Caroline Foran

And COVID has to have had an impact on that.

Subconsciously.

This is the thing.

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, we tend to not give enough weight to those bigger, wider factors, you know, because it doesn't feel like it directly affects us.

Like you can go and do your job and go into your podcast and you're like, well, what's going on the other side of the world doesn't affect me.

But it does because of how you're consuming it.

And like you say, there's there's all these environmental factors, whether it's the

drip feed of horror on your phone all the time and the just constantly being plugged in and online and like that just that brain pattern that sequence of events where you keep looking for another hit of dopamine all of that seeing such horrible things happen in the world feeling completely powerless in that because anxiety the nature of anxiety is to is to look for certainty and like in the world right now with how much we observe we cannot give ourselves that certainty so anxiety is um

Dr. Ono Cain defines it as an intolerance of uncertainty.

So your brain is looking for a way to solve it, but it can't.

And then you take all those bigger things that we underestimate that are collectively pressure on us.

And then you add in your own day to day life stuff, whether that's your nurture, your nature, maybe you're just predisposed to be a more anxious person.

Maybe your wiring just means that you might be more susceptible than a person, a friend of yours.

And then it doesn't really matter what's going on in your life.

as such as how you came into the world, how you're wired, how you're designed, and then all of those things.

And then you add in a stressful job or you add in parenting, a challenging situation at home.

And of course you have a recipe for constantly, maybe it's like a constant similar anxiety.

Maybe it's where I went to, which was very chronic, like I was ill with anxiety.

Like you described more high functioning anxiety where you can still get up and do the things, but it's just always niggling there in the background.