What Is Anxiety?
Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health conditions, affecting a significant proportion of Australians over their lifetime. But "common" doesn't mean "not serious." When anxiety becomes persistent, excessive, or out of proportion to the actual situation, it can significantly impair your quality of life and your ability to function.
Here's how anxiety typically affects people:
Constant Worry: Anxiety often involves persistent, excessive worry that's difficult to control. You might find yourself catastrophising – jumping to worst-case scenarios – or ruminating on things that might go wrong. The worry can attach itself to almost anything: work, health, relationships, finances, even worrying about worrying too much.
Physical Symptoms: Anxiety isn't just in your head. Your body responds too with symptoms like racing heart, shallow breathing, muscle tension, headaches, stomach problems, sweating, trembling. These physical symptoms are real and can be frightening, sometimes leading people to think something is seriously wrong with their health. This reflects heightened activation of the nervous system in response to perceived threats.
Avoidance: When certain situations trigger intense anxiety, it's natural to start avoiding them. Maybe you've stopped accepting social invitations. Perhaps you avoid speaking up in meetings or put off making phone calls. You might have stopped driving on highways or taking public transport. Avoidance provides short-term relief but tends to make anxiety worse over time, as your world gradually shrinks.
Difficulty Relaxing: Even when there's nothing immediately wrong, you might find it impossible to truly relax. There's a constant sense of unease, like you're waiting for the other shoe to drop. Your mind won't switch off, and downtime feels uncomfortable rather than restorative.
Sleep Problems: Anxiety and sleep don't mix well. You might have trouble falling asleep because your mind won't stop, or wake in the early hours with racing thoughts. Poor sleep then worsens anxiety, creating a frustrating cycle.
Panic Attacks: Some people experience sudden, intense surges of fear that come out of nowhere, racing heart, difficulty breathing, feeling like you're dying or losing control. Panic attacks are terrifying, and the fear of having another one can become its own source of anxiety.
It is important to understand that anxiety disorders can often be effectively managed with appropriate treatment.
Are You Struggling With Anxiety That Won't Ease?
If you've been dealing with anxiety for a while, you've probably already tried to manage it yourself. Maybe you’ve tried deep breathing, meditation apps, cutting back on caffeine and telling yourself to stop worrying. Maybe these things help a little, but the anxiety keeps coming back.
Perhaps you've seen a doctor who told you it's "just stress" and suggested you take some time off as if that were possible, or as if rest alone were sufficient to address ongoing symptoms. Maybe you've been prescribed medication that helped somewhat but left you feeling foggy, flat, or dealing with side effects that created new problems.
You might have been told "everyone feels anxious sometimes" as if what you're experiencing is just normal nerves rather than something that's genuinely interfering with your life. Or perhaps people have suggested you're "overthinking" or being "too sensitive," which can feel invalidating for some individuals.
The truth is that anxiety exists on a spectrum, and there's a point where it crosses from normal worry into something that needs proper treatment. If anxiety is affecting your work, your relationships, your health, or your ability to enjoy life, this may indicate the need for further clinical assessment.
Dr. Husayn Aly takes anxiety seriously and works to find solutions that actually address what's driving your symptoms.
Comprehensive Psychiatric Care vs Traditional Anxiety Treatment
In some healthcare settings, anxiety treatment may involve a brief GP appointment, a prescription for medication, and perhaps a referral to a psychologist with a months-long waiting list. This approach helps some people, but it can leave others feeling like they're navigating their anxiety without adequate support.
A comprehensive model of care involves a broader clinical assessment.
A comprehensive approach recognises that anxiety doesn't have a single cause or a single solution. We look at the full picture including your symptoms, your history, your life circumstances, and the physical health factors that might be contributing. Thyroid dysfunction, hormonal imbalances, nutritional deficiencies, and sleep disorders can all worsen or even mimic anxiety, and these need to be identified and addressed.
Traditional care often focuses on one intervention, usually medication. A comprehensive approach considers the full range of evidence-based options: medication when appropriate, psychotherapy to address the underlying patterns driving anxiety, lifestyle modifications that support nervous system regulation, and strategies tailored to your specific type of anxiety.
In traditional settings, appointments are often brief and infrequent. Comprehensive psychiatric care means having ongoing access to a treatment team that knows your situation and can adjust your approach as needed. Anxiety treatment often requires fine-tuning, and having a psychiatrist who's genuinely engaged with your progress may be beneficial for some patients.
How Do We Treat Anxiety?
Comprehensive Assessment
Anxiety treatment starts with understanding your specific experience not just that you're anxious, but how anxiety shows up for you, when it started, what makes it better or worse, and how it's affecting your life. We also screen for medical conditions that can contribute to or mimic anxiety.
This thorough approach allows for a broader understanding of contributing factors. We can identify whether thyroid problems, hormonal changes, sleep disorders, or other physical factors might be playing a role. We can understand what type of anxiety you're dealing with, generalised anxiety, social anxiety, panic disorder, or something else, because different types respond to different treatments.
An individualised approach is essential. What works for one person with anxiety may not work for another, and cookie-cutter treatment often falls short.
Once we complete proper assessment, we develop a treatment plan designed for your specific needs – particularly where symptoms have persisted despite initial strategies.
Medication Management
Medication can be very helpful for anxiety – but it needs to be the right medication, at the right dose, for your specific situation. There are several different classes of medications used for anxiety, and they work in different ways with different side effect profiles.
The advantage of working with an experienced psychiatrist is careful medication selection based on your symptoms, history, and preferences. We don't just prescribe the first-line option and hope for the best. We monitor for effectiveness and side effects, and we adjust as needed.
Some people do very well on medication and find it gives them the stability they need to engage with therapy and make lasting changes. Others prefer to minimise medication use, and we can work with that too. The goal is to identify an appropriate treatment approach based on clinical assessment and patient preference.
Psychotherapy
Therapy is one of the most effective treatments for anxiety, particularly Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). CBT helps you identify the thought patterns and behaviours that maintain anxiety and develop practical strategies for changing them. Unlike medication, the skills you learn in therapy stay with you after treatment ends.
Other therapeutic approaches, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), can also be highly effective for anxiety. These approaches focus less on eliminating anxious thoughts and more on changing your relationship with them – so anxiety has less power over your life.
We can help connect you with therapists who specialise in anxiety and work collaboratively with your psychiatric care.
Addressing Contributing Factors
Anxiety doesn't exist in isolation. Several factors can trigger or worsen anxiety, and addressing them is often an important part of treatment.
Sleep: Poor sleep and anxiety feed each other. Addressing sleep problems can significantly reduce anxiety levels.
Physical Health: Thyroid dysfunction, hormonal changes (including perimenopause and menopause), blood sugar instability, and certain nutritional deficiencies can all contribute to anxiety symptoms. We evaluate whether these factors might be playing a role.
Lifestyle Factors: Caffeine, alcohol, poor nutrition and other substances can worsen anxiety. Exercise, on the other hand, has genuine anti-anxiety effects. We work with you to identify realistic, sustainable changes that support your recovery.
Nervous System Regulation: Chronic anxiety often involves a nervous system stuck in overdrive. Strategies for calming the nervous system – from breathing techniques to mindfulness to lifestyle modifications – can be genuinely helpful, but they work best as part of a comprehensive treatment plan, not as a replacement for proper care.
Ongoing Support
Anxiety treatment isn't always straightforward. You might respond well to initial treatment, then hit a rough patch during a stressful life period. Your needs might change over time. Having ongoing access to psychiatric care means you're not left to manage these challenges alone.
The advantage of comprehensive psychiatric care is having a treatment team that knows you and can provide support when you need it – whether that's adjusting medication, helping you navigate a difficult period, or simply being a consistent presence in your mental health care.
Recovery from anxiety is absolutely possible. Many individuals experience meaningful improvement in anxiety symptoms with appropriate treatment.
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Locations
To better serve our patients and provide accessible, comprehensive care, Dr. Aly consults from Hirondelle Private Hospital and Brisbane Waters Private Hospital. These facilities are staffed with experienced professionals and equipped with the resources needed to deliver the highest standard of mental health services.
Chatswood
CENTRAL COAST
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