Donna Sullivan: The Woman Who Refused to Let Anxiety Write Her Story

Some people meet anxiety and spend years trying to out-run it.

Donna Sullivan did the opposite. She turned around, faced it, and asked the question most of us avoid: What are you here to show me?

In this episode of The True North Show, host Megan North sits down with Donna Sullivan, an Australian holistic intuitive healer and personal and spiritual development coach whose work centres on one powerful belief: transformation is always possible when you reconnect with your inner wisdom.

And Donna is not speaking in theory. Her work was forged in the kind of real-life disruption you cannot “positive-thought” your way out of.

The moment everything changed: Christmas, age 35

Donna’s turning point arrived in her thirty-fifth year, right on the doorstep of Christmas.

It started quietly with unfamiliar anxiety that she did not yet have language for. Then it escalated quickly. Driving became difficult. Festivities became overwhelming. And when she returned to work, she woke up with her pillow soaked in tears, unable to function.

She did what many people do in that moment. She went to the doctor.

Medication was offered, Valium specifically. Donna accepted a short seven-day course to stabilise, but what truly shook her was not the medication itself. It was the idea of living a life where anxiety had to be hidden, managed, and covered up forever.

She carried the medication in her bag for seven years.

She never needed it again.

That decision reveals a lot about Donna. She was not willing to live in “coping mode”. She wanted freedom, and she was prepared to do the inner work to get it.

Choosing curiosity over avoidance

Rather than hiding from anxiety, Donna committed to understanding it.

She began reading everything she could. She explored holistic healing and spirituality, and she trusted a quiet inner knowing that there was another way.

Then a memory returned that added weight to her determination.

Years earlier, Donna had received a psychic reading that said she would become unwell in her thirty-fifth year. It would not be life-threatening, but if she did not deal with it, she would carry it forever.

Whether you take that literally or symbolically, the impact was the same: Donna recognised this was a crossroads moment. Not a detour. A doorway.

The return of the healer: claircognisance and past-life awareness

Donna describes herself as claircognisant, meaning she receives clear “downloads” of knowing without always being able to explain how she knows.

Instead of treating that as strange or inconvenient, she treats it as a skill you can practise.

Her advice is refreshingly grounded: don’t make intuition overly serious. Play with it.

• Guess who is calling before you answer
• Notice patterns and nudges
• Let “knowing” become familiar through practice

One of Donna’s earliest breakthroughs came through a book by Denise Linn, which helped her connect emotions with where they live in the body.

Sitting on a beach, Donna explored a lifelong fear of dentists, despite never having had a bad dental experience. In the process, she experienced a vivid past-life memory of being shot in the mouth, which she connected to a missing tooth in this lifetime.

For Donna, that moment was not about drama. It was about trust.

It was the moment she stopped second-guessing her inner truth.

From corporate life to calling: why COVID became the turning point

Donna stayed in corporate for many years, with a sense that she would step into healing work later in life.

Then COVID shifted the landscape.

The emotional and spiritual impact hit people hard, and Donna felt the timing was right to fully commit to her calling. She describes a deep desire not just to help people recover, but to help them not get unwell emotionally, physically, or spiritually in the first place.

Her belief is clear: everything is healable.

That belief underpins her work across one-on-one sessions, coaching, workshops, and courses, where she blends intuitive guidance with practical emotional tools to help clients release old stories and heal patterns at the root.

Donna’s framework for emotional healing: present moment truth

One of Donna’s clearest teachings is also one of the simplest:

• Anxiety is fear of the future.
• Depression is unresolved emotion from the past.
• Healing happens in the present.

It is a deceptively simple framework, but it gives people a practical way to locate themselves when emotions feel overwhelming.

When you know where you are, you can begin to shift.

Modalities as tools, not labels

Donna works with a range of modalities including ThetaHealing, BodyTalk, kinesiology, energy work, and past-life exploration.

But what stands out is how she chooses what to use.

She is guided intuitively.

ThetaHealing is her primary modality, but she trusts what is needed in the moment, rather than forcing a one-size-fits-all method. The focus is always the same: helping clients reconnect with their inner wisdom and shift the emotional pattern beneath the presenting issue.

“I am triumphant”: the affirmation that helped her rebuild herself

During her early healing journey, Donna discovered a simple affirmation that became an anchor:

“My name is Donna Sullivan, and I am triumphant.”

She found it in a book with the cover torn off while sitting in a waiting room, and it struck her at the exact right moment. Donna describes it as a conscious choice to shift her inner world back toward empowerment and joy.

She still uses it occasionally, especially when she needs a reminder of who she is.

And honestly, that is the point of affirmations when they work: not to pretend life is perfect, but to bring you back to your power.

Forgiveness as freedom, not performance

When Megan asks Donna how she maintains her own mental health and wellbeing, Donna brings it back to fundamentals:

• focusing on the positive
• setting intentions
• grounding
• and practising forgiveness

But Donna’s view on forgiveness is not the fluffy kind.

She speaks about forgiving the emotion, and especially forgiving yourself.

Because self-forgiveness does not just soothe the moment, it breaks the pattern.

It is one of Donna’s core messages: when you release the emotional charge, you reclaim your energy and your choices.

The truth Donna wishes she knew earlier

When asked what she wishes she had known earlier in life, Donna’s answer is beautifully direct:

Trust yourself. Everything you need is already within you.

No theatrics. No guru language. Just truth.

And that is exactly what Donna’s story demonstrates: anxiety did not take her life away. It redirected her back to herself.