Anxiety is expensive—not just in terms of the mental toll, but in the way it costs us our lives. Every minute spent consumed by worry is a minute lost.

But even with reminders, breaking free from anxiety is not easy. It traps you in a tunnel where emotions blur your thinking,

How often does the thing you were worried about actually happen? Sure, occasionally there are issues that come up. Occasionally, you miss the connection or the package arrives late. But far more often, the imagined disaster dissolves into nothing.

Just about everything researchers understand about resilience and mental well-being suggests that people who feel like they are the chief architects of their own life — to mix metaphors, that they captain their own ship, not that they are simply being tossed around by an uncontrollable ocean — are vastly better off than people whose default position is victimization, hurt, and a sense that life simply happens to them and they have no control over their response.

Like most things in life, the answer is a complicated balance. And you have to find your way and find your balance, which isn’t easy no matter who you are or what you do. After two years of trauma, I’m going to crack on loads more. Make some new memories, new good times, which in the future I’ll be able to look back on as part of my nostalgia. Just have to find that tricky balance.