Are you anxious, asks a picture book, then helps me face my answer| Rebecca Slater

Generalised anxiety is paralysing to live with and nearly impossible to explain but a new book on it proves pictures can indeed be worth a thousand words

I first came across Catherine LePage’s illustrated book browsing the aisles of my local bookstore. I do this most days, as a way to get myself out of bed, out of the house. After months of holding down temporary and contract jobs, I’d recently landed a full-time job, quit after a week in a fit of panic, and now found myself unemployed, unsure and more anxious than I’d been in my entire life.

I found it propped up in the small self-help section, tucked away in the back corner of the store. On approach, a young woman, flicking through a book on self-esteem, averted her gaze: a sign of mutual respect, sympathy or occasionally fear that I’d become accustomed to in frequenting this section over the past months.

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