Unsure when to inform my two-year-old about my impending solo work trip to Dubai, I began scouring the internet for suggestions from mothers who have been in similar positions. One journalist mother decided to assuage her panic around separation by interviewing experts. Strangely, I remember little of what they said. What impressed itself in my memory was her sage advice to remember that anxiety, at its very root, stems from lack of trust. It really hit home, this sentence. After reading it, I paused for a second and felt a lightness take over. I began to dwell on my circumstances and realised I deeply trusted the people who would be caring for our child in my absence. It got me thinking about what lies on the other side of anxiety. What happens if and when you dive deep into the feeling and begin to untangle it? Is faith its logical opposite?

Having been around highly anxious people, I felt sure I didn’t share their attributes. In retrospect, I understand that I had simply not been allowing myself to feel the emotion. Because if I had truly wrestled with the bodily consequence of it, I would have better interpreted the conditions that were enabling the feeling. I would have made better choices in the past. I hadn’t fathomed how being around anxious people felt familiar. I never made the connection between people who have regular tempestuous outbursts and their internalised anxiety. I suspect I often felt like my behaviour merited the outburst and it was my job to dissipate the negativity and make everything ‘good’ again.