Fair enough, you say. Everyone worries about public speaking. But this was different. I was more anxious than before any previous talk and it was worsening by the minute.

But as I looked worriedly out the window, I realised I could let my anxiety escalate or a I could try roping it in. So I started trying to unravel my catastrophic thoughts.

Quite quickly, I realised it wasn’t just my talk I was anxious about. There was a host of minor worries that I’d allowed to gate-crash my thinking. They were now intertwining and snowballing uncontrollably. Thoughts about finances, family, deadlines and so on.

As I unraveled and examined them individually, I realised that each of them could be thought about at some other time, not now. So I opened the box in my brain labelled “To Be Worried About Some Other Time”, then went back to fretting about my upcoming speech.

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And you know what? I felt better. Not fist-pumping, deliriously better, but certainly a lot better than I’d felt 15 minutes before.

David Westgate is a mental health trainer, writer and speaker for the Black Dog Institute.