I've been asked to finish off our evening on fear and courage. We've talked a lot about phobias - fear of heights, fear of needles, fear of spiders - fear of speaking in public. Normal things that have been spun out of control by our own brains, as our instincts work against our ability to reason. They're obviously different from normal fears, like speeding cars, or fire, or being asked to go to your boss's office, but they all share something that people can recognise as visible fear. People notice it, and act accordingly.

I want to talk about invisible fears. The ones you don't notice.

About three years ago, I went to university. It didn't work out, for a lot of reasons. I had problems with my sleep patterns, I forgot about work. But I could have got through this if it hadn't been for irrational fear. Now, when a rational person oversleeps class, they go and talk to other people in their class, to find out what they've missed. When they miss the deadline for work, they go to their lecturer and apologise, preferably with the work in hand. I am not always a rational person. My lifelong instinct to trouble has been HIDE IT AND MAYBE IT WILL GO AWAY. The consequences of the mistake build themselves up in my head until they are larger than they have any right to be. I ignore it. This doesn't work when you're five years old and you broke one of Mum's ornaments, and it doesn't work when you're an adult, either.

The immediate consequences of my mistakes were, basically, that my lecturers would be angry at me. So I skipped the next class. And the next. Before long I'd just stopped turning up completely. My fear of the consequences had overruled common sense, and made things far worse than they could have been if I'd just accepted responsibility and tried harder next time. And it took over the rest of my life. I stopped talking to family because I was afraid that one of them would find out what had happened. I'd sit with my friends and pretend that everything was completely fine, because letting other people know what had happened meant admitting it. Admitting that I'd messed up, and let everyone down.

Eventually I realised how stupid I was being. I talked to people, and told them what had happened. That I'd been lying to them. And they WERE disappointed. But they were mostly concerned with helping me out of my hole. They wanted what was best for me.

There are a lot of people out there who have invisible fears. People who think that, for whatever reason, they've messed up their life beyond repair, and that nobody can help - that nobody wants to help. Even though they have friends and family who clearly love them and want to help however they can, there's a voice inside their head that says, they'll think less of you, and for some strange reason that's the worst thing in the world. So they bottle it up and go through the motions as best they can.

If you're worried about a loved one, then please. Talk to them. Let them know at least that there's someone who cares.