Anxiety feels real even if the thoughts aren’t.

It is highly likely that you or someone you know has experienced anxiety in an unsettling manner for several months or more. In a National study on mental health and wellbeing, The Australian Bureau of Statistics found that 17.2% of adult Australians had experienced a 12-month mental disorder between 2020 and 2022, with the majority of this group experiencing anxiety.^[1] Beyond Blue, an independent, not-for-profit organisation supported by the Federal Government and every State and Territory Government in Australia, reports that the current number of Australians living with anxiety totals 3 million.^[2] The statistics certainly do not look promising. It prompts querying why anxiety is so prevalent. 

As an infant and toddler, it was common to live life consciously. You did not understand time as a construct, or that there was a past or a future. You were aware of your hunger, tiredness, joy and wonder in the moment. As you grew older, you were indoctrinated with the concept of time (in colonial terms). Your mind was slowly exposed to conceptual conditioning relating to what has occurred and what might eventuate. With a Western civilisation driven by deadlines, multiple family schedules and systems such as education run to rigid start and finish times, lunch breaks, assessment due dates, you cognitively collapse into the perpetual ticking of a fast-paced clock. 

Often, you will have been around others including family, caregivers and friends who were conditioned about time. Similarly, they became preoccupied with the past and/or future. 

Being present is not something that is readily taught or role-modelled. Hence, you find yourself relying on your mind to solve every issue. Before you knew it, your mind had extended its role to incorporate “Control of the Future” by constantly thinking about what might happen. 

For surely if the mind has thought through every potential occurrence, it will be adept and prepared to deal with anything, meaning you will be safe. Yet, safety is usually the last thing you are feeling. Your nervous system is on high alert and pretty much twitching to the silent beat of a jerky techno track. Insert: Anxiety.

As a therapist and counsellor, many clients seek relief from anxious thinking, and the impacts it has on their health, employment and ability to enjoy life and/or their relationships. As an individual, I am no stranger to the experience of what I term “The Anxiety” disrupting my peace. I call it this, for I am aware that I am not the anxiety. It may well be described as relentless thinking, or an entity of fearful energy, that stealthily conceals the truth in this moment; I am safe. However, there is relief from The Anxiety. You can learn to live a life that becomes increasingly liberated from stress and perpetual angst. 

I propose consciousness. Consciousness is presence to what is in this moment. When you are “conscious” you can experience peace and pleasure more completely. You become aware that your unsettling thoughts are related to past experiences or future projections. Neither are your reality. The distressing worry is not your now. Drawing on what’s has occurred in the past to plaster it on a potential future is not your now. With the discovery of being present, the distraction of mental noise dissipates. You are free to notice what you can change in this moment, and that which you cannot and come into acceptance.

In the moment, you return to consciousness. You are present, you are presence. Every moment of your life is enriched; listening to the nuanced story of a child, a warm embrace with an elder, driving home noticing the majestic masterpiece of sky, the magical unfolding as you create, the wonder of your physicality when working out, your attentive contribution at work, the tenderness of each exchange when making love, the delicious sensation of food in your mouth. 

P r e s e n c e. You are allowing life to live fully through you in each moment. You become both the witness and the embodiment of sensation, of experience. The richness of presence changes one forever. The challenging moments are understood to be fleeting. The beauty is equally transient and therefore appreciated.

The awareness that every emotion, feeling, exchange is temporary becomes both precious and simultaneously reassuring. 

It is for this reason, that my work with clients has a focus on consciousness. I may apply modalities including Internal Family Systems (Parts Therapy), Somatic Therapy, Narrative therapy, and more. Underpinning the use of tools is the aim to bring you into your conscious awareness. The modalities are implemented with intention; to support clients to notice the ways their mind and parts of them may be holding them hostage to past memories and consequential beliefs or future fears. Therefore, they become aware of how these are interfering with their ability to be present. The constraints of egoic thinking are recognised. The client becomes the conscious witness. This liberates one from the mentally constructed limitations.

Fundamentally, I guide individuals and groups to connect with the timeless truth that they are consciousness. To be here now. When living in awareness, present to the moment, life will constantly dazzle you as the source of exquisite awe that it seamlessly provides. 

If you are ready to live life feeling deeply peaceful and enriching, email me to enquire about 1:1 Counselling. Alternatively, join a lovely online group who meet monthly to ELEVATE consciously or attend a workshop in person across the East Coast of Australia. Peace of mind is yours in the present. 

Image: Sin Mariani

Image and Article 100% human created.

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^[1] Australian Bureau of Statistics (2020-2022). ‘National Study of Mental Health and Wellbeing’, ABS website.

^[2] Beyond Blue (n.d.). ‘Anxiety’, Beyond Blue website.