“I have a question for the ‘Anxiety Girl.’”

This is how I was referred to at a recent well-being event. While not exactly what I imagined, being defined by anxiety—how very sexy—is how my career has transpired. I have no degree in psychology. I am no doctor. I have not unearthed a magical cure for stress and anxiety (if only). But I do have heaps of firsthand experience with the crippling shit show that anxiety can be. It’s made me kind of an expert in learning how to own it.

When I was in my twenties, I went through what I now describe as a mental breakdown (still such scary words to put together). I seemingly had everything going for me—great friends, great boyfriend, great job, great life. I didn’t have a “reason” to be anxious. Why couldn’t I just snap out of it? Why couldn’t I get my shit together? Sure, I had stress, but who doesn’t? Everyone else was handling it, or so it seemed on Instagram; why couldn’t I?

Despite having a lot going for me, for which I was both lucky and grateful, I fell apart. There was no majorly obvious trigger: I made the move from a job that I loved into a new one that didn’t suit me on many levels, and as such, I began to experience stress. So what, right? We’ve all been there. But the little ball of stress in my stomach quickly grew arms and legs. What started as containable anxiety about a new job gathered at an avalanche-like pace. It became anxiety about what this would mean for my career. Anxiety about what this would mean for my relationship, anxiety about paying my bills. Ultimately, though, it became anxiety about what people would think about me: I had everything going for me—what reason did I have to break down?

When I did broach the subject, people told me to get some perspective, to remember it could always be worse, to buck up, as if my adrenal glands could simply be convinced to switch off with the right attitude adjustment. I felt that, compared with those who go through really hard times like the loss of a loved one or another life-altering trauma, I had no right to fall apart.

At first, I thought—as is characteristic of anxiety—that I was completely alone in my struggle, but I soon learned more women feel this way than I could possibly count. Two years ago I published my first book, Owning It: Your Bullsh*t-Free Guide to Living With Anxiety, and I started talking about my anxiety a lot. When Owning It became an international best-seller, I heard from scores of women dealing with the same shame cycle I was in. They had objectively good lives and didn’t feel like they were “allowed” to have anxiety.

It’s an anxiety-shame cycle that goes a little like this: We don’t feel that we have a good enough reason to “justify” our feelings of anxiety, which just creates more anxiety. Anxiety about our anxiety! As a result, we continue to self-stigmatize, serving only to increase the anxiety we’re feeling, and so the cycle repeats. Not ideal.

What I now realize is that is bullshit. Bullshit for me, bullshit for you, bullshit for anybody else experiencing anxiety for “no good reason.” The reality is that anxiety doesn’t simply discriminate based on life circumstances—it’s not a members-only club for which you have to have been dragged through the emotional trenches—but I didn’t understand that until I began to peel back the layers of the brain to understand how stress and anxiety actually work.

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