Here is one person's view of their experience in overcoming anxiety.
The feeling of being paralysed by fear and anxiety is common to many who've experienced a state of anxiety.

Fear and anxiety is a perfectly normal condition, a survival of the 'fight or flight' instincts of primitive man. While the response may be natural, what's unnatural or unhealthy is when this state of anxiety starts to overpower our lives and control or interfere with our happiness and interactions.
But anxiety, like all problems has a solution. Overcoming anxiety is possible.

Anxiety hit me in my teens. Unhappy and fearful in my boarding school, I rejected the chance of going to college and came home, using the excuse of looking after my widowed mother as a reason for not finding a job.

In our remote country home, I felt safe in my comfort zone - or so I thought. After a few weeks, I realised that my comfort zone was shrinking. What I'd done easily before (like cooking lunch for a visitor) had become an ordeal.

This discovery led me to the realisation that the instinct of "flight" or fleeing from my fears just wasn't helping me. It wasn't working at all.

Even so, I still couldn't face going to college, so I took a part-time job. Facing my fears in the workplace was exhausting - so exhausting that I was grateful for the free days just to recover.I didn't have the awareness of what I was doing, but in fact, by going to work I was following the principles of cognitive therapy to deal with my anxiety.

I was in a process of overcoming anxiety by facing up to the fears I'd been running away from.A great example would be a novice mountaineering attempting to climb Everest. An impossible task without the necessary experience and practice. It takes time and training to reach the zenith we're aiming for.

Cognitive therapy, in effect, kind of works like an antibiotic. It's not the most pleasant cure and sometimes there's no way to sugar-coat it. It can also be terribly frustrating because the results aren't immediate. We don't give up, we persevere. We don't stop before we finish, we complete the course. We are cured.

The same challenge faced me after having my first child. In a strange area where I knew no one, I scarcely went out.

It got so bad that on the occasions when I had to leave home, I developed a fear of the escalators in the London underground.It frightened me to think I was dangerously close to becoming completely agoraphobic. However, I began my therapy one step at a time. Simple things like going shopping with my husband, seeing friends who lived a little out of my way and meeting other mothers through playgroups.

Eventually, it began to work. Temporary work helped as I did not have the panic feeling of being trapped in a permanent job.But with perseverance, I managed a job that lasted 5 years. For that time I overcame my anxiety in this area of my life.

Recently, the fear of escalators returned. Trembling at the top, I learned to step off closely following another person.

Now I've completely conquered the underground fears. I've overcome this anxiety and am working on shopping malls.

Perseverance is the key! Overcoming anxiety means facing your fears, not running from them. If I can achieve this, so can anyone else who needs to overcome anxiety.