You decide – is it possible to get rid of anxiety?

The consequences of living with anxiety

When people overwork themselves that much, they will respond in different ways. Some might get sick and be forced to stop overloading their plates, others might realise they are only harming themselves and seek professional help, while some suffer from panic attacks.

Johnston says she has had a few of these attacks in her life – not often, but they have worsened as she’s gotten older. Physiologically, she explains that she’d feel herself ‘coming down’ from the attack, allowing herself to feel and cry. However, while her body recovered, the panic attacks were ‘extremely traumatising’.

She recently started taking sessions with Webb, who tells me that she doesn’t see anxiety as something external.

‘It’s a state of being,’ Webb explains. Some people have natural tendencies towards it – like they have chosen to surrender to feelings of anxiety – and when things in their bodies go ‘out of balance’ then they are more likely to feel it.

We all have moments that make us anxious and some people will be more prone to surrendering to it, she adds.

For example, when a person experiences significant anxiety about an exam, they might start to associate that fear with all future exams.

‘All of a sudden, your body has memorised a state of anxiety,’ Webb explains. Our bodies know better how to feel anxious – and every time you re-witness the object or the person or the event that first made you anxious, those feelings come back.

When it’s time to sit exams again, we might feel anxious, but when we look around we find there is actually no reason to be, she adds.

Webb says that it is entirely possible to live with anxiety, but it could mean living in a constant state of worry and hyperfocusing on everything around you. ‘People get exhausted feeling hyper alert and this can lead to chronic fatigue syndrome or even endometriosis,’ she notes. ‘ They are related to feeling hyper alert and having too much adrenaline coursing through your system, which sets your hormones out of balance.’

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So how can we get rid of anxiety?

Webb says that many of her patients recognise they have anxiety, but have never allowed themselves to ‘feel it’. The first step is to sit with it, and we can do that by teaching our bodies to feel something.

She notes that only 5% of our minds are conscious – while the rest is subconscious, and our bodies manifest that 95%. If we can sit with our bodies in a state of elevation, happiness, peace or fun just for an hour or two a day, we can start to drive positive thoughts to our brain and we can convince our bodies that this is the only thing that exists.

Webb doesn’t believe that there is necessarily always a source to our anxiety and to start tackling anxiety, we just need to recognise that we can feel other emotions too, as well as recognise that anxiety is a feeling and not an issue to ‘overcome’.

Ultimately, how we feel is derived by the meaning or the judgment that we’ve given something. If you have been diagnosed with a condition, or been told you e have an upcoming exam – you more often than not will start to manifest its outcome before even experiencing it.

But if we can change that and ask ‘what is the meaning I want to give it?’ we could find that these things might give us the opportunity to feel happiness, rather than anxiety, Webb continues.

Instead of ‘I will fail this exam’ or ‘this condition will stop me from achieving my dreams’, you can be open to the numerous other possibilities that this upcoming event, or life-changing circumstance may provide.

‘Our minds will always jump to one thing, but we can be aware that our thoughts are completely within our control and we get to decide how we react and how we perceive changes or events in our lives,’ she adds.

Staying anxiety free

Johnston explains that tackling her anxiety has gone from feeling like having to climb Mount Everest, to walking up and down small hills everyday. ‘I was at the bottom of this huge mountain and had no idea how to even begin walking up it,’ she says. ‘But Lauren has demolished it into small hills that I no longer have to be afraid of.’

‘The first step to getting over it was understanding that my anxiety isn’t a problem but a human emotion,’ Johnston recounts. ‘And to ensure it stays away, I will reprogramme my mind to my own narrative, because my perfectionism and people-pleasing tendencies are a choice I make.’

Johnston has since been able to face her fear of flying and begin travelling the country again as a motivational speaker. She says she feels more confident than ever in her future, now that her anxiety towards travel is no longer keeping her from having the impact she wants to have on millions of people.

‘I am now able to show up and realise that anxiety is normal, but it doesn’t have to run my life anymore.’