Owning It: The Anxiety Podcast

This week my guest is a psychologist and psychotherapist Dr Natalie Cawley who has just released a book called Just About Coping . It reads like a drama but it's her story, her own experience of anxiety while becoming a qualified mental health professional, and what she's learned from both sides of the therapy room. It's peppered with really helpful anxiety advice and Natalie makes it so easy for...

Welcome back to a brand new season of Owning It. Join me and author/scientist/lawyer Anu Gupta to talk about the role and relationship between bias and anxiety, the impact bias on us and others and how it's at the root of almost every social and cultural issue we experience. His book, Breaking Bias , is out now. You can support this podcast by sharing it with a friend or signing up to my Substack....

This is a solo episode. I struggled to fully explain it in the title but it's dedicated to a close friend currently in the trenches of health anxiety with plenty of additional anxiety on top. It's everything I want her to know. Everything that might help her ride this wave including a step by step roadmap for overcoming anxiety. If you would like to support this podcast you can do so by subscribin...

This is one of the hardest areas of anxiety to get on top of: health anxiety. Whether it's general health anxiety where you're prone to spiralling about what could or might go wrong with your health, or you suffer with OCD or body related conditions such as Trichotillomania, this episode is probably the most helpful thing you could listen to. With anxiety expert and CBT therapist Kimberley Quinlan...

On this episode of the series I am joined by international bestselling author and reporter with The New Yorker Charles Duhigg who wrote The Power of Habit. Here we talk about his new book Supercommunicators and how to crack social anxiety with some really practical tools and insights. Order yourself (or for a friend) a copy of my new book, Everything I Wish I'd Known About Anxiety: A Roadmap out o...

Join me with guest Laura Guckian, life coach, host of 'Momfessions' and creator of Mind Mommy Coaching as we talk about postpartum anxiety, which, for her, was so significant she decided to check herself into a psychiatric hospital. How did the anxiety show up for her? What does a hospital level of mental health support look like? We talk about whether the problem for new mothers is the lack of su...

This week I have a powerful episode with Terence Power, co-host of the super successful Talking Bollox podcast. We try to unpack his experience of anxiety, growing up in an environment affected hugely by poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, crime and violence. How did he cope? How did he come out the other side? Was anxiety behind all of it? Terence talks through his story with such impressive vulnera...

My guest for this episode is the mega bestselling author of Dopamine Nation and her name is Dr Anna Lembke. She's an American psychiatrist and Chief of the Stanford Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University. She is a specialist in the opioid epidemic in the United States. Here we talk about the relationship between anxiety, pleasure and pain. The pleasure pain balance an...

For this episode we're hearing from someone who's felt severe anxiety and figured out how to manage it. My guest is the brilliant Vicki Notaro, bestselling author of her debut novel Reality Check . A prominent journalist and editor in Ireland, Vicki has an eerily similar story to me, having been floored by anxiety for reasons she struggled to understand at the time, in her mid 20s. Here we unpack...

On this first episode of my new season I am joined by Dr Nicole Vignola, neuroscientist and author of brand new book REWIRE . We talk about the steps required to break the anxiety cycle, understanding the role of our default mode network and how it relates to our executive network, the things that we think won't make a difference but really do and the science behind them and so much more. Sign up...

On this episode, the final of this season, I am joined by clinical psychologist Dr Claire Conlon (The Caterpillar Clinic) for a very specific conversation that I hope will be useful for those among you who are parents. This mirrors my own current experience, and my last year and a half. It's about the overwhelming anxiety you can carry as a parent when you're worried about your child and the ways...

Subscribe to my Substack here and get 20% off as an Owning It listener. On this penultimate episode of the season, I am joined by Hannah Daly, an Occupational Therapist and author who I actually worked with privately to get my son's sensory profile assessed. Here she helps me better understand the relationship between sensory issues and anxiety. What comes first, the anxiety or the...

Get 20% off my Substack here as a valued listener of Owning It. This episode is with Sabrina Hill, influencer, business owner, Cork woman, hair stylist and mother of two - a ten month old and a twenty two year old. It was really hard to write a title for this episode because we talk about so much: her experience becoming a parent at 20/21 and the psychosis and breakdown which followed, her divorce...

Get 20% off my Substack here . A solo episode this week, sharing my experience of depression, the surprising function of intrusive thoughts and the heavy bag we carry. Order yourself (or for a friend) a copy of my new book, Everything I Wish I'd Known About Anxiety: A Roadmap out of the Overwhelm and Back to Yourself here Follow me on Instagram @CarolineForan and @OwningItPodcas t, on Tik Tok here...

This episode is all about how ASMR could help your anxiety. What exactly is it? What happens to our brains and bodies when we experience ASMR? What does the research show? ASMR is such a new subject, it's hard to find people who know it inside out in an expert capacity but here I am joined by one such unicorn, Dr Craig Richards who founded the ASMR University. He has been involved in studies as we...

This bonus episode is brought to you in collaboration with British Airways Holidays who are on a mission to make all of us take our holidays a little more seriously! I’m joined again by Dr Claire Kambamettu and we dive into our complicated relationship with rest, and the importance of setting firm boundaries when on holiday. We discuss the anxiety we feel around taking time off, the guilt we feel...

Solo episode this week. I'm answering your questions around medication and other people's stigma about it, how anxiety isn't always to blame for our every niggle we feel and exactly what I do if a tsunami of anxiety washes over me. Episodes referenced in this podcast were my Owning It Real Time audio guide for dealing with anxiety first thing in then morning, my solo episode on the fear of going b...

Buy Sophie White's book My Hot Friend here . Sign up to my Substack with 20% off for more Owning It related content and to connect personally HERE . I am joined here by award winning bestselling author and columnist Sophie White. Sophie shares her story with me, the pivotal moment at the age of 22 that changed everything, the diagnosis of bipolar II she would later receive, the anxiety of needing...

I am joined here by Stanford psychiatrist Dr David Spiegel to talk about hypnosis and self hypnosis. Now before you switch off and think 'ugh that's a load of poppycock' - I was and always have been cynical about this too but David is very much from the science and research school of thought and he utterly dispels my distrust of hypnosis here, educating me and hopefully you too on what an effectiv...

I was going to record a new episode for this year but it would pretty much run the same as last year's so for anyone who needs a reminder - I'm bringing this one back to the top of the pile for the month that's in it. In this episode of Owning It, I'm talking about the various contributing factors that can give rise to anxiety at Christmas time (or 'the holidays' if you're in America/Canada). Why...

If you love this podcast, please consider subscribing to me on Substack here for more long form writing from me! Heard lots about cortisol but not really sure what it's all about? Here the super successful @HealthWithHolland (Becca Holland) joins me to help us better understand the role of cortisol in our bodies and how to manage it so that we can manage our anxiety. Order yourself (or for a frien...

Join me on Substack here where I write about anxiety, parenting and careers. For this solo episode I am talking through how I overcame my latest anxiety wobble - something I hadn't felt to that extent in so long. It really unnerved me and stuck around for a few days. For me, a fear I will probably forever grapple with is the fear of losing my mind. It comes now and then as a scar from the trauma a...

Are you pregnant, thinking about becoming pregnant or trying to become pregnant and dealing with anxiety? Or did you experience anxiety in pregnancy? Perhaps it was anxiety due to the physical symptoms, or because you arrived at pregnancy after experiencing reproductive trauma, with lots of worry around conception and fertility, or loss, or because for whatever reason, the hormones in pregnancy ju...

I have promised another deep dive into anxiety medication and 11 seasons later, I have delivered. Here I am joined by the wonderful Laura Dowling, pharmacist and founder of Fabu Wellness supplements. She also hosts her own brilliant podcast The Laura Dowling Experience. Laura answers my questions (and yours too) on everything to do with anti-anxiety medication. This is a super helpful overview if...

Sign up to my Substack HERE . Sign up to Owning It Real Time HERE . In this solo episode, I run through my ten most helpful mindset swaps to help you, in a nutshell, own your experience of anxiety. From how to visualise the anxiety to questions to ask yourself, these are all learnings I've had over the years and through interviewing countless world renowned experts on how to better understand and...