During my life I have often suffered from brief bouts of depression. I have been very lucky that none of these periods have lasted for very long. However, when they hit they did give me a very good understanding of how people could get caught up into negative thinking and easily drop into depression. During these times I have found that nature can be a great teacher. 

As a little child I already had anxiety in my body and it was part of my daily life. After the war in Germany my parents put me in and out of an orphanage several times till the age of maybe eight or nine. I never knew when I was being picked up again to be with my sisters and family or when was the next time they would drop me off there again. 

​I would not have described myself as an anxious person, as I thought it was a condition manifesting obvious physical symptoms such as nervous or rushed speech, a worried face, obsessive compulsive behaviour. However, looking more deeply into this word, I now realise that a calm exterior can mask anxiousness very deceptively.

The anxiousness of wartime experience
​Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to live in someone else’s body for a day or even for an hour! Would my five senses experience something fresh and new or would it feel much the same as being in my own body? Is what is normal for the other person much the same as what I consider ‘normal’ for me?