but pertinent, all the same. Do you really know what's missing, though? I'm not always sure.

You don't look sick! No, I don't. It shouldn't be an accusation, either. One of the worst parts of having an anxiety disorder, or any other invisible illness, is how hard it is to explain to someone when they don't have the first notion. It becomes almost a routine battle, feeling sick on the inside while knowing the world thinks you look fine.

Anxiety likes to keep us in boxes. Little boxes, with four walls and a steady stream of same, same, similar, same. Don't stray too far now. Don't, should, must,... and after a while your mind stops using the windows, let alone the door.

As a friend of mine pointed out, there was a weird thing happening in cyberspace this week: People were rationing grief. Portioning it up like that really can be done, like any of us could put a cap on sadness, anger, denial, fear.

Fear denied, repressed, suppressed, or put out of mind is not fear extinguished. Treating anxiety: 'as if' I've been told that acting 'as if' I'm not nearly as anxious as I am is a helpful thing. It's also dangerous. As with almost any technique sometimes is fine but if you're anything like me and you'll do whatever you have to do to be able to put your anxiety aside and function, and if what you want is to go on with as much of life as you can, uninterrupted by fear, then it can become destabilizing.

"The meds don't work!" I hear it a lot. From rational people. It's shorthand, a way to tell me that psychiatry has failed them. Unfortunately it's also used as a vantage point from which to argue that psychiatric medications are universal bunkum. I find this insulting; It implies those taking medication for mental health issues are at least a little clueless, prone to hypochondria. One step barely removed from calling the lot of us hysterics. So much for a century of scientific research and advocacy.