Perhaps it’s the curse of modern living in the social media era. Or maybe it’s the superwoman myth, all laden with guilt and expectation, but the prevalence of anxiety in women is at an all-time high, despite all the creature comforts and headway our modern world affords us.

Thankfully, experts like Dr Jodi Richardson are helping us to spot anxiety disorders in ourselves and loved ones and face them head on with simple techniques scientifically proven to help. In fact, it’s hard to imagine an expert better placed to help us turn the tide against anxiety than the Victoria-based mum of two. Not only has she spent 25 years in the fields of education, clinical practice, and elite sport, she’s an expert in anxiety having lived with it since the age of four.

In her ground-breaking book Anxious Mums – a follow-up to her bestselling debut Anxious Kids – Richardson shares her own experiences of anxiety, depression, and post-natal depression, alongside the latest science-backed strategies for managing and minimising anxiety, all sealed with her trademark realism, compassion, and hope. “I'm open about my experiences and thrive with anxiety, and I’m on a mission to help you and your children to do the same,” notes Richardson, who is the founder and director of Happier on Purpose. “As women, we all have ambitions and things we've set our sights on, but anxiety can make us feel like our ducks aren't in enough of a row to move forward. But I say forget the ducks. They are never going to be in a row, so stop waiting for it to happen. Be willing to tolerate that uncomfortable feeling of anxiety, frustration, or disappointment, and take the steps in the direction of what you want to do anyway. Don't wait to feel amazing to do what matters.”

Statistics show around 15 percent of women experience clinical anxiety in their lifetime, and around seven percent of girls aged between four and 17 experience it in any 12-month period. Here, Richardson shares more of her insights on anxiety, and how to thrive as she has in spite of it. 

Go to drjodirichardson.com

Anxiety is a word that is used so often now but easily confused with being tired or worried. What are some of the physical signs of real clinical anxiety?

An upset tummy or sick stomach is a very common sign, and the reason why is quite fascinating. The fight or flight response that happens when we’re anxious is a protective response to a threat, so all the changes that happen physically are to that end, to power us up to be faster and stronger. Blood is moved from our digestion to our major muscle groups which is why we feel sick, and you can feel this need to urgently go to the toilet sometimes. Our hearts race to bring more oxygen-rich blood to our muscles so that we can move quickly. Our breathing rate changes, which can make us dizzy when our oxygen and carbon dioxide balance gets out of whack. We sweat, because in anticipation of all this powerful movement, our cooling mechanism switches on. We can also tremble as we become fueled with adrenaline. These are just some of the common physical signs and it's important to know them, because not understanding them can make people feel even more anxious about what’s happening. Then the anxiety spiral can get out of hand.

In your book, you talk about showing signs of serious anxiety when you were a very young girl. What were they and do you know what caused them?

I got that really upset tummy I just mentioned, especially at school. At the time nobody knew what it meant but I can look back now and identify it. I was in a class of 53 [kindergarten students] with just two teachers in a big double classroom. It was a very stressful place, and the teachers yelled a lot, and I just wasn't used to it.

I was a very sensitive child who'd come from a very peaceful home. I had an anxious mum, and she was quite irritable at times because of that, but overall, it was a very loving home and yelling was not a frequent experience for me. I started to get anxious about going to school and I'd say to Mum in the morning that I didn’t want to go because I felt sick. I didn't look sick, and I didn't have a fever, so she'd send me, and I'm glad she did because once you stop doing the things that make you anxious, it's a bit of spiral.

In Anxious Mums you look at different types of anxiety. Can you describe some of the most common types that women experience?

Generalised Anxiety Disorder is just worrying about anything and everything – all these irrational thoughts. It can be worrying about our kids’ health, it can be worrying about ourselves, it can just be worrying about a mum that might not have waved to us when we did the daycare drop-off. It really is a challenge for anyone who experiences it because those things go on almost daily for weeks and months, so you’ve got to get help. Social anxiety is a terrible fear of being humiliated, embarrassed, and criticised for something you might say in a social setting. Then of course there are anxieties that get in the way of rational thinking, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder. Women are at risk of OCD and intrusive thoughts particularly when we’re pregnant and in our first year postpartum.

If anyone reading this suffers anxiety or can relate to some of the feelings you’ve mentioned, what can they do to manage it?

I'd encourage you to recognise you’re feeling anxious, and to tell yourself that’s okay. Anxiety can feel awful but any attempt we make to shake that feeling – whether it’s by compulsively cleaning or scrolling or eating or drinking – is just a distraction from experiencing our emotions. It’s a game-changer when you can say, ‘I feel really crap, and I'm just going to have to feel like this for a little while and that's okay’. We can't feel good all the time, no matter how much we want to. Use whatever expletives you like but try sitting with the feelings for a little bit and experiencing them. The irony is, if you go through the middle rather than trying to go round the outside, you move through it quicker than you do if you’re finding all the different ways to not feel what's happening. There's a great acronym to help you remember this, from the work of Dr Russ Harris: A-C-E. The A is for acknowledging thoughts and feelings. C is come back into the present. And E is to engage in what's important. I hope this helps people.

We talk a lot about mindfulness and things like meditation play such a key role in helping with anxiety. How can we be more mindful in our daily lives?

An anxious mind is a wandering mind that’s usually future thinking. Mindfulness helps bring our attention back into the present, and regular mindfulness practice reduces the sensitivity and size of the alarm in our brain that detects threat, so over time it helps to reduce our anxiety. Most of us are busy, so I encourage mini mindful moments throughout the day. For example, imagine you’ve just made yourself a beautiful latte or you've picked one up on your way to somewhere. Take a moment, or even 30 seconds, to just enjoy the aroma of the coffee before you dive in to get that caffeine hit. Another one might be to notice the cool temperature of the water when you wash your hands. Or if you have a favourite hand cream, take a moment to enjoy the scent and sense of touch as you rub it in. My hope is that the more you do these mini moments, the more you’ll feel their benefits, so you’ll find ways to extend the pocket of time for more mindfulness practice.

Many women are hard-wired to jump straight to the worst-case scenario. How do we manage that kind of irrational worrying?

Worrying about the future and catastrophising is classic anxiety. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an important approach for managing anxiety, but it wasn't the approach that was effective for me. I subscribe to a different type of behavioral therapy now and that's the one I'm trained in. Instead of looking for all the evidence as to why something might happen or why it’s true – as they do in CBT – we ask a different question. Whenever you start to worry, ask yourself ‘is this [worry or feeling] helpful’. For some people that's enough of a circuit breaker and they can get back to what is helpful. But there's also a second part to this and I'll give you an example as a parent. Let's just your child is worried that nobody likes them. We could say, ‘Well, is that a helpful thought?’ and they would say no. Then you could say, ‘Right, let's say that thought in a silly voice’. Because thoughts really are just a bunch of words in our heads that we put too much weight on.

We often use a rap app that lets you speak into it and create a rap about whatever silly thing you’ve said, and you all end up doubled over laughing because they can be quite funny, especially if you added sound effects. That helps your child get some distance from what they're thinking. As adults we often have these anxiety goggles and when we're looking through them, everything seems so difficult. But if we can say to ourselves, we’re just having a thought and we can distance ourselves from it and get on with doing what's meaningful, then it can be life changing. It has been for me, and the science backing it up is broad and deep and quite incredible.

Many of us can recall a time we felt anxious, but when do you know it’s serious enough to go and get help? And at that point, where do you start?

The average gap between having anxiety and getting help is about eight years in Australia, and that is a long time to suffer. It was 20 years for me. Until I was depressed, I didn't know I had a problem with anxiety.

What the science says is that when you're experiencing incessant worry with physical symptoms, that overwhelming sense of dread and all the worry and all the avoidance that comes with it, on more days than not over several months, up to six months, then the standard [diagnosis] is anxiety. But if you're worried and it’s getting in the way of day-to-day functioning, no matter how long it’s been going on, then there's no harm in going to your GP anyway. Always make a double timeslot booking for a mental health appointment.

In your book, there is a whole chapter dedicated to being a partner of someone who is anxious. Can you explain why that sort of information is so important?

It is extraordinarily hard for partners and my husband Pete has been through all the highs and lows. We’ve been together since we were 19 and one of the things that he's had to learn is to not try to fix it. What we need most from our partners is to recognise we’re anxious and say ‘I can see you're having a really hard time,’ then do one or all of a few things. One, give us a big hug. Two, clear the decks because if our partners can reduce our load in that moment, maybe if the kids are asking for help, take care of it. And three, if we need a little bit of alone time or to make a phone call or get out for a run, then make that time available and support us. Sometimes when we get anxious, the part of our brain that helps us rational decisions is unavailable, so in that case, we need our partners to step in and say, ‘Do you need to go for a run, or sit out on the porch and throw the ball to the dogs?’

Would you agree many of us resist the things we need most in that moment of anxiety, like sitting down to meditate when we’re in a frantic state of mind?

In that instance, I’d encourage you to do something different first because sometimes you're just too anxious to meditate. It’s such an irony, but exercise and high intensity movement is the natural end to the fight or flight response. I practice karate and it's very cathartic [Richardson is studying for her second dan black belt]. I also have focus mitts and speed ropes at home, and sometimes skip or run on the spot. What really works is practicing mindfulness in between highly anxious times, so that we can draw on that practice when we’re feeling anxiety build. That way it helps calm our physiology and anxious brains.

Words: Rachel Sharp