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©Clay Stang
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'I try to separate my worries from myself and look at my anxiety as if it was the flu,' says Pearson
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The writer Patricia Pearson talks about the fears that devoured her life.
Patricia Pearson, author of
A Brief History of Anxiety... Yours and Mine, worries a lot. "I fret about everything and nothing. After 9/11, a friend died and that combination had the effect of turning me into a hypochondriac. I would lie awake at night listening to a gurgling sound in my abdomen convinced I had cancer." On another occasion, she ordered 12 containers of freeze-dried vegetables after an American report warned of a possible flu epidemic and advised stockpiling food.
As well as inflicting a bizarre set of phobias, anxiety has brought Pearson's life to a complete halt three times: dropping out of university, resigning from a job, and winding up addicted to anti-depressants.