DR SIAN WILLIAMS: In the age of hysteria, are you a resilient dandelion, a extremely delicate orchid or a well-balanced tulip?

It’s July 6, 2004 and Queen Elizabeth II is to open the Diana memorial fountain in London‘s Hyde Park. This is the first time the late princess’s families, the Windsors and the Spencers, have been together in public since her funeral in 1997. I’ve been chosen as the BBC‘s anchor for a special live broadcast.

I’ve done national events like this before, and there is always a feeling of anxiety. I’ve over-prepared, as usual. Like the crowds, I arrived early in the day. It’s now mid-morning, the programme is underway and I’m on an incongruously high barstool, in a marquee overlooking the fountain.

It is blazingly hot and I’ve been on this stool and talking for what seems like for ever. Until at last, my director tells me, ‘The royals are on their way.’

Suddenly, the live feed on the little telly by my feet stops. I have no idea what’s happening. ‘Keep talking,’ my director says. I do, but I can’t see what I’m supposed to be talking about. Then my brain starts to swim, and my heart seems to slow.

Just as I keel over, I hear the director shout to our royal correspondent, Nick Witchell: ‘Fill! Fill! Fill!’ Nick, as he puts it, begins to ‘witter away’ as a producer runs over to revive me with custard cream biscuits.

Low blood sugar? A hot day? Sat in the same place for hours? Stress levels overwhelming my resources to cope?

Probably all the above.

And for a while after that day, anxiety set in about whether it would happen again.

Anxiety has been my lifelong companion. In my first year of secondary school my teacher wrote in my report: ‘Sian Williams is a small girl with thin powers of concentration, who tries hard and is keen to please.’ Harsh, but he got it right, and I’m not sure much has changed.

More than 20 years after that fall and now with a master’s in psychology, a doctorate and thousands of therapy practice hours under my belt, I still haven’t eliminated anxiety from my own story, nor would I want to.

I have learned to stop struggling with it and I hope some of the tips and tools I’ve learned and shared in my clinical practice, can help you too.

I was a TV newsreader and breakfast presenter for a quarter of a century before I became a counselling psychologist, mainly working in the NHS.

The reason I kept going and loved it – and, as a BBC radio presenter, still do – is because when the camera is on, when the microphone is live, it’s the best job in the world.

When you’re in the flow and news is being thrown at you, you thrive on the adrenaline and the buzz of hearing the director in your earpiece telling you to get ready, because you’re about to interview the prime minister, or a Hollywood film star, or reveal the outcome of a general election.

It was a brilliant job but one which could occasionally send me into a spiral of worry and doubt.

Lots of us will know that feeling, because anxiety is there for a reason. It alerts us to danger and we need it, to keep us safe. That’s productive worry.

When it’s unproductive, is when it’s turned on when we don’t need it to be, when the mind is searching for answers it won’t get.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer the week after my 50th birthday, in 2014 and after my surgery, there was a lot of uncertainty. I’d had a double mastectomy, but after a conversation with my brilliant oncologist, Glen Blackman, at University College London, we decided I wouldn’t have radiotherapy, even though the surgeons hadn’t got rid of all the cancer cells.

I wanted to know, what was the percentage risk of the cancer returning, based on the available empirical evidence? How did I stop it returning? What was the likelihood of it doing so? What would happen if it did come back?

Mr Blackman smiled as he listened to my questions. ‘Sian,’ he said. ‘If you’re stuck in a maelstrom of anxiety about the worst happening and then it does, then you have lived through it twice. You need to learn to live with uncertainty.’

That’s easier said than done. We need to aim for ‘safe uncertainty’, as we used to say in the family therapy practice I worked in – to tolerate and be with uncertainty and yet still feel safe. Because when anxiety becomes severe, overwhelming and persistent, it inhibits how we function.

I learned another valuable lesson nearly a decade ago when I was recording a programme for the BBC about resilience with Professor Michael Pluess of Surrey University, a leading expert in sensitivity. During our conversation, he told me that I might not be as resilient as I’d thought.

I’d just completed a battery of tests on my thoughts and feelings, my childhood and concerns. As I typed out my answers, I began to realise there was a flaw in my belief that I was strong and capable in all circumstances. There was anxiety, sensitivity and a reluctance to seek help running through all my responses.

Pluess told me I’d been thinking about resilience in the wrong way. The strongest among us, he argued, aren’t those who appear unbreakable. The resilient ones are those who are reactive to changes in conditions and adapt to them. They sense when the storm is coming and, if they’ve learned how, can bend with it.

He outlined the brilliant ‘orchid hypothesis’, a theory originally developed by the American paediatrician W. Thomas Boyce, which suggests some children are more sensitive than others. Boyce came up with the idea after hearing the Swedish expressions for a ‘dandelion child’ (maskrosbarn) and an ‘orchid child’ (orkidebarn).

Dandelion children survive and thrive through whatever life throws at them, much like the cheerful yellow flowers that burst through cracks in the pavement, or on a dry lawn. Whatever the soil, whatever the weather, they keep growing.

Orchid children – the highly-sensitive ones – can wilt and decline with neglect but can flourish and become magnificent given the right environment.

Tulips are those who fall in the middle. Orchids are now thought to make up 30 per cent of the population, dandelions 30 per cent and those with medium sensitivity, the tulips, are the remaining 40 per cent. Sensitivity exists on a continuum, but the theory suggests that, broadly, people fall into one of these three distinct categories, with orchids scoring higher than tulips and dandelions in neuroticism and emotional reactivity, and lower than both in extraversion.

In other words, orchids can worry more, react more emotionally and be more introverted and avoidant than tulips and dandelions. Not all the time, but typically.

Ten years on, Professor Pluess and colleagues have developed an adult version of the orchid test, designed to identify Highly Sensitive People. You can try the test for yourself (above).

Highly sensitive people are more likely to be affected by negative stuff and react by becoming stressed and overwhelmed, especially in the wrong environment. But because orchids pick up signals in their environment and the people around them faster than dandelions and tulips, they can also recognise emotions fast – making them more empathic.

Orchids think deeply and are more reflective, so they’re more likely to experience the good things positively too.

That might mean being profoundly moved by art, music and nature, or having a rich, deep, creative imagination. If a situation demands a deep level of engagement and connection, a sensitive person is your go-to. They make good artists, authors, therapists and excellent friends.

Orchids can also dwell on bad past experiences or feedback too, though. You might be the one who winces thinking back on a difficult situation. It might be a presentation in front of colleagues where your brain froze, or you may have said or done something embarrassing at a social occasion.

Whatever it is, when the next presentation or party comes up, our brain tries to protect us by reminding us of what went wrong last time and then predicting ways it can go wrong again.

‘Remember that disaster and how all those people judged and laughed at you?’ says the brain. ‘It could be even worse this time, so let’s think through all the possible ways you might let yourself down.’

Anxiety is there for a reason. It tries to prepare us for a future where that feared situation might happen or happen again. It keeps us on our guard, scanning the horizon for the next danger.

The trick is to notice what our body and brain are trying to do to keep us safe. To name it, thank it, and then, if it’s not useful, to try something else. To listen to the self-compassionate voice instead. It’s quieter, but it’s there.

It may be that you were born sensitive or made that way. What were you like as a child? Did you react emotionally to books, films or people in ways others didn’t?

You might have been told you were over-sensitive, dramatic, emotional or fragile. You may have been told to be quiet when you alerted an adult to something you felt was wrong.

Some of that high sensitivity is down to your genes. In studies of twins, Pluess and his team identified the heritability of sensitivity and put it at around 50 per cent.

Of course, inheriting a sensitive trait, doesn’t automatically mean you’ll develop anxiety – but if you are highly sensitive you are significantly more likely to develop anxiety and depression than those who are not.

If half of our sensitivity is down to our genes, which we cannot change, what’s the other half? The answer: our environment.

If you grew up in a household where you were constantly put down or humiliated you would need to be vigilant all the time, wouldn’t you?

If your emotional needs have never been met or if you have been condemned, laughed at or punished, if you do not know how to soothe yourself when frightened or anxious, you must learn those things by yourself. The child becomes an adolescent, and then an adult, and all the while they carry these patterns of behaviour with them.

But how we choose to behave, even in the face of suffering, can be transformative. Too many of us only do that life audit towards the end of it. Bronnie Ware, an American palliative care nurse, says the most common regret among those who are dying is ‘I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me’.

If you had to live the life that was true to you, how would it be different to the one you are living now? What would you do if you weren’t frightened of what other people might think?

Can you allow yourself to follow a path guided by the things which are meaningful to you, behaving like the person you believe yourself to be? Behaviour that is driven by our values makes for a less anxious life.

That was true of my lovely friend and former BBC Breakfast colleague Bill Turnbull. I visited him as he was in the last stages of prostate cancer. He regretted not having been checked sooner and wanted to raise awareness.

I was to interview him for Radio Times magazine. As we chatted, he reminded me of a phrase coined by our friend and BBC Breakfast editor Alison Ford when she was diagnosed with incurable cancer: ‘I don’t want to die dying,’ she said. Bill didn’t either.

He wanted to spend it living, surrounded and sustained by the love of his family, doing the things that matter: ‘It’s easy to let a day drift by, doing the usual sorts of things, and it’s important to make sure that they all count.’

We joked about going back on telly to present Bill and Sian’s Cancer Club – a club, he says, that no one wants to join but which has with lots of members. Bill died aged 66, not knowing the profound impact he made on those he met and those he never knew: those who got checked for cancer and are living, because of him.

Living according to your values is crucial for keeping anxiety at bay.

If you’re struggling to identify values, try to think of someone who you look up to, who you respect and admire. Have a think about what they stand for, how they treat others, what it is about them that you like and what qualities you’d like to bring into play.

Values are not goals. They are actions and directions. For example, a goal might be to get married; a value would be a fulfilling relationship.

A career goal would be promotion; a value would be to find satisfaction in work. You may reach a goal, you may not, but your values will be there for as long as they’re important to you, probably for ever, although they may shift in priority.

There is an easy way to define your values, by taking the Living My Values test (right).

Scientists analysed those with generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) who worried excessively and uncontrollably. Those who were most anxious, and often also depressed, were less likely to describe themselves as living according to their values than those who did not have anxiety.

Why? Because if you are fused with your critical and internal judgements, you may avoid situations and experiences, like a work party, for instance, despite wanting to do them.

The discomfort of possible judgement or failure seems to outweigh the connection, engagement and joy you might find in those moments. But withdrawing only adds to anxiety and keeps us isolated. Anxiety is not something to fight, or run from. That just makes it more powerful. And although those who are sensitive are more likely to be anxious, they can experience the good things positively too.

If you are born with a highly sensitive ‘genetic load’ and grow up in a supportive environment, or move to one, you’re likely to respond more intensely to the good influences in your life, be more adaptable and think through alternative solutions to emerging problems.

We need to look at anxiety differently, because for many this vital sensitivity is an intense and important set of feelings.

We can learn to drop the struggle – and in doing so, redress the power imbalance, allowing ourselves to have more awareness and acceptance of our anxiety, rather than having it dominate and bully us.

That means tuning in to what anxiety is saying, using a different framework of understanding. Instead of allowing it to keep us stuck and lonely – chastising ourselves for not having beaten it, I suggest we turn towards it, ceasing to see it as a problem to solve and instead as a truth to acknowledge, accept and work with.

Instead of allowing it to destabilise us, if we listen to what it is telling us rather than quietening it, then it can propel us towards action.

It’s about letting our intuition guide us, instead of our fear.

It’s seeing anxiety as a tool, not a trap.

Adapted from The Power Of Anxiety by Dr Sian Williams (Allen & Unwin, £14.99). © Sian Williams 2026. To order a copy for £13.49 (offer valid to March 21; UK P&P free on offers over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.

Sian Williams is a former BBC Breakfast presenter who has retrained as a psychologist