Owning It: The Anxiety Podcast

In this engaging podcast, Millie Mackintosh opens up about her struggles with anxiety, from panic attacks during Made in Chelsea days to navigating social media judgment. She discusses pre and postnatal anxiety, the pressure of online scrutiny, and managing IBS. With her second baby on the way, Millie's vulnerability and honesty shine through as she shares her journey with anxiety.

For this final episode of season 6, I am joined by the very lovely Cressida Bonas - actor, writer and more recently podcaster. Her podcast Fear Itself is earning rave reviews and features guests such as Ellie Goulding, Sir Richard Branson, Dr Pippa Grange and many more. Her focus is on fear and how fear might actually be at the root of all of our main emotions. Joining me here she tells me her experience of anxiety - including some pretty debilitating catastrophic thinking - as well as navigating a life as a very shy person for whom much of their work is public facing. 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 @OwningItPodcast, on Tik Tok hereSubscribe to my weekly Substack here (not always anxiety related, often parenting related)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/owningittheanxietypodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this episode I am explaining a few key tools that I use again and again when feeling anxious about an upcoming event or a change of some kind. Fear hacking - using catastrophic thinking to work in your favour - followed by positive visualisation which involves a tool in itself called 'anchoring' and much more. This episode is just me and the content I'm discussing is based on what you'll find laid out in my 13 part toolkit in The Confidence Kit, my second book to have been published. Available now on audiobook and in hardback/paperback online and in book stores. 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 @OwningItPodcast, on Tik Tok hereSubscribe to my weekly Substack here (not always anxiety related, often parenting related)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/owningittheanxietypodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this episode I am going back to where it all started for me: with gut issues. Diagnosed and plagued with IBS for most of my teenage years, I had no awareness that a lot of what I was experiencing was anxiety manifesting in this way. My tummy issues made me anxious, my anxiety made me have tummy issues. I am joined here by the world renowned author of The Mind Gut Connection, Dr Emeran Mayer. (I wrongly title it the gut brain connection in my intro so apologies for that!) He is not just a gastroenterologist but a neuroscientist too and where these two disciplines overlap, you know there is a lot to be learned. I hope you find this episode helpful and validating. Dr Emeran Mayer's new book is out now, The Gut-Immune Connection.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 @OwningItPodcast, on Tik Tok hereSubscribe to my weekly Substack here (not always anxiety related, often parenting related)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/owningittheanxietypodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sometimes in life, things change or thing go drastically downhill, without any forewarning. For Jane Enright, author of Butter Side Up, big, negative life changes occurred to her 3 times within the space of one year. 3 changes that would leave almost anyone in the throes of anxiety, negativity and hopelessness. But Jane realised she already had a lot of the skills necessary to get through this, if she just tapped into them, now that she really needed them. In this episode she shares her story with me, and how she handled the anxiety that went along with such traumatic incidents as well as how we can better process the things in life that happen that we do not see coming, so that they don't swallow us up. Her book, Butter Side Up, is available widely now.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 @OwningItPodcast, on Tik Tok hereSubscribe to my weekly Substack here (not always anxiety related, often parenting related)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/owningittheanxietypodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Happiness anxiety sounds oxymoronic but it's a real thing: it's known as Cherophobia which sounds sinister but really it's just the anxiety that can arise intermittently (or it can also be quite all consuming) when you fear that if things are going well, something has to go wrong. For me it manifests as feeling so grateful for what I do have in life that I think it will be taken away from me or that I don't deserve it. For others it can be an actual aversion to joyful experiences which require an element of letting go and being comfortable with being vulnerable and the idea that things are transient and not everything works out. For this episode I am joined by clinical psychologist Dr Malie Coyne to unpack Cherophobia, what it is, why we might struggle with it and crucially what we can do about it.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 @OwningItPodcast, on Tik Tok hereSubscribe to my weekly Substack here (not always anxiety related, often parenting related)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/owningittheanxietypodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this episode I am joined by Katy Milkman, award winning behavioural scientist and Wharton University Professor to talk about anxiety and more specifically how to change, and how labelling will impact your behaviour in a way that exacerbates your anxiety. Katy is a legend and explains everything so well. Her new book, How To Change is out now. My books are NAKED: Ten Truths To Change Your Life, The Confidence Kit and Owning It: Your BS Free Guide To Living With Anxiety, all widely available online. 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 @OwningItPodcast, on Tik Tok hereSubscribe to my weekly Substack here (not always anxiety related, often parenting related)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/owningittheanxietypodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For this episode I am joined by the founder of Happy Not Perfect the app plus the new book of the same name, Poppy Jamie. She has an incredibly illustrious career behind her with a refreshingly honest story. As much as I know about anxiety today, Poppy said many things that really gave me an a-ha moment, making me think twice bout things. She offers in this podcast, a step-by-step approach to dissolving anxiety in the moment. Most notably, she's all about employing curiosity as her most reliable tool for quelling anxiety when it rises. I found her insights here incredibly helpful and I'm sure you will too. A conversation I didn't realise I needed to have until I'd had it.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 @OwningItPodcast, on Tik Tok hereSubscribe to my weekly Substack here (not always anxiety related, often parenting related)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/owningittheanxietypodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I am joined by Dr Soph for this episode, she is absolutely fantastic, I have adored following her for years now. She is a clinical psychologist and now author of A Manual For Being Human. She breaks down anxiety in way that make it so easy to understand and move forward with. Here we talk through her approach for understanding why you're here (feeling anxious), what's keeping you here and how to move forward. We talk about therapy and therapists, how to flip social comparison on its head and lots more. I'm sure you will find her as wonderful as I do. Her book is out now.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 @OwningItPodcast, on Tik Tok hereSubscribe to my weekly Substack here (not always anxiety related, often parenting related)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/owningittheanxietypodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Johann Hari is a really interesting if somewhat controversial character. He is a prolific journalist, an NYTimes bestselling author and his Ted Talks on the reasons why we might be anxious/depressed has been viewed a staggering number of times. He too also struggled significantly with anxiety and depression. He has some really hard-to-argue-with insights on the various reasons why we collectively struggle so much: we have a series of unmet needs, or as his book title suggests, we are suffering from various lost connections. Here he chats to me about some of the key reasons why we struggle (according to him and the research he has done around the world chatting with experts) as well as what we can do about it: social prescription, questioning our junk values and more. A very interesting guy, did I say that already?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 @OwningItPodcast, on Tik Tok hereSubscribe to my weekly Substack here (not always anxiety related, often parenting related)Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/owningittheanxietypodcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.