Caroline Foran

So was it difficult to make those changes or were you just happy to embrace them?

Well, back then when it was really critical and chronic, the choices were made for me because I physically could not work, I could not function properly.

So what I hope is that for people, you know, that you will be able to recognize things and make those changes before anxiety makes them for you.

But these days, yeah, it's just again, it can be really small things about just choosing where you direct your energy, who you give your time to and not trying to do it all and take it all on because, you know, we all have so many spinning plates and the one that's going to drop is your well-being.

All right, and we need to prioritise that, don't we, particularly us women.

The book is called Everything I Wish I'd Known About Anxiety.

It is a roadmap back to yourself.

And it's great to see you, Caroline Forna, and to see you doing so well.

Thank you so much.

Thanks so much for joining us here on The Clare Byrne Show.

This is a vibe.

This is a whole setup that I wasn't expecting.

And it's so, so nice to be here.

Yeah, I often feel like I need to preface anything I do by saying I'm not an official expert because I don't have that little piece of paper.

It's a personal expertise point of view.

It's a lived experience with a huge amount of research and like conversations with experts that I'm so intimate with anxiety and knowing how it functions in the body that I feel like you have to experience it to a great extent to be able to know, to understand this and then help other people feel like feel their way through it.

I'm in an intimate relationship with anxiety.

Yeah, because it's one thing to, you know, read about something and another thing to feel it and it to be personal and note ahead to respond.

And it doesn't always hold up like what you read in a textbook doesn't always apply to human experience.

So but I do also think that most people who wind up studying and becoming experts, you know, whether they're psychologists or psychiatrists, they often come from the experience of having experience.