G
rowing up, Jess Gazal was
one of the lucky ones. She
was confident, outgoing and
excelled at sport. Until the
day in Year 10 when she was playing
touch football and found herself strug-
gling to breathe. Lurching from the
field, her terror increased because she
had no idea what was happening to her.
“My dad is a doctor and even he couldn’t
figure out that I was having a panic
attack,” she says. After she was cleared
by a cardiologist, she was eventually di-
agnosed with anxiety. And it got worse.
By the time she was sitting her HSC, the
panic attacks were regular. “I couldn’t
function. I couldn’t go to school,” she
says. She even contemplated suicide.
Today, at 21, Gazal is a personal
trainer and has made an uneasy trucewith her anxiety which, crushingly,
seems to be set off by vigorous exercise.
“I see my psychologist every week,
but it’s very frustrating,” she says of the
panic attacks that still plague her, even
when she’s working with clients. “I
expect too much of myself. I’m a perfec-
tionist. It’s very hard to accept that I
need to relax and ease into things
instead of going full throttle.”
Gazal is anything but alone. Anxi-
ety is the most common mental health
condition in Australia, affecting one in
three women and one in five men. And
numbers are rising: almost one in two
young women reported high anxiety in a
recent NABˆ report, while a separate
study dubbed women aged 18–35 the
“most anxious age group in Australia’’.*
The number of teenagers suffering fromanxiety and depression is also on the up
compared to five years ago – with girls
twice as likely as boys to be affected.†
This ‘Age of Anxiety’ is rampant
throughout the Western world and it
can hit anyone at any time, with many
sufferers those you’d least expect. Even
on the international stage, Selena Go-
mez, Emma Stone and Adele are some
of the stars who have opened up about
their anxiety struggles. “I had to stop,
because I had everything and I was
absolutely broken inside,” said Gomez.
The common element for all
anxiety sufferers is persistent, excessive
worry. But this is not the normal worry
that all of us have from time to time. It is
relentless, ongoing and debilitating, and
is often without any particular cause. It
also manifests in different ways.
Laurinda Wellings, a successful lawyer,
knows how it feels to hold it together
while breaking beneath the surface.
“When I first started working, I wouldYOGA INSTRUCTORMARJA JACOBSON, 36
‘‘Moving to Australia from Hong Kong when I
was eight was a tough transition for me. At
school, friends called me hyper: I was skittish,
and I would move quickly to try to control the
tremors that would shake my whole body when
I was feeling uncomfortable. Even going to the
movies would bring on a bout of anxiety. My
heart would start beating out of my chest just
thinking the tickets could sell out. I didn’t talk to
anyone about it; I didn’t know what to say.
“It was only as I got older that I realised what it
was and how to manage it. At 19, I started
practising yoga and it immediately clicked – this
was what helped. And not just in managing my
anxiety, but also accepting it. I don’t see anxiety
as something that needs to be fixed. Now, I’m a
yoga teacher at that same studio, and I love
helping people feel comfortable in their skin.
“I still have some social anxiety. I can be quite
extroverted when I want to be, but when I know
I need time alone but go out anyway, my body
reacts. Learning to accept who you are is a
tough journey. Yes, I have anxiety and, yes, it
makes me reclusive sometimes and some
people think I’m being rude. I love when people
call me out for cancelling, because I can look
them in the eye and say, ‘Yes, I know I do that
and I’m OK with it.’ I have my own back.”Why we’re being gripped by panic,
stress and worry more than ever before
ANXIETY
...WE ALL HAVE
40 marieclaire.com.au
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