Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Gorgeous. Welcome back to All of the Above with me, Emma Keogh. So this week I have a really special guest on, which I had on about three and a half years. She is a bestselling author and also a podcaster. She is the one and only Caroline Foran. So nice to be here.
This is a vibe. This is a whole setup that I wasn't expecting. And it's so, so nice to be here.
Thank you. And the reason I have Caroline Caroline on today is because she is like an anxiety expert but not only an expert you have been through the trenches yourself and that's why you got to a point where you have your podcasts and you are an author as well because you wanted to share your experiences with people as well
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.
Yeah, I like that.
I'm in an intimate relationship with anxiety.
Yeah, maybe that sounded a bit weird, did it? No, because when you think about it as well, there is so many like experts out there and then people who have went to college for, you know, neuroscience, for psychology, for like, you know, bodies as well. But you do really have to live through an experience in order to talk about it.
Like I think as well, like you can, you can't study things, but you have to experience it in order to really feel it and give it out to the world.
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Chapter 2: What is anxiety and how can we understand it better?
And it's actually crazy, right? So I have here pre-COVID, so 2016 to 2019, this is in Ireland now, around 5% of adults were diagnosed, you know, with anxiety disorders. Okay. So I was like, oh, that seems quite kind of low. Do you know what I mean? But for what we know of. Then around after COVID, 2024 to 2025, because I feel it's only hitting now the last year or so. Nearly 18%.
Wow.
That's over tripled. That's tripled.
Yeah. I'm not surprised and it was really interesting for me. Obviously it was a terrible time and people were really negatively affected by it, but to see something affect us on a global, like that's never happened before, like that we were all, all of our nervous systems were compromised by this legitimate threat That was outside our door.
We were sending messages to ourselves daily being told, you know, you're not safe. You need to do this. You need to wear a mask. Being around people isn't safe. That gets in on you.
And even if you didn't feel like a lot of people didn't feel anxious about COVID, a lot of people enjoyed the slower pace and they enjoyed the time at home and they maybe started businesses and like maybe it was the making of them. But even if you don't, you didn't feel consciously aware of it. Something at that level, that's that...
genuine like it's not just oh you don't need to worry about that we did need to worry like it was a very valid cause for concern it was the biggest threat we'd ever faced on a global scale that everyone was impacted by like that doesn't just disappear yeah when you spent like we had to spend if you think about it how many months on end conditioning ourselves to believe that we were 24 months yeah
So to reverse that conditioning, just because things opened up and we were like, right, it's fine now.
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Chapter 3: Why is anxiety not something to 'fix'?
Yes, you might be able to go out and do things, but that message takes so long to unwind in your body.
And I do think that so many people ended up arriving at anxiety, maybe not to their awareness directly because of COVID, but COVID became a huge vulnerability factor that put strain and pressure on their nervous system so that when they went to go to work and to cope in their relationships and everything, all of those things were a little bit more difficult.
And COVID has to have had an impact on that. Subconsciously. This is the thing.
It's like an iceberg. Like do you ever see that model, especially even in coaching? It's like an iceberg. Think of the Titanic. You only see the little tip of the iceberg that's in the Antarctic, but it's underneath the surface. How big that iceberg is. And that is like how we all like felt. And I'd say a lot of us are feeling as well. Do you know that way?
I think myself and I was only saying to you, like I have down here as well. like over 40% experienced anxiety, like especially in like COVID and it affects one in six people. Yeah. So, which is crazy and I do think it's on the increase now more than ever with the pressures of the world, you know, social media, inflation,
It's just becoming a lot like these are obviously huge world factors, but then there's personal factors as well, which is more important. Like, you know, I found myself because even from when I talked to you last, I actually looked and it was September 2022. You were last, excuse me, on my podcast.
in power with em and we touched on you know like your own personal experience because you would have suffered with anxiety attacks and like your work you can touch on that again but like how much I feel then I've like my own anxiety like you know I thought I I think it's worsened. I think it has heightened because of like number one, self-employment.
Number two, you know, my hormones are changing. I'm getting older. I am a sensitive person and I'm an empath as well. And I do feel things deeply. But I just think it's and then it's the worries of the world. It's like as I'm getting older, like, yeah, you can keep things at bay to a point. But then there's a point like you can control yourself, but then there's other things you can't control.
So it is learn to control you.
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Chapter 4: How can mindfulness practices help manage anxiety?
Oh, my God, girl, it'd be like Harry Potter. Chronicles of Narnia. I love it. How did you get to the place where you are today?
It took me a long time. There were so many facets that came together and I really very prescriptively chart through all that in the book because I wanted, I think the question I get asked most is like, what can I do and where do I start? Like, yes, I know I'm anxious. Yes, I know I'm
experiencing anxiety like we know that now like we talk about it we're all aware of it we use the word we don't need someone to say I know what it is you've got anxiety we know that so it's what to do where to start what turns to take what um dead ends to avoid and I went such an arseways way around getting to where I am now because I didn't have the awareness. We didn't have the conversations.
I didn't have the knowledge. I had really unhelpful perceptions of what it meant to experiencing anxiety. I was so concerned with what it said about me that I was weak or broken or... beyond help and that there was something really wrong with me. So I stayed stuck in very bad anxiety for a very long time and trying desperately to just think my way out of it, which is a mistake.
Did you go to like therapy or doctors?
Yeah, I did. I did so many different things. I tried so many things. I was also very vulnerable to... Like basically charlatans who would say, try this one thing and you'll never feel it again.
I was like, sign me up, you know, but because I didn't understand the mechanisms of anxiety, none of those things were going to make a difference until I met myself right where I was with self-compassion, which was so hard to do because I did not like myself. I did not want to be that sensitive person who feels too much.
And it was it was a lot of different things, whether it's lifestyle changes that I had to make completely working on my relationship towards anxiety, my perception of what anxiety actually is, the psycho education of just understanding your nervous system, which makes it so much less about you and so much more manageable.
it's not a reflection of your personality it's it's your nervous system under strain and every single person's nervous system is capable of having that strain it's not even saying like one in five people experience it every human experiences it yeah but just for some people it becomes maladaptive where it's really impacting their life like you would not be alive if you didn't have the ability to experience anxiety it's a survival mechanism 100 but for me
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Chapter 5: What tools can be included in your 'anxiety toolbox'?
I was so frightened that I was so capable and vulnerable to falling apart. Like, I think it's such a human fear. Like, what if I just lose it? And I really felt like I lost myself. I didn't have control over my body. I didn't, my thoughts were just not my own. Do you think you hit like rock bottom? Yeah, absolutely. Was that before you had your son? Yeah, yeah. This was when I was 25.
And what was that moment you actually felt I'm at my low? Like this is my low, like the lowest I felt. What was that like? And what did it feel like?
Two ways of looking at it, I suppose. I was so afraid of hitting rock bottom because that felt so lonely and isolating and scary. And I didn't see anyone else going through it around me that I knew of.
You were only in your 20s.
I was 25. Yeah. That's when it all, I mean, it had always been brewing. I had always experienced anxiety in some ways.
It was a burnout as well.
It came to a head when I was 25. And I actually think that's so interesting because that's the age at which our prefrontal cortex is fully formed. You're only when you're 25 are you then fully all online up here.
And you know, in saying that as well, my first panic attack I had only when I was 26.
and I remember that feeling I was like what is this like I mean out of nowhere it just came over me I couldn't breathe it was like someone was standing on my chest I was in Australia I was after coming back from visiting here for like I was away for a year and I went home to Ireland for a year and then I went back to Australia for my second year and when it's like I stopped I was like I was like pull over the car I was on the way to the cinema and out of nowhere I couldn't breathe like the tears I was like what is actually I thought I was having a heart attack like
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Chapter 6: How has COVID impacted anxiety levels in society?
But the rock bottom thing was, it was very dark. I... I started to experience depression as a side effect of the anxiety. I wouldn't have been someone who was depressed or suffered from depression. Like anxiety is all up here. Depression feels very like a gravitational pull down.
But it was almost a symptom of the anxiety because I so desperately did not want to continue living if that's how life was going to be. Because I didn't leave the four walls of my apartment. I couldn't go to the shop. I couldn't even be in my... How long did that last for? That was a really intense period of a few months.
It was, I think I remember like Easter 2014, it all, I really felt like this is not going to right itself, like I have a weekend off. And then it was.
How long did you stay in the house for? What was the longest you ever stayed and didn't go outside the four walls?
I definitely did go out, but I was going back to my parents' house and sleeping with my mom in the bed with her.
I only ask this because this is bringing me back to a place when I had that anxiety attack. That's why I can relate to a point. When I had my first anxiety attack when I lived in Australia, I remember I could not go outside the four walls. I think it was eight or nine days. And that's very uncommon for me.
That's when I really related to what you just said there, because you have the anxiety and you have the depression and there's this pull. And after that, I remember talking to my mom. And I was like, ma'am, like all I was doing was I was barely having a shower and I'm feeding myself. Like the thoughts of going outside. I was like, I can't put my foot. I don't know where this came from, Caroline.
I swear to God, I couldn't go outside. I remember my mom saying to me, Emma, if you get over 10 days, two weeks, you're going to have to go to the doctor because...
It's not normal you're allowed probably maybe I fell homesick because I was so hard being on the other side on the other side because I remember my ex at the time he went to work he was in construction or whatever at the time he went out whatever seven eight o'clock I remember breaking bad that was only after coming out and I and that was a narrow long episode each I watched nine episodes straight in bed with the curtains pulled and he came home from work and it was six or seven he was like have you not moved.
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Chapter 7: What personal experiences shaped the guest's understanding of anxiety?
This is a lot for you. Like would what would make a meaningful difference? Even one tiny thing in this moment. Forget about tomorrow. Forget about trying to solve all your problems.
Yeah.
And I would have been like, well, what difference will that make? But over time, and the science is there to prove it, you literally change your wiring. 100%. And when you can bring your body into a calm place, then over time that becomes easier to access. And then the fear of the anxiety starts to simmer down because you can just be in it a little bit more. You can tolerate it a bit more.
I call that the power of pause. Very good. Yeah, because I'm, I can relate so much to your journey as well. That's why you're here. And even the self-compassion thing, I would have really only explored because I was like the go, go, go up a half five. Like I didn't know, but it was high function anxiety and I was masking at the same time.
But then when the shit hit the fan in 2020, COVID, you know, breakups, everything like that, I had to go internal and fix my inner world. And a big part of that, even though I don't like the life coach and neuroscience course, I did understand myself to a point, but it was mindfulness that altered everything for me.
And the biggest thing in mindfulness, not only is it awareness and bringing your attention to the present moment and your own self and your body, your internal body, but it's compassion. It's learning to have love for yourself and compassion because
like I'd say from day dot Caroline like I would have been my own worst enemy like as in like you're not good enough no like you can't have a break you have to keep working get up exactly the same as you tough love but like and I do think kind of some of that does come from our parents and how we grew up as well do you know what I mean like you gotta get up you gotta get at it you know we
Because that's how they were parented. Exactly. It's not their fault. It's just the culture of the times that we lived in.
and learning to have compassion for yourself and make up your own little bubble of compassion and your own beliefs from what you have been told in order for you to function in in day to day like what does love mean to you it's not yeah it's get up and work yes it's you know feed your family do those things but looking after you and that little bubble instead of feeling stressed out of your head because even i'd look at my mom my mom had four children my nana had 11.
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Chapter 8: How can self-compassion aid in managing anxiety?
compassion can fall into a trap of being like really self-indulgent or we think it just means giving up and just surrendering to every inclination we have. Like if I was to always be really compassionate whenever I felt anxiety in the past, I wouldn't have gotten out of the bed, you know?
So the trick is, and I interviewed a woman, Dr. Kimberly Quinlan on my podcast for this and she introduced me to the idea of what that, the kind of sweet spot of compassion and accountability and it's, Yes, knowing when to push and knowing when to pull back. Like on some days, you'll know this is not a day where I can like, I'm not going to learn a lesson today.
I just need to totally surrender to it. But there will come a time where you need to say, yes, I'm feeling it, but I'm thinking of myself in the long term and what is best for me overall. And that might be doing the thing that feels hard.
And that might be it might not it might not always be giving into every single feeling like so compassionate accountability allows me to really acknowledge and hold space for whatever it is I'm feeling and say yeah this is hard and this is a lot and this makes sense and anyone would feel this way like this is not just a you thing anyone in this situation would feel this.
So feel that and let that sit on you today. And like if today it's all too much, that's OK. But ultimately, the compassionate accountability piece helps me go into action mode of like, what can I do to help myself here? And I think it's really important not to just fall into a duvet. Like I would literally never leave like my house.
I love this because I can relate because I had this day yesterday. Right. Everything you're saying, it's so funny. It's like it's all synced up what we're talking about.
so yesterday um obviously like you know I had a few drinks there like the weekend and then I felt a bit like fluffy my mood I'm coming into PMS do you know what I mean like I've had such a busy few weeks and I was like do you know what I had two events and an appointment and loads of things to do and I was like I'm just gonna cancel the day I'm going with how I feel yeah I just gonna cancel I'll just go out for a walk or whatever and in that moment I was like no I'm
I'm going to think of my higher self. I'm just going to push through today because I know I'm going to feel better if I push through the day because there's things in there, there's events I have to show up to for work. You know, I think I just need to push through the feeling and then go to the end of how the end goal, right? And I did that. I got up. I had an appointment.
I had to work events and then I went to the gym, came home, typed out three podcasts and I was like, how fucking yeah. Do you know? Yeah. And I seen something. I actually put this up on TikTok and a follower messaged me. She was like, follow the plan, not the mood or follow the follow the plan, not the feeling. And I was like, that is so right.
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