Everyone knows the feeling: the racing heart before a difficult conversation, the 3am mind that won’t switch off, the knot in the stomach that arrives before you’ve even worked out what it’s about. Anxiety is part of being human — it’s the body’s alarm system, and for most of our history it kept us alive.
The trouble starts when the alarm becomes oversensitive: going off for things that aren’t dangerous, staying on long after the moment has passed, or getting loud enough to shrink what you’re willing to do. If that’s where you find yourself, you’re in very large company — and there’s a solid body of research on what helps.
Anxiety is Australia’s most common mental health condition
The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing found that anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorder group in the country, affecting 17.2 per cent of people aged 16 to 85 in a 12-month period — about 3.4 million Australians. That’s worth holding onto if anxiety has ever made you feel like the odd one out: on any given train carriage, in any workplace, plenty of others know exactly what you’re dealing with.
A different way to relate to anxiety: what ACT offers
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT — said as the word “act”) starts from an observation most anxious people know from experience: the harder you fight anxiety, the louder it tends to get. Trying to argue with anxious thoughts, suppress the racing heart or wait until you feel calm before living your life often becomes a second layer of struggle on top of the first. ACT takes a different route. Instead of trying to win the argument with your mind, it teaches you to change your relationship with anxious thoughts and feelings — to notice them, make room for them, and take your hands off the rope — while steering your behaviour by what matters to you, not by what anxiety permits.
This isn’t just a philosophy; it’s well studied. A meta-analysis by A-Tjak and colleagues found ACT produced moderate to large improvements across clinically relevant problems including anxiety, and a comprehensive review of 20 meta-analyses by Gloster and colleagues concluded that ACT is effective for anxiety disorders, with outcomes comparable to established treatments such as cognitive behavioural therapy. The engine ACT targets is something called psychological flexibility — the capacity to stay present and do what matters even when uncomfortable thoughts and feelings show up. Research consistently links greater psychological flexibility with better mental health.
The avoidance trap is central here too. ACT calls it experiential avoidance: every time we dodge the feared thing — the difficult phone call, the social event, the drive on the motorway — we get a hit of relief, and the circle of what feels manageable quietly shrinks. In ACT, the way out isn’t forcing yourself to feel calm first. It’s clarifying what you actually care about — family, health, work you’re proud of, mates — and taking small, willing steps in that direction with the anxiety along for the ride. Counsellors often put it this way: the goal isn’t to feel better first and live better second; it’s to live better, and let feeling better follow.
Move your body — the evidence is stronger than most people think
An umbrella review of the research, led by Singh and colleagues at the University of South Australia and covering more than 1,000 trials, found that physical activity significantly reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression — with effects comparable to, and in some comparisons larger than, standard treatments for some groups. The encouraging detail: it doesn’t require marathons. Moderate, regular movement — brisk walks, swimming, a gym session, surfing — appears to do meaningful work, and shorter programs showed some of the strongest effects.
Slow your breathing — there’s science behind the cliché
“Take a deep breath” can sound like a brush-off, but the underlying mechanism is real. Slow, controlled breathing — particularly with long, slow exhales — stimulates the body’s parasympathetic “rest and settle” system and dials down the physical arousal that drives anxious feelings. A meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials by Fincham and colleagues found that breathwork practices produced significant reductions in self-reported stress and anxiety. A simple place to start: breathe in for four counts, out slowly for six, for a few minutes. It won’t make a hard situation easy, but it can bring the alarm volume down enough to think.
Mind the basics — they’re not trivial
Poor sleep, heavy caffeine use and alcohol all feed anxiety, and each is easy to underestimate. Alcohol in particular is a trap: it settles anxiety in the evening and repays the loan with interest the next day. None of these on their own causes an anxiety disorder, but tidying them up gives every other strategy a better chance of working.
When it’s time to get support
- Anxiety is showing up most days, not just around genuinely stressful events.
- You’re organising your life around avoiding things — places, people, conversations, tasks.
- Sleep, concentration or work are suffering.
- The strategies you’ve tried on your own aren’t shifting it.
None of these means something is wrong with you — they simply mean the alarm system needs some skilled recalibrating, and that’s exactly what counselling is for.
If you’d like some support
If anxiety has been taking up more room in your life than you’d like, counselling offers practical, evidence-based help — not just a place to talk, but a plan to work from. Sunny Coast Counselling provides individual and couples counselling in person on the Sunshine Coast, and via Zoom, Teams or telephone across Australia and New Zealand. We also support workplaces through our Employee Assistance Program and wellbeing seminars.
If you’d like to talk, you an book a session here.
References
Australian Bureau of Statistics. (2023). National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing, 2020–2022. https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/health/mental-health/national-study-mental-health-and-wellbeing/latest-release
A-Tjak, J. G. L., Davis, M. L., Morina, N., Powers, M. B., Smits, J. A. J., & Emmelkamp, P. M. G. (2015). A meta-analysis of the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy for clinically relevant mental and physical health problems. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, 84(1), 30–36. https://doi.org/10.1159/000365764
Fincham, G. W., Strauss, C., Montero-Marin, J., & Cavanagh, K. (2023). Effect of breathwork on stress and mental health: A meta-analysis of randomised-controlled trials. Scientific Reports, 13, 432. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-27247-y
Gloster, A. T., Walder, N., Levin, M. E., Twohig, M. P., & Karekla, M. (2020). The empirical status of acceptance and commitment therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 18, 181–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcbs.2020.09.009
Singh, B., Olds, T., Curtis, R., et al. (2023). Effectiveness of physical activity interventions for improving depression, anxiety and distress: An overview of systematic reviews. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 57(18), 1203–1209. https://doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2022-106195