How To Overcome Anxiety

Your Step-by-Step Guide to Regaining Calm

Anxiety is overwhelming. It can feel like your mind is racing, your chest is tight, and the world is spinning too fast. I know, because I’ve been there. Before I learned how to overcome anxiety, it controlled my life — impacting my relationships, my work, and my sense of peace.

The good news? Anxiety doesn’t have to rule your life.

On this page, I’ll guide you through understanding anxiety, why it arises, and the steps you can take to overcome it — not just temporarily, but at the root.

Understanding Anxiety

Anxiety is essentially a fear of what might happen in the future.

It’s a story your mind creates, often out of proportion to reality. While anxiety can feel physical — tightness in the chest, racing heart, or stomach discomfort — it starts in your thoughts and beliefs.

Key insight: Your thoughts create chemical responses in your body. Negative or fearful thinking floods your system with stress hormones like cortisol. Over time, this can create a cycle where your body and mind keep feeding the anxiety, even when no real danger exists.

But the reverse is also true. Positive, empowering thoughts and beliefs generate healthy chemicals like serotonin, dopamine, and oxytocin, helping your body and mind feel calm, safe, and in control.

Practical Steps to Overcome Anxiety

1. IMMEDIATE RELIEF

Anxiety can feel urgent, like you need it gone now. That’s why I created a simple 2-minute exercise to release anxiety fast.

  • Identify what’s making you anxious.
  • Close your eyes and breathe deeply.
  • Imagine the moment you’re anxious about… 15 minutes after it’s already passed, and envision the best possible outcome.
  • Feel the relief, joy, and confidence as if it’s real.

You can listen to this exercise in action on my podcast Episode 31: Get Rid of Anxiety in 2 Minutes Flat.

2. ADDRESS ANXIETY AT THE ROOT

While immediate relief is powerful, the real transformation comes from clearing the beliefs that create anxiety in the first place.

Many anxieties stem from childhood programming or subconscious beliefs that your mind has adopted as truth. Changing these beliefs creates long-term freedom from anxiety.

This is the process I take people through as part of my One-on-One Intensive and my Remarkable Relationships self-study program.

‘I didn’t think it would be possible to overcome so many issues that I have been struggling with for years in the space of 5 months! Before I met Tamra, I had been in rehabilitation for 18 months after a major car accident and had become depressed with countless therapists and body workers unable to help me recover both physically and emotionally.

Thanks to Tamra’s program, I am now able to jog again pain-free, have overcome my fears of driving and am now back on the road, can sleep again and was able to return to uni which wasn’t a possibility for me after the crash. I am now depression and anxiety free, with a newfound confidence in myself that I never knew even existed. This work that I have done with Tamra is the best decision and investment on myself that I have ever and will ever make.’
– Jessica, Sydney.

3. LIFESTYLE SUPPORT

Supporting your body naturally amplifies your results. Techniques that helped me, and have since helped my clients include:

These are tools to help your body stay calm, producing natural happy chemicals instead of stress hormones.

A Holistic Approach

Healing anxiety isn’t just about coping — it’s about changing your internal environment. When your mind and body are aligned, anxiety naturally diminishes.

This is why I developed my One-on-One Intensive. Over 5 months, we:

  • Identify the root beliefs causing your anxiety
  • Reprogram them for long-term freedom
  • Build a lifestyle that supports a calm, anxiety-free mind and body.

I’ve guided many people through this program, and when clients commit fully, they live free from anxiety.

‘I began my sessions with Tamra in June 2012, with the intention of making my anxiety more manageable. I wasn’t sure to what extent Tamra would be able to help me, but feeling there may not be light at the end of the tunnel, what did I have to lose, right? Fast forward seven months and not only has working with Tamra exceeded my expectations but Tamra has helped me more than I could have imagined. One of my main concerns was that I wasn’t sure if I would play cricket again due to my anxiety getting so serious. In January 2013, I realised my dream of stepping back onto the cricket field and playing again – all thanks to Tamra.

Having Tamra help me through individual 1:1 sessions and them completing the Remarkable Relationships course has exceeded my expectations by tenfold and has left me declaring myself anxiety free.’
– John Milone, 23, Werribee, Australia.

Additional Resources

Listen to my podcast I Love Me with Tamra Mercieca for a simple, but powerful practices and teachings to support you in becoming more centred and more calm. These episodes directly relate to anxiety relief:

Episode 2: Programmed For Love.

Episode 31: Get Rid Of Anxiety In 2-Minutes Flat!

Episode 34: Why I DON’T Drink Coffee Anymore!

Because anxiety is ‘a fear of the future’, here are some helpful episodes that explore fear and anxiety patterns…

Episode 18: Is The Fear Of Failure Keeping You From Loving Yourself.

Episode 39: When Little Miss-Fear Drops Round For A Cuppa.

Episode 40: The Physiology Of Fear: How Our Body Responds to Stress & Fear.

And if your anxiety is coupled with depression, please have a read of my How to Overcome Depression page.

Remember: Anxiety doesn’t define you.
Relief and freedom are possible, and it begins with understanding, intention, and practical tools.

Frequently Asked Questions About Overcoming Anxiety

Q1: Can anxiety be overcome without medication?

Yes. While medication can help manage symptoms temporarily, long-term relief comes from addressing the root causes of anxiety. This includes clearing limiting beliefs and emotions, learning to regulate your thoughts and emotions, and building supportive lifestyle habits. Every client who has committed to my One-on-One Intensive  lives anxiety-free without relying on medication.

Q2: What causes anxiety at the root?

Anxiety stems from subconscious beliefs formed in childhood, combined with patterns of thinking that overestimate danger or risk. These beliefs shape your emotional responses, causing fear, worry, and tension even in safe situations. By identifying and releasing these core beliefs — as we do in the One-on-One Intensive and Remarkable Relationships programs — anxiety can be resolved at its source.

‘A special thanks to Tamra for being able to help me understand my anxiety attacks and for giving me the right tools to choose, so I am now in a position to achieve and do things that I want to and to enjoy my life. Anxiety no longer holds me back.’
– Glenn Knott, Golf instructor, Sydney, Australia.

Q3: How do beliefs affect anxiety?

Beliefs act as the programming behind your thoughts. Negative or fearful beliefs trigger stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which manifest as physical anxiety symptoms. By replacing limiting beliefs with empowering, supportive ones, you can calm the body, reduce fear responses, and prevent anxiety from arising. This also supports the body in coming back into a harmonious state where physical healing occurs naturally.

Q4: How quickly can I get relief from anxiety?

Immediate relief is possible with tools like the 2-minute exercise featured in my podcast episode Get Rid of Anxiety in 2 Minutes Flat. This helps you calm your body and mind in the moment. Long-term anxiety resolution requires clearing the underlying beliefs that generate it, which usually takes a few months of regular belief clearing. In my One-on-One Intensive clients are usually anxiety free within 3-4 months.