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Chapter 1: What insights does Owen O'Kane provide about anxiety?
Coming up on Dig It. When an anxious thought comes along, they are the most tantalising thoughts. I joked about it once and I said, it's kind of almost like porn for the brain.
I started to have panic attacks. I think it was from grief. Yeah. And then I started to have crippling anxiety to the point where I was struggling to work.
I would really, really welcome a conversation about how we help our children when they are having anxiety and it's genuinely stuff they've got to tackle that you have no control over. I honestly find myself lost for words quite often.
Let's be honest. Let's lay our cards on the table. If you're having a hard time at the moment, trust me, you are not on your own.
Honestly, Owen, I have to say, I actually feel quite emotional listening to you today. Honestly, I think that's going to be one of my favorite episodes. All of that right after this.
Hi, Diggers. We've got a very special guest joining us today, someone that Zoe and I are both really excited to talk to. He's a psychotherapist, former NHS mental health lead and a bestselling author. His most recent book is called Addicted to Anxiety, which explores whether there's a connection between anxiety and addiction. It offers a guide for how we can deal with anxiety in a healthier way.
Please welcome Owen O'Kane. Morning, Owen. Owen, welcome to Dig It. Today you're speaking to Generation Anxious. There are many, many, many of us in that club and it's a term that you've coined yourself. Is this as bad as it's ever been, do you think, this generation?
I think there is a generational problems right across the board with anxiety. I've talked a lot about the addicted component to it. You know, people getting addicted to the process of anxiety, which was the whole premise of the last book. I do believe that's true. I mean, certainly in clinical work, I'll see it everywhere.
I'll see it a lot with younger people, but I'm seeing it with, you know, university students. I'm seeing it with people in middle age, men and post-ages, men going through kind of transitional phases and interestingly older population groups. So I think definitely over the last five years, it's problematic right across the board.
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Chapter 2: How can we change our relationship with anxiety?
And that kind of creates something very different because you can learn to negotiate with your anxiety and you can learn to navigate it in a very, very different way. And for me, that's personally where I see most breakthroughs. When I did Addicted to Anxiety, the initial concern was that people...
might be a little bit offended by the title or they might think I'm not addicted and blah, blah, blah. You know, it's not my fault and it's never about fault or blame. But I guess the conversation I really want to have is that most people play a bigger part in their anxiety than they're willing to admit.
And that's a hard conversation to have, but it's a really important one because I believe that if people recognize that they're a part of their anxiety and that they feel it more than they realize, well, then they're also part of the solution. And I think for me that that is so, so important that we have to move away from the cure your anxiety, heal your anxiety.
This technique is going to heal you and all is going to be well for the rest of your life. I mean, frankly, it's bullshit. It's not a truthful conversation. So it's like, you know, we all get anxious. Like in a spirit of transparency, I was laughing today coming onto this podcast.
Chapter 3: What are common triggers for anxiety in different age groups?
So I'm off on holiday tomorrow for a week and I had to hand over my dog today to the dog walker who looks after the dog for a week. Now that in itself, it's only the beginning of the day, but just handing the dog over and getting his bag packed and given a whole list of the do's and don'ts and stuff. I mean, you immediately feel your own anxiety levels rise up with just one small micro event.
But it's a very normal protective, you know, it's a normal reaction. And we all have hundreds of these interactions every day. But it's about learning to see them for what they are, that this is a protective part of me. It comes up. It means well. It means to support me. It means to help me. I just need to learn how to work with it in a more helpful way.
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What advice can you give us then? Because people will have this anxiety reaction for many, many different reasons. According to, is it upbringing? Is it your nature? Is it nurture? Where does it all come from?
Never one thing in my experience. I mean, the research will tell you that it can be nurture. For some people, it can be biochemical. We know that at certain points in life, for example, menopause, it can be more problematic because of the chemical changes that are happening in the body. It can be a transitional phase in life. It can happen after grief.
You know, there are a number of things that can trigger anxiety. But in my experience, it's never one thing. I think it's normally a collection of things that feed in together. And I think for the majority of people, most people learn to worry at home. I think most people come from cultures where, and very often it's not even named.
You know, certainly I grew up in an anxious family, but we wouldn't have called it an anxious family at that time. But my mum and dad, when I look back on it now, they worried about everything. Now, they wouldn't have said they had anxiety.
So I think when you come from backgrounds or cultures where worry is seen as a good thing, there's a principle in psychology called positive beliefs about worry. So very often we're taught that to worry is a good thing and it's a useful thing.
And that often can get inherited and people kind of take that on that actually if I don't overthink, if I don't overanalyze, if I don't watch out for the problem, something might go wrong. So that's one component of it. And that's where the overthinking, the overanalyzing, the catastrophizing, that's where that all comes into play.
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Chapter 4: How has the pandemic affected our mental health?
They're probably going to work out. There's things that I can do about some of them. So thank you. That was a really helpful exercise.
It's called worry time. And you know, for anybody listening or watching it, you basically write down all the key things you're worried about and what we discover is when we write them down, I encourage people to take five, 10 minutes out, just get them all down on paper. Then you go back and you look and you think, okay, well, what can I do about any of these worries at the moment?
And for most people, you know, it's like, well, actually nothing, you know, there's maybe one or two. And actually what it does is immediately is it reduces that sense of burden where it's like, actually, I don't really need to be managing it. I mean, if you think of a, a definition of anxiety. It's an intolerance of uncertainty. There's a big clue there in the word intolerance.
So if we're not tolerating the not knowing or if we're not tolerating the discomfort, that's what's creating the problem. So you're kind of teaching people, look, you know, you can't manage all of this at one time. So it's okay to be aware of what they are, but it's equally okay to say, okay, that's not for now. I'm not denying it. I'm not pushing it away.
But what I am doing is saying, okay, I can put that aside for now. And that doesn't need to come with me. I don't need to bring that to bed. I don't need to bring all of these worries to bed with me every night. It's okay. And that creates great freedom for people. And I guess that is the liberating thing about this work.
And thanks, Zoe, for sharing about your own story, because I think that's such a powerful thing that this happens. It's happened in my own life. You know, there are periods when... It can be like a tidal wave. And when you're in the thick of it, it can feel very disempowering. It can feel like there's no way through and that it's never going to end.
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Chapter 5: What practical steps can we take to manage anxiety?
Whereas actually what I've learned over the years, both personally and professionally, is that if you can work with the fact that, okay, this mechanism, as uncomfortable as it's feeling, is actually working with you. It's trying to protect you. It's trying to keep you safe. It's trying to get you to downregulate.
It's doing what it thinks it needs to do at that moment in time for protection and safety. And actually, if you learn that, it's basically that skill of learning to accept it and work with it and negotiate with it. And bit by bit, then suddenly you notice that this freedom starts to come and things start to unravel. Whereas actually,
If you think about the amount of effort that goes into not experiencing anxiety, what it will do is it will create more resistance and it creates more tension. And even if we think about, you mentioned menopause, which I know is a big issue for many, many people. And it's interesting, similar for men. You know, this is a conversation we don't have.
Men have these hormonal transitions in their 40s and 50s as well, where the hormones begin to change and it has a detrimental effect on anxiety as well. But Despite the chemical changes, what we forget is that there are a lot of other things going on, you know, that it's a transitional phase of life. You know, things are happening. Kids are leaving home.
Elderly parents, you know, we're moving towards the latter stages of our lives. We're letting go of being younger. We're letting go of a lot of our old experiences. We're letting go of relationships. We're letting go of people we've lost. It's never one thing. So, of course, how could we not be anxious in these periods? It's a very, very normal thing.
And I think if you can think of the anxiety as something that's just simply trying to anchor you and get you back to your point of stability. Now, albeit I know that the process can feel really uncomfortable, but I think if you can view it as, okay, well, this is trying to get me back to dry ground. It's trying to stabilize me. It's trying to look after me in some way.
Then you start to see it very, very differently. So the way you manage the thoughts, the way you manage the emotions and the behaviors and that you adapt around your anxiety start to change very, very powerfully. So what I would say for anyone who struggles with anxiety, and I promise you wholeheartedly, it's not a permanent state and it is something that can be navigated and worked through.
And if you can truly, truly listen to what it's trying to communicate, You know, in my early 20s, and it's a really interesting one because as therapists doing this job every day of the week, it's really interesting then when you're on the receiving end or something happens to you. But I remember having panic attacks in my early 20s and there was a lot going on for me.
There was a lot of transition. I was living in Ireland at the time. I was coming out as gay to my family and that was creating a huge amount of uncertainty for me. And the panic at the time was doing its job. It wasn't the wrong thing. And I think if you can see it that way, it's powerful. I did a talk last week. I was doing a big corporate event last week.
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Chapter 6: How can we support children dealing with anxiety?
And I think shaming people, you know, saying, oh, you shouldn't take medication. I think it's a conversation and every situation is contextual and you just have to take it case by case. So, you know, a GP will normally have that conversation about whether it's a useful support. I think therapy, look, I'm a therapist. I do think good therapy.
And I mean, you know, find a therapist that will challenge the shit out of you and that won't... You know, it's not there to feel all lovely and fluffy. You don't want a therapist who just lets you come in and splurge and just talk about everything or give you a lot of reassurance.
You want a therapist who will be able to be with you and hold you and support you but challenge you and actually allow you to look at yourself and hold responsibility.
I think don't underestimate the power of everyday stuff, like all of these things that we hear on social media every day, but we know that like getting out for 10 minutes every day, just walking in nature, like every piece of research supports that really strongly. Whatever exercise you can do, just bloody honestly do it, even if it's a few minutes a day, because we know chemically it helps.
The foods that you put into your body, if we have foods that are high And sugar and fat, they are inflammatory foods that we know anxiety is an inflammatory process. So think about the foods that you're putting into your body. We know that if you're dehydrated, it can make you feel angsty and stressed and more anxious. So that can aggravate it. So make sure you're getting plenty of fluids.
Think about the people in your life. I talk about two people. You've got the radiators and the drains. If you've got a lot of people in your life who are taking your resources, you have to stop sometimes and evaluate who the people are in your life and where your time has been spent. I think the word no is crucially important. Most of us say yes when we want to say no.
I think when you're managing anxiety, that word no is sometimes really important.
I think perspective, I think this is an important thing that if I'm in the books and certainly in Addicted to Anxiety, I think I talk about, I often say to people, imagine on the days when things are really, really tough, you know, imagine you're stepping into a helicopter and helicopters, when they're taken off, they normally pull back. And there's that moment where they just hover.
And I think there's real power sometimes in imagining that you step in to that helicopter and you pull back and you look in in your life and you look in in the experience and you kind of think, all right, there's a lot going on today. There's a few difficult situations. My mind's in overdrive. There's some big emotions around. I'm not feeling great today.
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Chapter 7: What role does uncertainty play in anxiety?
It's an experience I'm having at the moment. That can be a really useful way of not getting, I describe it like quicksand. You're not getting pulled in. So you're learning to observe and look in. So there are so many things that we can do, like meditation, yoga. I've mentioned all of those earlier. We know the research is pretty good on them all.
But what I think is, look, you can never be overly prescriptive. For some people think yoga doesn't work for me. Breathing techniques don't work for me. So you've got to find what is it that brings it down a few notches for you.
Honestly, Owen, I have to say, I actually feel quite emotional listening to you today because I just think there's, as I hear you talking, I'm just thinking about all the situations and all the people I know who would be really helped by hearing you speak. And you are an amazing human. Oh, thanks.
Thank you very much.
Thank you for having me. For writing these books and having gone through stuff yourself, you know, learning to understand that. I'm just telling myself, stop trying to rescue. Stop trying to rescue. Just be alongside someone.
Just hold their hand. It's excellent advice. It really is. It's Addicted to Anxiety, How to Break the Habit. And it's Owen O'Kane. Owen, thank you very much indeed for talking to us. Thank you, guys. It's been a pleasure. I've taken so much away. Thank you, Owen. Honestly, I think that's going to be one of my favourite episodes. Oh, thanks. Wonderful. Really nice to meet you, Owen.
Thank you so much.
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