Why am I feeling paranoid about everything I say?
Over the past few weeks, Ive been waking up in a puddle of anxiety. Take the last time I went for drinks with a mate. The conversation was moving fast  we covered lots of ground, from our romantic lives to politics to snippets of gossip wed gathered over the past few months of lockdown. It was richer and longer than most of the chats Id had in the past year, not to mention fun. But by the end of the night, I left the table with the lingering feeling that Id said something wrong, something Id regret, amid the flurry. When I arrived home, I couldnt put my finger on it. Nonetheless, I felt I needed to send a text to apologise. This has been the story almost every time Ive socialised since restrictions lifted  Ive found myself spiralling in the hours that follow, sometimes actively taking a few duvet days to work through a carousel of anxious questions. In the pursuit of answers, I fired off a few tweets about my problem: Does anyone else have this new thing when socialising where you go home and worry that youre cancelled for the next five days? I was more than a little surprised by the response  it turned out many of my friends and followers identified with my sudden spike in post-socialising anxiety, specifically surrounding the fear of having said something silly.