How Nick Haynes overcame his anxiety to embrace footy again

Giants defender Nick Haynes shares his experience of anxiety, and how he has changed his ways to deal with it.

Nick Haynes can remember his panic attack in detail. It was 2013. After earning his place in the GWS Giants AFL team the year before, he'd been dropped for the first time after a particularly bad game and told by coaches his performance wasn't good enough.

After a couple of weeks in the reserves he got picked again for the seniors, but this time with baggage.

Extra pressure and fear.

«Coming back to the AFL, that pressure of performing again at the highest level after you've been dropped as a young kid, was a bit too much,» Haynes said.

He'd always experienced what he thought was just nerves, but this time he was in a hotel room, by himself, three hours before the game and thinking of all the terrible things that might go wrong.

«I just started not breathing and kind of like hyperventilating and it turned into, like more of an attack,» he said.

Luckily his teammate, house-mate and best mate for seven years, Adam Kennedy, was there to help as the team boarded the bus from the hotel to the ground.

«I just said to him, 'I really need you today, I'm really panicking,'» Haynes said.

«He could see it in my eyes — like how much panic I was in. He's like, 'Yeah, it's OK, we'll get through it. Just get through this bit and we'll get to the stadium, and we'll get through it.'

»And I think just telling someone, saying I need help, was probably the best thing I could've done that day."

It was the first time Haynes realised he had to cope and learn how to live with anxiety.

It's something Caroline Anderson sees all too often in her job as a performance psychologist, and a feeling she also experienced representing Australia in taekwondo