“You froze when this happened. It’s a way of manifesting anxiety.” He looks me right in the eye and leans in close, as though he doesn’t already have every molecule of my attention. He says, “If you remember only one thing from this meeting, remember this: run towards the danger.”

I should now view my symptoms, he says, not as something to be avoided but as “opportunities” to increase my threshold of tolerance. I must learn how to run into the discomfort instead of away from it.

In order to fully recover, I require daily exposure to anything that has traditionally triggered symptoms or caused me pain. Grocery shopping, parties, screen time, driving, film sets, all of it. My avoidance of the things that have bothered me has made it more and more difficult for my brain to cope with them.