Most people who email me apologise somewhere in the first paragraph.

Not for anything they’ve done. For being there at all. I’m not sure I should be taking up your time. I know other people have it much worse. It’s probably nothing. Then a list of things that are plainly not nothing, delivered in the tone you’d use to report a slightly wobbly shelf.

If you’ve been circling the idea of therapy for a while and keep stopping at the same place — is this bad enough? — I’d like to take that question seriously, because it deserves better than reassurance.

Someone asks you what you'd like to do on Saturday and your mind goes blank.

Not because you're tired, although you are. Not because there's nothing to do. But because the question — what do you want? — has stopped having an answer. You know what the kids want. You know what your partner would probably enjoy. You know what your mum is hoping you'll say. You know what would be "good for you" in a vague, self-improvement sense. But what you want, separate from any of that? The line's gone dead.

You don't look anxious. That's part of the problem.

You hit your deadlines. You remember birthdays. You answer the WhatsApp. You make the appointment for your mum, finish the report on time, and still manage to put a meal on the table that isn't beige. Colleagues describe you as "on top of it." Friends ring you when things go wrong. Nobody, including you, would put you in a clinical box.

And yet. There's the 3am wake-up where your brain rehearses tomorrow's meeting. The tight chest before a difficult email. The way a single piece of mild criticism can shadow your whole week. The exhaustion that doesn't really lift on the weekend, because the weekend has its own list.