Anxiety

Anxiety can feel like a mind that won’t switch off, a breath you can’t quite catch, or the feeling of being frozen when everything gets too much.

A woman sitting by a sunlit window in a calm living room, eyes closed, one hand resting on her chest

“You can’t stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.”

— Jon Kabat-Zinn

Anxiety can follow you for years before you have a name for it.

It isn’t always the dramatic panic attack people picture. Sometimes it’s not being able to catch your breath. A tight stomach before you’ve even opened your eyes. A constant hum of worry in the background. Feeling on edge or waiting for something to go wrong. Or becoming so overwhelmed that you simply freeze.

You might have called it stress. Worrying too much. Being “highly strung” or just the way you are.

More than one in six Australians aged 16 to 85 had an anxiety disorder in the past year, making it the most common mental health condition in the country. And so many more people are living with it quietly, without ever having told a doctor or found the words for what they feel.

Anxiety is not a weakness, and it is not all in your head. It lives in the body too. Often, it’s a nervous system that learned to stay on guard or in hypervigilance, still working overtime long after the danger has passed.

The good news is that there are many ways to work with it. Practical tools can help you feel steadier in the moment. Therapy, body-based approaches and emerging treatments can help with what sits underneath.

But managing severe anxiety is not as simple as taking a deep breath, and anyone who tells you it is probably hasn’t been there.

You are not too much. Your nervous system has been working incredibly hard to keep you safe.

What's inside