I feel under siege, everything feels like an emergency from the fear we're on the cusp of a World War to the fact I missed my dentist appointment and he's going to charge me for it. Why am I so strung out?

I'm sure in the past I wasn't this panicked. Back then when kids played in the yard, dad came home, put on his slippers while Spot the dog brought him the papers and Mom was cooking up a meatloaf that couldn't be beat. Maybe back then we were all in our right minds. But now there's no time to stop and smell the meatloaf - the busy-ness is too busy, frazzling us all.

These days if mom is making a meatloaf, she's furious because she just got back from the office after working 12 hours straight plugged into her computer, a slave to her inbox. The more she answers, the more they breed into the thousands and now she has to cook a meatloaf? There is no rest. Where the hell is her husband? Why can't he do it? After dinner she reads that the meatloaf will eventually clog your veins with fat and kill you. On top of this new scare story she is already worrying that the kids are on ketamine or cutting themselves because of the pressure of getting into Oxford by the time they're 13. In this world our innocent little brains are never at rest from wave after wave of shock and horror. If you sit down at the TV what will you see? I'm not talking about some vampire death orgy TV show where everyone's necks get sucked out by the first ad break. That's a great show and really no different from old West shootouts we used to watch as kids.

I'm talking about the news. If God forbid you accidentally hit a news channel, you will be invited to see, in close up, not just a report there's been a plane crash but the camera goes right into the homes, up the stairs, into the bathrooms of the victims' relatives for a close up as they cry into the lens and plead to their dead loved ones. It seems to have become really important that we don't just hear about a disaster, we have to be close enough to smell it. Now the camera has to film the corpses then pan up into a close up of a wailing mother.

Finally, we snap back to the newscaster with smiling teeth on top of an exposed cleavage the length of the Nile giving us "What a tragedy, the victims suffered ninth degree burns and some limbs were found 3,000 miles away from the wreckage. A dog was heard barking and that's the news for tonight, see you tomorrow morning where we'll chose the final entrée for pie of the week." You are left shaken and mortified from seeing all the suffering and your little brain registers that pain as if it happened to your own children.

We all have mirror neurons that pick up other people's suffering, this is why everyone cries at the same time in a cinema. If you don't believe me, just try sitting in front of the screen of Toy Story turn around and watch what the audience does when the girl cowboy sings. Wonderfully, frustratingly, terrifyingly, we're all in this together. The madness will continue until we realise we have to stop looking, turn off the TV, burn the newspapers when there's some hope, privacy and only watch things we can do something about rather than sit helpless watching the disasters unfold.

I'm on tour again this autumn with Sane New World - my guide to keeping sane in a busy world. You can also catch me in Edinburgh at the Assembly Rooms 1 - 7 August. Full details are over here.

One thing I really will never recover from is the realization that I am an adult as in a grown up person. I never thought this would happen. I only realized when one day I was called 'ma'am' instead of 'miss'.

When exactly did this 'ma'am' transformation happen, what was the giveaway? Getting old is something that happens to other people, not me. I know at one point I saw visible evidence of aging (dark circles) around the eye area and almost immediately had them hoiked. Wrinkles can be de-wrinkled in minutes thanks to the miracle of dermatology and so as far as my constant battle with aging I believe I am winning, on the outside anyway, I can't speak for my insides. Several hundred birthdays ago I was slightly drunk during my speech and asked all my 'then' friends "What happened to all of you? You look so old have I been in a coma?" Some of them are no longer speaking to me. I then fell forward into my chocolate cake and had to be lifted out by the hair.

Clearly I'm in complete denial. Recently a woman told me she had three adult children and I responded with incredulous disbelief, "You have three kids?" It was my girlfriend who pointed out, so did I. It seems other people know how to act like thing called a grown up. Having coffee mornings where they don't digress from the topic of 'the children.' I know women in their 40s still blathering about how long their delivery took. Get over it! Exchanging phone numbers for kids party entertainers who in the spirit of wackiness pull live rabbits out of their pants. My idea of hell are those cocktail parties my parents used to have where you stand holding a drink and make small talk about absolutely nothing. I never know how or when you're supposed to end one conversation and then move on and start again. I wish we could be as honest as when we were kids and just blurt, "I want to go home I don't like you."

Dress-wise I go for the 14-16 year old range. I borrowed my daughter's thong - I can no longer find it. I'm going to need miners to go in there and dig it out. My look is Nikes and skinny jeans even though my stomach hangs over the top like a tutu made of flesh. My behind is on permanent display but at least I don't have to look at it. If I'm this deluded now imagine when I really hit the skids, I'll be the one wearing my incontinence pads at a jaunty angle and body surfing on my Zimmer frame. Wish me luck.

I'm on the road again this Autumn, and in Edinburgh this summer. You can find details here!

I don't know when it started but I've recently noticed when I'm talking to someone they don't ask me one question, not one. I don't even want to talk about me but for God's sake I'm sitting in front of them aren't they embarrassed that they're taking up all the airtime? I exist, I am not just a mirror to reflect them back to themselves nor part of some sound-check. I find I'm suddenly cast in the role of 'interviewer' filling in the blank spaces when they're done with their answer and expecting the next question. Do I look like I'm interested in the fact their kid can't figure out what he wants to do for a living at age eight or that the builders put the sink in upside down?

I want to hold up a sign that says, "Gaza Strip, you idiot, get real." When did everyone lose his or her curiosity? I count how many times they use the word 'me' and if it's ten out of ten, I delete them from my contacts list. The only time I don't mind a monologue is either when someone's being hilarious or when someone needs to talk about something deeply problematic even if I never met them before. I got in a random taxi a few days ago and the driver asked me to sign a book. I thought it was his. It turned out to be my book (I'd never seen it without the jacket). He then tells me it's good I got in his cab (like that was planned) because he always wanted to talk to me. For the next hour he unloaded how he felt, his mind in a thick fog accompanied by screaming abusive voices in his head and what did I think was wrong with him? He then got lost and was driving in circles (luckily he turned off the meter). I asked him if he's was on medication, he told me he wanted to try and get better without them. I said that he had severe depression, it's not his imagination he is really ill with something he can't wilfully snap out of. His attitude to drugs was like finding out he has cancer and he's passing on the chemo. Now, I call that a great conversation; it was real and had a point. I hope I helped, I know I woke him up from his delusion.

On the other end of the spectrum, I had a dinner party last week where I invited a few famous people I knew from when I did my interview shows. Many of them suffer from something I call 'movie star disease.' They live in their own time zone so when invited to dinner at seven they either come in at eleven with no apology or not at all. When they do finally arrive it's expected that non-famous people shut up mid sentence to give full attention and look enthralled. On the hierarchy of famous (though I worked in television and may be considered famous by some) I am protoplasm. In these relationships it's implicit that I am the interviewer and I know that's the deal so no surprises. I'm ashamed to admit that probably like other 'non-fames' when faced with an A-lister, I slightly go into that nervous, heart pumping arousal, turning myself inside out to amuse. I'm sure it's a throw back to when I was a looser in High School and when the Prom Queen deemed to look at me I'd start metaphorically tap dancing until exhausted to get her approval, I never did. One of the great pleasures in my life is now knowing that the Prom Queen is ensconced in re-hab. I think I'm happier with taxi drivers.

Every morning I drag myself from sleep (it's so hard especially when I've been starring in my own dream and I've been a hit) to sitting up on my pillow to do 20 minutes of mindfulness.

Every morning I think why am I doing this because when I look in at my thoughts it's never a pretty sight?

In the beginning of the sitting, I usually hunt around for something that pisses me off because I'm addicted to anger and it feels so familiar when I get that wild, fire in my veins.

This morning I found my victim in the first few moments to stoke my fury.

Some friend of a friend came to my house a few nights ago and spilled wine all over my carpet.

Not a tiny splatter, she swamped it, covering a three foot area.

How you do that, I do not know? I start to fuel up with that old well-known feeling; rage.

As I sit there, every cell of my body is itching to reach for the computer to write a vitriolic email informing her she has to pay for the stain removal or I will either sue or kill her.

I try to focus on my breath but I'm so stuck in my habit, my mind drags me back to the girl and the stain and my need to eliminate her.

Just as I think it's over I find myself reaching for the phone to scream and rant at her.

I pull my focus back to the sensation of breathing.

Eventually I feel the anger subside and my need to murder pass, not completely, it fluctuates in intensity, it comes and goes, sometimes harsh then light, then gone.

Now I have a choice, I can either fuel it some more or let it go.

It's usually at this point, I get angry with myself for having these impulses so I now I get caught in the thoughts of how bad I am as a person and at doing mindfulness.

The thing that eventually makes me stay there for 20 minutes of war going on in my head is knowing even if I can't remove the thoughts of stains in my head then the very act of noticing is good enough.

The point isn't to try and clear my mind or to forgive the stain-maker but to just notice I'm stuck and usually when you notice you become unstuck.

I've been thinking how little we know about ourselves no matter how much has been coughed out to shrinks. Surely to understand our inner inconsistencies there must be some other influences outside our paltry life stories which some of us repeat on an endless loop tape to get to the nub of who we are.

My opinion is we need to take into consideration the influence of our ancient roots, our prehistoric past.

Like it or not, we all started as tiny one-celled protoplasm. We should look further back than our time as Homo Sapiens to understand who we are today. It wasn't all that long ago when we even began; only for the last 200,000 years have we been modern humans (hairless), before that fish, lizards and a various assortment of apes. (Not the most sophisticated of lineages.) Most of us are hopelessly unaware of the extent to which we're held hostage by our moronic beginnings.

In some ways we've come a long way i.e. standing up in high heels but as far as our emotional development we're still swimming in the pond scum. The problem is that we're unaware that part of our brains still play by the rules of 400 million years ago. I'm talking about the 'kill and mate' school of thought. As evolved as we think we are, we're still cave folk with Stone Age brains trying to deal with the complexities of the 21st century. This could be the answer to why we need so many shrinks and medication.

In the beginning things were fine, we lived in tribes with family members. We all shared the same genes so we trusted and protected each other. The bad news about this is the bit about all being related which caused infinite mutations; some of our cousins had more fingers than needed, others had their feet growing backwards. These were the days of hunter-gatherer, which lasted for many thousands of years. The men did the dirty work spearing dinner, the woman peeled roots and bulbs (before women's lib.). No one complained, mainly because they couldn't speak; language was not invented yet. The problems began when the tribes started to expand, cities grew up and civilisation developed. Now we had to make rules to control our deeper, darker desires, i.e. don't sleep with your sister. Freud tried to help us reign in our 'ids' but our baser, primordial selves are still sliming around under the surface. Repression doesn't help; that Alien inside is always lurking ready to let it rip. These days we convince ourselves we're fighting for justice to defend our beliefs. In my brutal opinion, we're simply appeasing our basic urge to kill; as in, tear the throat out of the foe, irrelevant of race, religion or political affinity. Every cell in our bodies wants to divide and conquer, why should our yearning to overthrow other countries be different?

To evolve any further we need to become conscious of these 'ancient whispers.' Underneath our mild mannered exteriors are our barbaric brothers of the past. If you act unaware of your Dark Force it will act out without you being conscious and throw grenades where you think you've done good. So when you feel the urge to tear off someone's head that got the job you always wanted, remember that we all have a savage within that seeks revenge. I even go as far as giving a little compassion to the beast within because I wouldn't have survived without him. So in essence, it took us four billion years to evolve to where we are and though we're cognitively brilliant we're still a little emotionally dwarfed, the question is could our more empathetic side catch up?

I say the first step is learning to hug your inner ape. (Perhaps the name of a new book? Maybe not).