After an incredibly relaxing year, maybe it’s time to switch from your everyday anxiety to your shiny Christmas anxiety? Excellent. So. Are you doing any of the following?

Stress fooding

This is not stress eating. This is stress fooding. Because food has become a mood-altering problem this year. It involves driving around pointlessly looking for a particular something that you just NEED TO EAT. Like spicy inside out rolls or a certain kind of chicken broth. It involves salivating over cookery books while eating salt and vinegar squares. It involves fantasising about how you could be culinary genius manque while ordering the second Nandos of the week. A hot one. It involves buying butternut squash at the deli with big ideas about soups and risottos and instead frying some Babybels and crying a bit because they’re so delicious but also sad.

Stress walking

You know you are in trouble when someone tells you that you should stop using your step counter. Yes, it all started out as a way of gently exercising with the gyms closed, as well as gently socialising so that the black hole of loneliness didn’t swallow you up. But then as the steps ticked up, you became obsessed. It’s the 4th walk of the day and you are still not satisfied. No, 11pm is not too late to walk around the murdery park. The dog didn’t want to come. But it’s important for you to stay healthy and not let the stress catch up with you so let’s just keep walking. You realise you are like Forest Gump but without the running or the entourage. Forest Schlump. Forest Plump.

Stress trying CBD oil

Five people on your walks (see above) have told you that THEIR LIFE HAS BEEN CHANGED BY CBD OIL. You want your LIFE CHANGED BY CBD OIL. You need to find the perfect one. You order all the different kinds. You pipette like mad. You… hold on, you’ve just got a text. It’s another person whose LIFE HAS BEEN CHANGED BY CBD OIL. Your life is the same. You wonder if the CBD oil is broken. You wonder if you are broken.

Stress measuring

Suddenly you notice that you are permanently attached to a tape measure. You are constantly measuring. Will that sofa fit there? Let me measure. That little desk, could it slip in here?  The pictures for ebay frames, the prints on that vintage site, suddenly you are measuring your legs to work out where the midi dress will fall, and the cushion depth of a leather armchair versus your torso to see where you might end up if you sat down. You are measuring like a motherfucker. You are still scared of the tape when it whizzes back into its case and then you realise you are measuring everything up for a whole other life.

Stress depilating

Your relationship with your body hair has been compromised in 2020. You have been smooth as an otter and wiry as a beaver. You have plucked, home-waxed, depilated, epilated, shaved. You have made shapes, you’ve gone 70s, you’ve gone Paris Hilton 00s, you are amazed you have any hair left but, dear God why is there so much of it? Where the hell did it all come from? You are battling a full Father Christmas beard. Except black.

Stress watching The Crown

You are watching The Crown in teeny, tiny micro-increments. Rationing it, 10 or 15minutes at a time. You know what happens (what a relief, no surprises, no shocks, they did WHAT? Yes, we know) so you are taking it slow. Because once you’ve finished The Crown, that’s it, you’ve finished Netflix. It’s like the end of The Truman Show, when you bang into the edge of your world.