Instead, they want to live the best life possible and deal with issues  stopping them from being able to achieve this as soon as they can.

Mrs Russell understands this drive. Throughout her childhood and early adulthood she suffered from anxiety, experiencing severe panic attacks when separated from her family.

‘‘When they were away I had massive panic attacks, just feeling like the world was going to explode,’’ she says.

 When she turned 25, she decided she didn’t want to live with anxiety any longer. Now a mother, she didn’t want her children suffering from the same fate and was determined to overcome the problem, rather than compensate for it.

She went to see a kinesiologist and after much work, managed to overcome her anxiety issues entirely.

‘‘When I had anxiety I could have been in a situation having fun with people that I loved, but underneath it all I had this underlying fear and insecurity.

‘‘Now in my life I could be having a tough time, going through a rough day, but underneath it I feel confident and at peace and secure.’’

She has since trained in life coaching, kinesiology and neurolingusitic programming, and says most of her clients don’t let themselves live with the issue for as long as she did. 

They are proactive, seeking solutions before the problem spirals.

Like her, they don’t want to just cope with anxiety, they want to eradicate it.

‘‘I’ve seen a real shift in people moving away from waiting until they’re really unwell to do something about it to wanting to spend their time creating wellness,’’ Mrs Russell says.

‘‘In the past a lot of people suffered in silence and had the thought process that if it gets worse they’ll see someone, but now people are saying they want more than OK and want to and expect to have more than that.’’

Anxiety can take  different forms, including OCD, post-traumatic stress disorder and social phobia.

According to mental health advocacy group Sane Australia, about 14 per cent of Aussie adults are affected by an anxiety disorder. They say treatment can help people manage, reduce and possibly eliminate its associated symptoms, such as panic attacks or excessive and unrealistic worries.

Mrs Russell says overcoming anxiety is not an easy task and requires much commitment but believes it can be done.

She says the key is to create new ‘‘programs’’ in the mind where the first thoughts aren’t anxious ones, but thoughts of confidence.

‘‘When you have anxiety you become so focused on what you don’t want, so one of the first steps is to really get clear about the details of what you do want. Is it calmness? Is it peace? And that really shifts the mind over to different thought processes,’’ she says.