Harvard Business School Executive Education develops leaders who make a difference in the world.

In their programs, experience the power of fresh perspectives and connect with a world of new ideas.

Learn more at HBS.m-me-slash-Learn.

That's H-B-S-M-E. L-E-A-R-N.

You're listening to Women at Work from Harvard Business Review.

I'm Amy Bernstein.

And I'm Amy Gallo.

I imagine many of us have been feeling anxious lately, with everything going on in the world,

like the U.S. presidential election and the war in the Middle East and artificial intelligence,

and I could go on, but I won't.

Then there's everything going on in our personal lives.

For me, it's the upcoming holidays and ongoing work pressures.

Me, my daughter's college applications, and my mom's

recent fall and health scare, plus a ridiculous battle with my health insurance to cover a medication

I need. Worrying is a fact of life. It comes and goes, usually. Because another fact from the U.S.

Food and Drug Administration is that women are twice

as likely as men to develop an anxiety disorder at some point in their lives. As highly treatable

as anxiety disorders are, the FDA also says that most adults aren't treating theirs.

I would wake up and cry and just count the minutes until I had to start work.

That's Mary, one of our listeners, whose mornings went on like that for a couple of months before she saw a therapist.

And it was that therapist who said that I have generalized anxiety disorder.

So I believe what triggered that really low point was now a former colleague who at the time

...