Life Uncut - Palms are sweaty, knees weak, arms are heavy - Talking Anxiety with Osher Gunsberg and Dr Jodie Lowinger

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

*Todays episode comes with a trigger warning. Issues relating to mental health, anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts are discussed throughout. If these topics could be triggering for you, please consider skipping this episode. For anyone experiencing difficulties please reach out to life line, open 24 hours, on 13 11 14*   Lifers, today we are talking about something extremely important and extremely prevalent. Today, we are talking a deep dive into anxiety and everything that comes with it. We wanted to bring you most informative episode possible, so we have two amazing guests on todays episode, both from very different walks of life.    First up we have the man who brought us Laura and Matty J’s ultimate fairytale love story on The Bachelor. Funnily enough, he's also the man that brought us Britt's epic, unheard of and far too public dumping. Yep, we are talking to Osher Ginsburg, the man that has collectively broken more hearts than any other person in Australia. He is a tv host, podcaster, author, husband and father. He is also an anxiety sufferer and speaks very openly about his struggles and his battle with mental health. We then speak with psychologist, best selling author and anxiety expert Dr Jodie Lowinger who runs Sydney anxiety clinic. She is an expert in her field and has helped thousands of people from children to adults to CEO’s manage their anxiety. She is the author of best selling book "The mind strength method". Between these two amazing humans we hope to shine a different kind of light on anxiety, to help educate you and hopefully assist you in realising that you are not alone and there is help waiting.   If you loved the episode please leave us a review and subscribe on apple podcast.   If you know someone that may benefit from this episode please share the love, because, well, we love love.   You can follow Osher @osher_gunsberg and listen to his podcast 'Better than yesterday".   You can follow Dr Jodie @_drjodie_ and read her best selling book "The mind strength method" at all good book stores.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, welcome to another episode of Life Uncut. I'm sorry, but it's very funny. I'm Brittany. I'm Laura. Wait, which part is funny? We've just gone on a real emotional roller coaster a lot has happened in the past couple of hours we actually recorded this intro look it wasn't my best because we recorded it I had two screaming children outside the door one of them was in the bath in the room next to it was just a lot it was a lot and then we took a break we went and watched Dancing with the Stars because our joint husband's on the show and now we're back and I feel like we're really back and then as we sat down to start recording Britt was like you know okay I am gonna guess that there are some other girls out there who

are at this point in their friendship with their girlfriends surely where you're so close that you share everything without thinking and you have such a good nude that not only do you want to send it to your boyfriend or to wherever you're sending nudes to you also want to show your girlfriends like fuck i took the most fire nude that's what just happened not me i don't take nudes anymore i just walked into laura and i didn't think she was gonna throw me under the bus on podcast i was like babe i took like a really good nude do you want to see it because i was like i just wanted to show someone jordan's asleep he hasn't woken up yet can confirm jordan will be a very happy man it's a very very good nude scares me in my pants anyway i think we can

confirm we're way way past that these days anyway yeah like we're solid we're so far past that point in the friendship but like i mean you see me breastfeed constantly it's kind of the same except less sexy it's the same except mine's a bit more sexual fit and like you usually squirt me in the eye with your milk which i cannot do so we're not there yet but no we're on a bit of a hi. This is Sunday night. We have just finished watching Matty J on Dancing With The Stars, which was so great to watch. I don't know if you guys watched it, but his facials were everything. I'm going to say out with maths. Who cares about the maths finale, guys? Like all that is, is just encouraging toxic relationships and perpetuating bad behavior within relationships.

Everybody get behind Dancing With The Stars. Anyway, how was your week? What have you done? mate not a lot actually a lot but far out like sometimes and I know that everyone who doesn't have kids is gonna hate me saying this but like being a mum is hard and I'm tired do you know what I think it's important to say that though because I think correct me if I'm wrong but I have a lot of friends you were one of them that before you have a baby you genuinely believe your life is not going to change that much so many of my friends have been like you know what not not that much is going to change when I have the kid like I'm still going to do this and this and this and you know obviously I just have to be home when they sleep they genuinely believe that it's

going to be a breeze that their kid's not going to be a pain their kid's going to sleep and every single one of those friends that said that has since turned to me and said you know what it is so hard it is the hardest thing I underestimated this so I think it's important that you are really honest well so when I say we tried to record the intro we did record the intro and then it just ended in me crying for 15 minutes that there were as a mic there was a mic drop but not like the cool mic drop like a throw it to the ground mic drop and then there were tears we had a moment on the bed in the studio after the nude after the nude we've had a lot of moments and I said Dolores she was trying to hold her tears back and I said let it out you don't have to hold it back

like this is life people go through hard times and the more you keep this in you're going to implode yeah but I guess the thing is and I'm sure that there will be mums who relate to this is that by saying that you're struggling it's real saying yeah well one you make one it's real you say it when you once you say it and once you put it out there it's almost like cementing I'm not coping right but then on top of that it's cementing it to yourself it's like giving into those feelings of like this is really hard at the moment I don't have my shit together by doing that you kind of have to admit it to yourself and then then what you know and if you don't have solutions in place like right now I feel like well I don't have any solutions to make it easier so admitting

that it's hard. What the hell is that going to do? I'm going to keep lying to myself until the cows come home. No, but then this is the thing. We always say there's power in vulnerability. If you need help, you ask for help. And you know, like there are people that can help you and anyone that's listening. If you need help, it's okay to tell your friend or tell a family member or you don't have to all do everything on your own. And like, I'm speaking, like I'm speaking to the audience, but right now this is directing it to Laura. You don't have to do everything on your don't and also it comes in waves you know like some days you will feel like you're absolutely killing it and some days you will feel like you're being killed and i think that's the roller coaster

laura has personality disorder like i don't know what i'm gonna get i just have to come in armed for anything you're like who knows what's gonna happen anyway we've decided we're never gonna record at my house again we're only gonna record at britney's house where it is serenity now all right let's get into some other interesting things that have been happening this week First up, I'm mind blown. We've been speaking a lot about Celeb Spellcheck. They have 100% completely disabled their account. Done.

Capisce. Deleted. Arrivederci. How do you feel? Oh, that was great. That was a time. Thank you. I am low key and high key very sad about this because Celeb Spellcheck has been bringing

us quite the amount of content for this podcast over the last few weeks. I thought after she had put her account on hiatus, we talked about it on a few episodes ago she did say that she was going to go away reassess what she wanted to do with the account and then she kind of came back with a vengeance but also came back a little bit toned down a little bit more g-rated well she came back after a week off thinking about what she wanted to do with the account she openly said i'm putting the account on hold i'm going to think if i want to monetize it i'm going to think what content i want to post etc etc she came back and she'd archived a lot of posts and she'd honestly said hey i'm back i'm not going to speak about drugs anymore like

I'm not going to go that far, but let's get back on track. Everyone was stoked. The account grew again astronomically in just like a week. And then now she's turned around. I don't know what has happened in a week. She said nothing has happened, but she's turned around after a week and said, I'm done. It's 100%. She gave 24 hours notice.

She put on her stories and she was like, tomorrow after 24 hours, the account's disabled for good. I reckon she was like, well, this is boring having so many fucking rules around what I can and can't post. She was like, I'm done. 100%. No, I think genuinely with having a huge audience, you know, I think, I don't know how many followers it was on when it disabled. About 167, I checked. Okay. Just approximately 167,000. But when you have a audience of 167,000 and you have to moderate the comments, but you're also not earning any monetary income for that. I think there does have to come a point where you're

like, well, what am I doing this for? This hobby consumes so much of my time. What am I getting back from this hobby nothing and is there any purpose in continuing it so like i'm sad i'm gonna miss you celeb spellcheck it's been good it's been real i think a lot of people gonna miss it it was a really funny account i loved the account i only started to disagree with it when i thought you know it was ruining people's lives but also fair also fair something else that was really funny this week actually if you guys listened to last week or if you haven't yet i'll quickly give you a rundown maddie j came on as a guest host and he was telling a story about masturbation and it tied in with a dinner party now we made the joke it was a very very intimate

dinner party if there was masturbation involved also i didn't know about this until after the fact no but this is not as bad as it sounds if you listen to the podcast you'll know but we made a comment at the time the three of us were like daily mail will run something with that anyway If you have read the story on the Daily Mail about Matthew masturbating at a dinner party, it's completely clickbait. We want to reiterate, Matt did not masturbate at a dinner party in Laura's house. I'd just like to read out the title. So I'm sure some of you guys have listened to last Thursday's episode.

If you haven't, please go and listen to the Ask Uncut with Matt in it. It's a really funny episode. And also he tells a story, which I mean, like, look, it got a good laugh out of us. But this is just the extent of how Daily Mail will take an article and will just really cherry pick the parts of that story that they want to this was the headline it's a real roller coaster guys maddie j johnson shares horror sex story about being busted with a bottle of lubricant by fiance laura burns friends after masturbating during a dinner party in their home exactly that is so far from the story it is ridiculous like it makes him sound like a creepy

pervert oh my god also the funny thing about this is that the dinner party that we were having that night was with my two lesbian girlfriends and they have been asking for matt sperm for so long because they want to have a baby so like i mean fair it could have all tied in but unfortunately no and for anybody who was curious and who did listen to the episode the lubricant the offending lubricant has made it into the bin after five years thank god i was hoping so there we go so that's done now now guys we actually do have such a great episode for you today and i'm not being bias. It's something that we have sat on and really, really wanted to do this episode justice for so long. Well, we are biased, but continue. No, what I mean is we put so much effort and so

much time into creating this episode. So what we're talking about today is anxiety and it's been something we've wanted to talk about for months now. And we have really wanted to make sure that we did this episode justice. And so we're interviewing an expert in anxiety. Her name is Dr. Jodie Lowinger. So we'll get into that towards the end of the episode, but we're also interviewing somebody who's had a lot of experience around it and is bringing their own personal experience. And it's someone who we have a real connection with, and that is Osher Gunzberg. And he has been really open in speaking about his struggles with anxiety. And because Britt and I, we've had our own small experiences, but nothing that has been overwhelming in a sense that it's

taken over our lives. And we understand one, how prolific anxiety is in today's society, but two how overwhelming it can be as a condition and so we really wanted to make sure that we're speaking to someone who has experienced it and can give their own personal life stories so I'm so looking forward to getting into this app and I'm so looking forward to unpacking it but before we do there's a few other things we want to touch on first yeah look I just want to add like my two cents in there real quick when we do bring you guys these things like Laura and I as you guys know we can talk underwater we love to tell you our experiences and we love to draw on our own experiences but we really bring you this podcast and we always have brought you this

podcast because we want to make a difference and we want to help you with anything that you're going through we will be the first people to put our hand up and say you know what we don't know enough about this or we haven't experienced this so let's get the experts in let's get the professionals in let's get the people that have really experienced it so that is why we felt really passionately about getting experts and someone that has gone through anxiety like osha to come and talk to you guys because we don't want to sit there pretending we've gone through something to this extreme that we just haven't so anyway I'm really excited about that but before we get into that I had a moment today Laura what did you do I something that I did but I had this

moment where I realized I've crossed over and I'm old I feel for the first time we are the same age and you've only just had that moment well you've got 12 months okay I'm a year older than you but anyway. Don't round it up. Don't bundle it in. No, I, you know what? Okay. I had some time off today and I thought, you know what? I'm going to go treat myself. I haven't gone shopping or bought myself anything in a long time. I'm not a shopper, right? I don't go in often treat myself. I try and save my money. I want to buy a house and I'm pretty good with it. What did you do? Go and buy some vitamin D tablets or something? Oh, wait, I went to the shops. I was like, cool, let's go on this shopping spree. I walked into Bondi Junction and without even, it's like my body just took me

there on its own. I all of a sudden was in Harvey Norman. Then I was like, what am I doing in Harvey Norman? Go and buy yourself a dildo or some clothes. I'm in Harvey Norman and I'm in front of the vacuum section and I'm excited. I am excited by these vacuums. I like that we just went from dildos to vacuum and now you're excited and sending nudes. This is the problem. I'm like on the borderline cusp of sending a nude, but then really wanting to vacuum up around it. So I'm in the vacuum and there's this couple that I'm talking about these vacuums with and the couple next to me that are also buying a vacuum except they're 65 plus we're in this great conversation we're both really excited and then I drop a thousand dollars on a vacuum before

I know it I'm walking down the escalator and I'm talking to them about how excited I am to go home and try it out halfway down the escalator it just hits me I was like who are you are you 75 what is wrong with you and then I had a moment where I'm like I'm done I'm old wait what sort of vacuum cleaner did you buy oh my god it was cordless it lasts 40 minutes and it's like the second most powerful on the market can you please say it again to me slowly because i'm really getting off on this quarters what's the suction value like it's like how many watts 100 oh okay so so anyway my point is like i had this moment of where i was like you are fucking old and then i thought sure does everyone else have these moments like i'm doing my best to hold on to my youth

right i'm dating a 26 year old i'm doing my best i'm putting the hard yards in but i think it's happening so i want to know have you had that moment the fact that you've only just had this moment now astounds me mine was about five years ago so the moment that matt and i were like okay we're gonna have a second kid we need to buy a new car even then i was like okay we're gonna get a family car so that's like that makes sense right get a family car we're gonna have two car seats in the back whatever let's get a tiguan volkswagen great family car no we didn't buy the tiguan volkswagen we bought the seven seater one the seven seater because the woman at the car yard convinced us that if we were going to maybe have another kid in the whatever future which

trust me after the last week you're probably not gonna think i could but we'll see we bought a seven-seater car and we got a home and i love my seven-seater car but it's like driving a minibus around it's just a people mover so i'm old that's 100 yeah there's no cool 30 year olds getting around with a seven-seater car i mean okay yeah there's not i was sure i was like trying to prop you up for a minute because that's what friends do but no you're old okay i also have back pain so you know it all explains it but anyway okay we do have a recommendation for you guys today and it's something that brit i mean brit is bringing this recommendation but i have jumped on the bandwagon because it's a book reco that brit read a couple of weeks ago and then she has

given it to me and that book is called heartsick by jesse stevens now guys we bought you some recommendations last week i said c-spiracy and there's a very controversial one there's been a lot of people sliding into the dm about that one but then britney also brought this is us which has had rave reviews rave reviews yeah you guys have gone nuts and like absolutely bonkers in my dms two people there's two types of people that have been sliding into the dms the ones that are like thank god you're finally spreading the word we've been a fan of this is us for years and the other half that like thank god for this recommendation i've started watching it and i'm obsessed so i gotta be big for my boots you know i was like oh i can bring the recommendations now

so i'm bringing you the new one i read this book when i was on my deathbed for the last two weeks you guys know that I was okay slight exaggeration you know I was really ill I exhausted all of Netflix and I started to read a book it was touch and go she's back she's back to a picture of health and a picture of nudity Laura was yeah great nudity Laura was putting out actually she was just going to call out for a new podcast host but I brought it back so if you don't know who Jessie Stevens is or you might have heard that name she actually is the co-host of Mama Me Out Loud and she also hosts their True Crime podcast so you might have heard the name from that but this is her very first book that she's ever written and honestly like it takes me a lot to

get into a book these days purely because I'm time poor and my attention span is that of a goldfish but it is so well written and it is such an easy read that's beautifully engaging that I'm halfway through now Brit's finished it and I'm obsessed well it's a narrative non-fiction so it's it's like she's been a journalist right she's gone and found three separate couples or three individuals I should say. And these individuals are completely unrelated. Their names are Claire, Patrick and Anna. And she speaks to them over a period of a year or so, maybe even longer. And she just gets their story. It's essentially a year long interview where she's extracting their story about love and heartbreak. And they all have very individual stories. So the whole book

is supposed to be showing, I guess, the ups and downs, the highlights and lowlights of dating, love and heartbreak. And I guess showing you that in a way we all experience heartbreak and we all experience it in different ways. And I guess for me, I was probably drawn to this because, you know, when you just feel really sorry for yourself, I was sick. I was in bed. I have like a broken heart because my partner's on the other side of the world. I saw this book called Heart Sick. I knew it was by Jesse Stevens. I was like, bingo, like, let me just go and wallow in my own self-pity for a while and listen to other people's heartbreak. But I fell in love with it. I fell in love with the way it was written. I fell in love with the characters. They're very different characters. And

I just feel like every one of us can relate to the love and heartbreak and the things that these characters are talking about. Well, one of the big things for us is like, of course, we're a relationships podcast and we talk about breakups. We talk about navigating heartbreak so much on this podcast. And like, even in the first couple of pages, I had a little teary and it wasn't because like in no way in my life do I think that I'm still navigating or getting over heartbreak, but it's one of those things where once it's happened and you've truly sat in it and experienced it. And even though you've overcome it, if you think back on that person that was so broken by that experience, I think you're always taken back to what that can feel like. And that's the thing

about the book is like heartbreak is universal. Everybody is going to experience it at some point in time, but it feels so uniquely personal. And it feels like when you're in it, you feel like nobody can really understand how bad it is or what it is that you're going through and then you read something like this and you're like oh my gosh everybody everybody experiences this their own unique brand of what heartbreak is but it's all the same and it's this type of grief that I guess we don't get the same validity for it as what you do if somebody passes away or other types of grief where everybody can understand it everybody can see what that is but heartbreak it's just like it's fucking shit guys but the book captures it really beautifully and I love this recommendation

from Brit and I fully wholeheartedly got behind it as well the thing I also like about it is that each chapter kind of swaps between one character to another character so you finish a chapter and then it's really annoying because you have to read the next chapter because you're just so into it totally I don't want to spoil it too much but just as a quick lowdowns how different each character is. Claire is in a gay relationship with a woman that she meets overseas and it's about their tumultuous love life and the things that they have to go through to navigate that. Then we've got Patrick who is a young sort of uni student. He's virgin, he hadn't had sex and he really develops feelings for one of his classmates and it's the story about him trying

to navigate that and try and get someone to fall in love with him and then they navigate a relationship where he because he's a bit socially awkward like he doesn't he doesn't know how to speak to girls very well and then we have Anna and now Anna is she's she was probably one of my favorite stories to follow I was so intrigued because she's in a long-term relationship she's married with kids and after a very very very long time she develops feelings for somebody else that is part of her life and it's her trying to navigate I guess the grass is always greener and like we've done an episode on the grass is always greener and I just felt for her because like she ended up kissing someone else she essentially cheated on a partner and then she has to deal with that

it's a whole nother kettle of fish but she is trying to navigate whether she is really wanting to leave and really has feelings for someone else or is it just because she's been in a long-term relationship and she's wondering what else is out there and I think that is something like I know we get so many people writing about that I've been in a long-term relationship before where I have felt that feeling where i'm like what else is out there should i leave should i stay should i leave should i stay so i just thought as i was reading it i could almost relate to a little bit of each character and i just haven't read anything else like it like laura said like heartbreak and love they're universal so i can't imagine anyone not being able to connect to it so anyway that's my

record for this week i feel like this is starting to become a weekly thing so guys that is heart sick by jesse stevens i'm sure you can get it in all good bookstores but also like it's really important to us to kind of hero other women who are creating their own businesses and you know this is her first book that she's ever written and she's actually part of a competing podcast so like mom and me out loud i would say is like a competitive podcast of ours yeah but they're fantastic 100 and credit where credit's due like we're so for this and so there's space for everybody in this landscape so we really recommend the book go get it read it love it have a cry with us as well okay guys it is time for our favorite segment where you write in your most embarrassing

stories and we essentially laugh at you. Accidentally unfiltered. I am going to kick this bad boy off. No, girlfriend. We talked about this. I'm going to kick this off because mine is so G rated. You do the G rated. And pleasant. Because mine's not. And yours is wild. So I think we should end on a really bad note. Okay. All right. So mine is, and I just feel for this person because I feel like in my current state, this is something I could do. The other day I was at the shops and I had done heaps of shopping I was really tired and my mind was completely on other things I was in a shoe store and I walked in front of this person and then they went to walk the exact same direction as me and I was like oh fuck sorry and then I walked the other way and

then they did the same thing and then I walked the other way this went on for a little while and I kept saying sorry but then they kept walking in the exact same direction I was getting super frustrated and then I looked up and I realized I was standing in front of a fucking mirror it was my reflection it is not no I can't and there were so many people in the shop looking at me and I look like an idiot I'm sorry but were you drunk at 10 a.m in Manning's shoe shop I can just imagine I can imagine being like flustered kind of half on your phone walking up and just being like oh like fuck get out of my way like what are you doing looking at the waist down maybe if you're looking at the feet and you didn't bring your head up but surely if

you're looking at your own reflection in the face you know that it's your reflection trust me sometimes I see my reflection these days I have no idea who's looking back at me I feel this person again that's because we buy vacuums now and I'm because it's been a while since I've had any Botox okay this one is not innocent it's a bit more crude but it actually reminds me of a story you've told in the past Laura okay so I'm 26 and divorced and as much as I didn't want to think about my ex there's one thing that he once did that will always make me laugh so here it is to set the tone i was having one of those girl showers you know hair shave face masks the whole works the reason i was on

my period i was just feeling miserable and i needed some love i needed a bit of a boost on my stroll from the bathroom to the bedroom my husband walks up to me without saying anything he reaches his hand down and down and before i could register what he was doing i feel the tug of my tampon string straight out in that same moment his arm flung back his face went white and he started apologizing profusely he thought the little fluff at the end of the string was a bit of toilet paper that had gotten stuck between my vagina flaps so he kindly reached down to pull it out also the thing that i get here is the thing that makes it the funniest is her saying it's okay he thought it was paper toilet paper in my vagina flaps why would he pull that out

anyway like i'm just so perplexed by the whole oh i think that that part is like i think if it was just a little bit of toilet paper like matt would do that he'd be like there's toilet paper there will you just pull your own toilet paper flap out like why i don't know i'm so confused i'm saying flap he goes she said she finishes off by saying innocently he had reached down to pick it off like he would do an eyelash off my cheek oh bless look i mean i've told my story before about how some guy accidentally pulled a tampon out you would think it happens because it just doesn't i feel like the next thing you would think that there would be some resistance but sometimes it just comes out with a little tug well you don't know the situation you don't know what else is going

on there but the point is this is bloody hilarious and girl i don't think you ever need to suppress that memory i think you live with that you laugh at that guys if you haven't accidentally unfiltered for us please write it in to the instagram it is at life uncut podcast if you haven't the instagram thank you I knew you were going to pull me up on that if you haven't joined our Facebook group as well it's also at life uncut podcast we highly recommend joining the group and you can get in on all of the maths dancing with the stars life chat that goes on there there's a lot going on there's a lot of meetup groups going on too guys like a lot of people meeting up and making new friends so if you are in a new city or you just want to meet new people I know there's a book

club going on up north I know that because my sister's going to join it to make new friends so there's so much going on in the group so if you want jump on there as well all right lifers as we said on today's episode we're talking about anxiety and we have got an interview with osha coming up who's going to share his own personal experiences and we do have an expert on which is dr jody lohenger however before we totally get into their stories and what they have to say brit and i did do a bit of research on anxiety and although like for both of us and we talked about this a lot before we actually started and sat down to do this record. Neither of us have experienced prolonged or generalized anxiety, but of course we have both experienced anxiety in our

lives. And I think that that's a really important take home and something that I found was really interesting from this conversation is that anxiety is normal and everybody will feel anxiety at some point in time. It's related to stress. It's related to worry. However, the thing about anxiety is that, you know, if it's triggered by an event or it has a causality to it, then that's what's quite normal. But when anxiety becomes paralyzing, it becomes a main focus of your day. It stops you from doing things and living life and enjoying your life. That's when you need to consider whether you want to go and seek help for it and actually start to implement some strategies to manage your own anxiety. And one of the things that I thought was really interesting, which we

didn't really get into in the questions that we had with Dr. Lowenjar was this conversation around how hormones affect anxiety as well. And I'm sure so many of you listening would know that like before you get your period, you may feel more down or more anxious or more depressed. And there is a correlative link between hormones and how hormones affect anxiety. So one thing that I researched and I thought was super interesting was when it's that time of the month and we have PMS, there are two hormones at play. There's estrogen and estrogen is what happens kind of two weeks before your period and you will feel happier and actually like more fluffy and like in love and that's like your estrogen is also linked to your serotonin so that's like your feel-good hormones however a

couple of days before you actually ovulate that's when progesterone kicks in and progesterone is like the antithesis of that progesterone is the one that will kickstart your anxiety it'll kickstart your feelings of like i'm fucking pmsing guys and that's where that comes from well like yeah estrogen think of it like estrogen as being like the good little angel on your left shoulder and progesterone is like the devil on your right shoulder and they're just fighting it out and all of a sudden you don't know what's up and there are other hormones as well at play so people you know like it's not just girls who are going to experience this but like people who have increased testosterone that can affect anxiety cortisol which is linked to stress is another thing that

really will increase anxiety as well so that was a big question that came in when we put this out to the podcast group and we were like guys what do you want to know about anxiety there were so many questions that came in and this conversation around hormones was a really big one but it was one that we weren't actually able to touch on with the experts so if you do feel that you have wild anxiety around your period or you have generalized anxiety it's so good to go and speak to someone and actually work through and have some tests done to figure out whether it's psychological or whether it's physiological and the same sort of thing goes for like yes 100% before your period because exactly that because your hormones are out of whack the same thing

goes for premenopause your hormones are out of whack while your body's trying to think what it's doing with its life and it's coming to the end of a chapter for premenopause so it's the same thing they say the same sort of hormone imbalance happens with your period happens with premenopause so they do say they think people think that women experience anxiety more than men and that is for a multitude of reasons but a large one that they think attributes to that is purely hormone based so if you do feel that before your period or you are premenopause or you've just had a baby any other reason that your hormones might be going crazy don't be too down on yourself and don't think straight away oh my gosh I have a problem definitely go and speak to someone but just

know to yourself okay let's note this down let's write this down is it happening every month is it happening every month the week before I have my period because that's a really good way a for you to keep track and b when or if you do go to seek help you do have a record of when this is happening and that's also going to help the doctor help you isn't it so funny though like and this i hope that other people can relate to this but when i used to get my period i would be a crazy angry sad demon just irrationally shit and then i'd be like oh my god i got my period there we go that explains everything but it happens every month and i never figured out the pattern you're taken by surprise every month every single month and any time a guy that I was dating would be like

are you getting your period I'd be like how dare you trivialize my feelings I didn't get like really up and down but I got sad that was my thing and everyone's different so my pre-menstrual feelings was sad I would cry at everything like the dog would walk past I'd cry and I'd cry on like home and away or whatever ridiculous so some people get mad and some people get cranky at their partners my thing personally was just like everything was cutesies and sad no I think I just had the emotional tolerance of a toddler like it was just so I was so irrationally sad angry like anxiety driven it just any feeling that you could feel it was heightened by a million but one of the other things that we did actually we had this conversation with Dr Jodi when we

were speaking to her and I really found this so interesting around the types of personalities that struggle with anxiety one of the things that Dr Jodi sort of touched on was that the great majority of people who struggle with anxiety are often extremely empathetic or extremely sensitive people. And it's because they're more inclined to worry and more inclined to care deeply about what other people think of them, how other people are going and how the world is affected. So it's this worry and this fear, which is so interlaced into what anxiety is. And there's so many different compartments of it, but this worry and fear, which stop you from being able to live your life to the fullest is an integral part of what anxiety is guys before we get into interviewing

osha we do just want to say that this episode does come with a trigger warning we are talking about issues relating to all aspects of mental health depression anxiety and we do touch on suicide as well so if you think that this could be triggering for you maybe this episode isn't for you and please feel free to skip ahead and jump on to the next episode the lifeline australia number is 13 11 14 and that is 24 hours a day so please know that there is always always somebody to talk to so today we are speaking to the man who brought us laura and maddie j's ultimate fairy tale love story the man that also brought us my epic unheard of and far too public dumping and ensuing heartbreak i don't blame you osha but i still haven't got over it osha ginsburg you've

collectively broken more hearts than any other person in australia you're a tv host podcaster author husband father i'm not sure what there is that you can't actually do but welcome to life uncut it has been a hot second i'm grateful to be here and and yeah i remember i stood there once a bachelor in paradise moment where everyone arrived and then i showed up and at fiji i said you all have one thing in common i've personally dumped every single one of you on television and it really is true and actually before we jump into it we do have you here to speak about something very serious and that is obviously you're very open about your struggles with mental health and anxiety but before we do get into that i just want to know it's something

i've been thinking about for a couple of years now did you know that nick was gonna dump me at we have him he's a pinned audience you can't get away from it um the absolute 100 honest truth which is the same when i stood on the beach at thailand with you laura i absolutely do not know until the moment i 100 do not know i might have a clue right but i don't know i really don't know so let me rephrase it i know that you don't know until the first person gets out of the car and then you're like oh cool it's not you it's the next person i think with me what i'm asking is did you know that when i got out of the car second were you like oh it's brit that's exciting or were Even then I didn't know because even then anything can happen

because it's happened overseas where our hero, be it Batch or Batchette, he or she has said no to both. It has happened. Right. In a different country. In other versions of the format, it has happened. So it's literally all up in the air until the moment we really don't know. So I really, really didn't know.

But I 100% absolutely, I mean, this is so behind the scenes, but I so love the woman who runs our show and I so love that she grabbed a camera I mean Jenny Cooper's about probably about a foot head shoulders shorter than me I've worked with her since I think 2006 I think 2007 and she just grabbed the nearest camera person and said we have to follow we're going we've got to tell this story when the girls see each other and that she was able to have that moment where the two of you were able to speak to each other and we all as a nation got that closure now we would have missed that had janine not seen we have to finish this story we have we can't have a sad man in a blue suit doing the jared down the beach we have to

have and he did doing the jared he did he did he did and he walked in the same direction too it was like it's like we've already done this once before it was like a remake it was brilliant I'm like, yes, you could script it. But it was so brilliant. It was so brilliant that, you know, at the head of the show is a woman who's like, no, I have to give these girls closure. They didn't get closure today.

I have to allow them to have closure. When they speak to each other, they can at least have some closure and some solidarity with each other. And that Janine was able to shoot that and give you that on that day. I was very grateful for that opportunity too, because I don't know how it would have left for me just wandering away into the wilderness. All right, well, let's get into it, Osha.

But you do speak so openly about your troubles and your struggles with mental health, anxiety, OCD. And you've already helped a lot of people on your own podcast and with your own writings and you're an author. I guess take us back to the start. Where were you? How old were you when you first realized that something just wasn't quite right? And maybe you didn't know what it was and you couldn't put your finger on it. But was there a moment that you can pinpoint? Yeah.

I guess I knew I was always a very jumpy kid and I always felt quite uncomfortable in my own skin I coped by being louder and trying to control situations by being loud and over the top unfortunately for me my coping mechanism became my career but I've learned since how to manage that because when am I more in control than when I'm on camera and speaking to millions of people and everyone else is quiet and I'm the one that gets to say what happens next on live television it's brilliant it's absolute you never get broken up with oh no i do people have walked out on me on live television before and that's fine because you know i know what to do and i know how to control the situation when i'm there so but yeah i was i was i was quite young i remember getting

sent off to psychiatrists at the age of five yeah things were really weird in high school but things are weird in high school for everyone it was particularly i i struggled with uh coping behaviors and coping mechanisms and you know and anxiety manifested itself in me with a like awful feeling inside of my stomach. And I found the best way to make that feeling go away is to put things in my stomach. So I ended up 112 kilos when I was 17. I mean, I was in Weight Watchers when I was eight. All right. So I, you know, it was a long time of compulsive eating and shame about my body and body dysmorphia. Around about the age of 15, I think I discovered an amazing way to make all the anxiety and weirdness and worthlessness and I don't belong here and will people like me

make it all go away and that was beer and this magical elixir when I drank it made everything okay unfortunately for me the amount that I needed to drink to at all feel okay or normal or comfortable became completely out of control and then you know using alcohol I mean I'm not uncommon Australian men have been dealing with anxiety by putting alcohol in their bodies for generations and so I'm not a special little snowflake but I most definitely ended up with quite a horrible alcohol problem and to the point where I could see that if I kept drinking I was going to die so I stopped there's about 11 years ago now that I stopped drinking but I mean it's really it's a slippery slope because at first you know alcohol was alcohol it's a depressant and yeah it takes

the edge off and oh isn't that great and when you drink it you know as far as the tv ads are concerned you know world-class cricketers show up and you know everything's rad and you know people are having an awesome time and drink responsibly but you know that's not what happens you know eventually it got to the point where it was no longer a choice to have a drink it was no longer i think i might have it it's like i've hang on there's no beer in the house i've got to go get some it's a very slippery slope but i was definitely using it to deal with anxiety and my all my worst anxieties my worst panic everything all that came in sobriety which was really fucking hard to try and deal with and try to stay sober. I'm lucky that I did. I had a

huge amount of support around that. There is a program who takes steps and count days. There's more than 11 steps. It's less than 13. I can't really talk about it, but you can probably figure it out. And those people helped me enormously stay sober, even when the anxiety was at its worse and even when i slipped off the edge of sanity into paranoid delusions and episodes of psychosis that manifested as paranoid delusions so i was really lucky i was really lucky to be able to stay sober because i have no doubt that if i was drinking during that time i would have just gone fuck it and um you know i wouldn't be here talk to you do you think that for you having this like you said you started with food and then moved into alcohol as you got older like

these things were such crutches that you were relying on to kind of mask that anxiety or was there more at play than just anxiety at that point in time but look there's all kinds of things but anything that's an avoidant behavior can be a problem and it became everything else laura it became online gambling it became shopping it became buying things it became memorizing both credit cards numbers and all the numbers on the backs of them you know knowing exactly what to type in to buy stuff online it became internet porn it became everything i think that's a really interesting thing with addiction is right like you go from one thing but sometimes when you then overcome that one it moves into another crux almost until you deal with the issue itself

yeah it's an avoiding it's all avoiding the behavior it's all avoiding that uncomfortable feeling within you and like i started taking meds i was 25 when i first got offered meds god i wish i took them then but i didn't start taking meds until i was 32 so seven years later nearly nearly 10 years i wasted not taking meds meds are really amazing the really important part of getting better for me once you're no longer able to regulate your own mood and your own mental state through breathing or through exercise or through relationships or through lifestyle choices once you can no longer get in front of those anxious thoughts that cascade upon each other you do need help you do need outside help and you know for me it was just accepting

that this was something bigger than me and i needed something bigger than me to help it get better the way i talk about me i like to ride bicycles and you'll be aware that there's a bicycle race called the tour de france you'd also be aware that people who ride in that bicycle race have had a penchant for doping themselves to the eyeballs now you can take might have read a few things about this you can take all the EPO you want in the world you've still got to pedal your balls off to get to the top of Alpe d'Huez to win the Tour de France you've still got to do the fucking work you've got to race so hard even with the drugs on board so the meds are just the thing that make it easier the meds are the thing that slow the cascading thoughts down they slow the

negative thoughts down just enough where you can go hang on is everyone really looking at me when I walk into this room because I feel like they are and all they want to do is drink 17 beers but are they really looking at me have another look where's the evidence actually no nobody's actually looking at me no one actually gives a shit okay i'll just have a soda water all right and it just gives you that little breath to rationalize and double check and question your thoughts and it's really really helpful because what that does is it creates new neural pathways which become automatic i think one thing i want to know with everything you've just said is did you know that with these addictions did you know internally that you were escaping you were doing it to escape

anxiety or had you not figured that part out yet had you not figured why you were jumping from addiction to addiction it took a long time to figure that out i was ignoring all of these things until it all just popped and now i live a life where i i write every day i use writing as a form of maintaining my mental health like in the same way that i i train my body with my bicycle and with my barbells. I train my mind and I keep my body fit with my bicycle and my barbells and I keep my brain fit with the writing work that I do. It's no different having had one and your husband's got one. You don't accidentally have a six-pack, all right? Six-pack abs. We can confirm that.

You've got to really work, as you would no doubt. No, you've got to really work really hard and you've got to be very mindful all day long of what you eat and how much you train to keep that level of body fat because I've done it, it's bloody hard. Similarly, you don't accidentally have good mental health. Particularly if you're someone like me who has been through episodes of poor mental health, you don't accidentally stay healthy. If you do nothing but eat burgers and fries every day, slowly over time, your arteries will calcify and you will have a heart attack. But it doesn't happen from one day to the next. It comes slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. But just as long as it took me to get sick, it took me to get well. If you've ever tried to lose a lot of weight,

which I have done in my life, for as long as it takes you to put on that weight, it's going to take you that long to take it off again. But it takes work. And just believing that this is the way my brain is seeing the world right now. And I have no reason to believe that the world will ever feel any different, but I just have to have hope and trust in my doctors that when they tell me that I will feel better, I just have to believe that I will. I couldn't picture a life without alcohol, but I had people telling me, you can't understand this right now, but it's going to be all right and you'll figure it out and life will be amazing. I didn't believe them. I thought they were telling me a fairy story, but it had to be better than what I was going through. So I'm like,

fuck it. I'll do what you tell me. Same when I got really sick, I could never have ever believed that I would ever feel different about the things that got me really scared or about the anxiety and about the horror and the fear. But I had to have hope that one day it wouldn't feel as bad. so i just did what they told me and that's the hard part you know there's an incredible psychologist that i love she's been on my podcast twice susan david's her name uncomfortable feelings of the price of admission to a meaningful life is what she says in her book emotional agility and you can't have joy without knowing sadness you can't be in love without the constant idea of this is precious because it might go away you know you can't have happiness without

the idea that there's also horror there is a full spectrum of human emotion that makes the positive ones possible you have to accept that the negative ones are there you can't have day without night and avoiding uncomfortable feelings and avoiding the things that make you feel weird in the tummy and make your hands shake and you your throat tighten it just makes them worse and you have to have in my case balls or in anyone's cases ovaries or both wherever you happen to be in your life to trust that you'll cope and trust that you'll be okay one of the things that we focus on so heavily on this podcast is around relationships and i know i've seen some of the conversations that you've had with audrey and for everyone who doesn't know

Audrey is amazing Audrey was our makeup artist on The Bachelor and so I actually feel like I got to speak to Audrey and know Audrey even more than what I was able to speak to you on the show because we're quite separated from you during filming and whilst that experience is happening but Audrey and I had some really great conversations and she's a beautifully warm person and one of the questions we always get is from couples or from women who are in relationships with people who struggle with mental health and they're like I'm not really sure what to do to be supportive and I'm not really sure how I can facilitate and help this relationship to be as healthy as what it can possibly be we don't often have the question coming from the other side of

the spectrum we don't often have people who have mental health problems saying you know how am I able to make this relationship work so my question is from your experience and in your relationship what are some of the things that Audrey has done to be that rock for you and to be that support person to help you to be able to really live life in a way that makes you excited and makes you fulfilled well she does a lot better job of it than I do in that she's good like that yeah and you're right she is kindness personified she's an extraordinary human being and I adore her but she does a lot better job of of it than I do and that she never tried to fix me she never tried to instantly make it better which is my big problem i try to make things better

she just allowed me to be with it and she would ask me well what do you need from me and i think it starts there it starts with validating i can see that this is very uncomfortable for you are you aware that you may be experiencing a response that perhaps doesn't belong to this particular trigger okay have you considered that you know there may be some it might be time to get help with it it's fine there's just something wrong with you know there's just something wrong with your brain it's not you it's there's a few switches and a few a few lights that are stuck on but it's not you it's something's happening with your head and that's fine we can go and i can help you with that and just ask the person you know what they

what they need and we've all had that to varying degrees we're all you know in the words of another excellent batch alumni everyone has an x and so when we um when we have a new partner usually there's a small little instruction manual that comes with the new partner and they go oh listen you know my last ex did this or that it's really important i know this sounds really weird can you never you know if i'm walking to the room can you not instantly turn your phone off because some shit happened to me and if you make your screen black the moment i walk in the room i start to think that shit's going on and people could probably relate to what i'm talking about you know i'm just making that up absolutely yeah i'm just making that up there's nothing to do with

my situation but it's something that you can relate to and people go oh yeah yeah yeah that's fine i'll get that yeah um we i mean matt and i have had those exact conversations because that was a big trigger for me it's like you know exactly that finding out that next was cheating on me through phones and so we have a really open phone policy and it was never a reflection of me not trusting matt but it was a reflection of that's my insecurity that's where you know it lays with me and he was like well i never have anything to hide so if this makes you more comfortable and be able to be the best version of you then that's an easy it's a different exactly Laura and it's a version of that it's a version of an understanding that and Audrey did this

incredibly she she said we did a whole podcast together where I talked to her exactly about this and that particular podcast has been very helpful for a lot of people because we just dived into exactly what we're talking about she was able to see me and my sick brain as two separate things and that was really really powerful because it doesn't it does not all day you know sometimes if you're in a triggered moment and you feel flooded your heart rate goes up you can hear your heart in your ears your hands might shake your voice might change your fists might clench and then for about 45 minutes you're not quite yourself and you're saying do things you don't quite recognize and then maybe an hour later once you've had something to eat or walk around the

block whatever you're like who the fuck said that stuff who was i when i said that what the what the fuck was that about and when she was able to recognize that she was able to recognize it's okay he'll be better in an hour he won't be like this go and do something go ride your bike go lift something go lift a heavy weight come back when you're done and so i would say you know it's just be there and understand that it's not you for a start and they're just somebody who they're sick and they need help i think for the world looking in on you you are so confident and you do look like you've got it all together and you don't look like you struggle from anything you you host shows that millions of people see you do voiceovers that millions of people hear you've written books it

feels like you expose yourself to the world and that you're not struggling so I guess I would like to know everyone's anxiety presents in a different way how did yours present in terms of were you worried unnecessarily that the world was going to end or did you have a social anxiety where walking into a room of people you didn't know made you have a meltdown or was it public speaking because I think for all of us looking in we're like damn Osh is living a life he's got his shit together he's doing everything he's on all these shows he's got all these connections he's done all these cool stuff so how did these symptoms literally present themselves to you well for a start as i mentioned earlier like you a lot of people only ever see me when i'm at work

and when i'm at work i'm in control as i'm on camera i'm in charge everything's amazing because i literally get to say what happens and which anxiety is for me it's a lack of control it's lack of control over a situation so when i'm not at work that's the hard part all right and yeah It was, I got diagnosed with social phobia, social anxiety when I was 31. And yeah, I had an irrational response to something that is rationally, something that's okay to be really afraid of. I fell down into the hole of psychosis and paranoid delusions around climate change. And my brain was telling me that the world was going to end and I'm the only one that

knew about it. And the world was going to end if it was going to happen today. And I'm the only person that knew or cared. And it's a terrifying thought. It was literally real, and I would see shit, and I would see forests burning, and I'd see the streets flooding, and it was awful. I would see chaos and disorder everywhere I looked. Now, I'm able to appreciate that we as humanity are in an enormously huge amount of peril. There's 420 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

There's 280 parts per million before the Industrial Revolution. you need to understand that the difference between an ice age and not an ice age is 100 parts per million so we are over what it took to get our planet out of an ice age and into the era that we're in right now so we're in a fucking massive amount of trouble and i'm able to talk tell you that and be okay and go upstairs and have lunch and be fine while my baby sleeps and you know my eldest goes off to a spin class and i sit down and you know watch a tv show and have a chat with my wife all right it doesn't make that thing any more terrifying and it doesn't make it any more urgent because the house is literally fucking on fire and we

need to be doing shit about it right now but i wanted to run down the street and grab people and warn people and they were going to lock me up if i had done that and so it's still terrifying but I'm okay with how frightened I am of it now. At first I just couldn't bear how frightening it is and it is, it's really horrible and I think a lot of people don't want to think about climate change because it is so horribly, horribly, horribly frightening of what is already the atmosphere and what we are unable to change.

One of the things that Dr Jodie Lowinger spoke about who we are going to get into her interview, she mentioned that something that kind of goes hand in hand with people that have anxiety is that often they have a really high empathy or really high care for other people for the world and those things are interrelated because there is this fear and there is this worry that is intrinsically part of what anxiety is and where it comes from and so what she sees in her clinic is that as a generalization a lot of people who suffer with high anxiety or generalized anxiety are really

empathetic people and i think when you say you know something that concerns you is this state of the world that just reminded me so much of the conversations we had with her and how those things linked together right osha i want to there's one other thing that i do want to talk to you about and it is quite raw and it is quite confronting i have read that you have said in the past that during season two of the bachelor with blake garvey that you did experience suicidal thoughts and you just were at a really really low point how did that look for you and how did you go to seek help? What did you do to know that everything was going to be okay? Because we know that depression and suicide is higher in men. And we know that with everything that's happened in the

world in the last 18 months with COVID, that we have seen an increase in suicide. So what advice do you have for anyone that is having these troubling thoughts or feels like there is just no way out? Suicidal ideation is no fun. I have experienced both passive and active suicidal ideation and it's really an awful awful awful thing to have your own brain tell you listen mate i know a really easy way to make all this pain stop really easy and then i knew i needed to seek help when i went oh man that sounds great because i'm like hang on a fucking second i'm a smart person and i love being alive why would i think that's a great idea and because i was in so much pain and so much agony and it was just it just wouldn't stop

the the stuff wouldn't i was flinching when the thoughts came through my head like you know like i'd been flicked on the ear by an angry sibling while i was playing with lego and i was kind of flinching away from it and the thoughts would come every 8-15 seconds and it just i was couldn't sleep i couldn't do anything and then my brain just piped up i know how to make this all stop, mate. Oh, wow. That sounds great. And at that point I thought, hang on a second. If doing that sounds like a really good idea, that's probably my brain. That's a distorted thing as well. That's my brain distorting reality just as much as distorting everything else. Fuck this. I need help. And so what I did when that was happening, I was on the other side of

the world at the time i just looked at the time zone chart and saw who do i know that's awake and i reached out because i knew from my time in the sobriety fellowship before you pick up a drink you pick up the phone and i have done that in the past i've just called people particularly after i got divorced i once called 23 people in one day and just say hey look man i just need to talk for five minutes just just can you just i just need to check in with someone who's thinking about the world not using my brain and just trust that what you're seeing is okay and then i'll just go with that and then i'll be okay for a couple minutes and i get on the phone to somebody else so similarly i'm like i know what to do here i know i've got to reach out and check in with someone who's using

another brain to think about the world because i can't trust my own brain at the moment it's distorting everything i'm seeing i'm not seeing reality thankfully because of my time in the sobriety program i knew that just because i think it doesn't make it real and that feelings aren't facts and that my brain can misinterpret reality quite easily and it's okay it's just a symptom of having a brain that's a bit sick who i am is okay but the way i'm perceiving the world it's like looking at the world through dirty glasses or a cracked windshield so all i did i just i just got on the facetime and the skype and whatever and i just started calling people and facetiming people or i started with my brothers uh who were awake in australia at the time and as the world started

to wake up i was because i was on a european time zone i just started calling people then i started calling people in east coast america then west coast america and then you know just started calling people and i just stayed on the skype and on the facetime and just hours and hours and hours just connecting with people and i think that's if you're in that critical moment you just have to connect with another human being just connect with another human being if there might be a helpline that's fine understand that no mental state is a permanent state and don't go making a permanent decision about a temporary problem it's horrible it's painful i've been there it's awful and it won't last it will lie to you and tell you it will that's the thing it tries to

convince you that this is how it's going to be forever it's not it's not permanent that's your brain lies your brain tells you the three p's tells you that it's permanent that it's personal that it's permanent and it's global like it's everything it's just about me and it's never going to be any different and those things three things are not true but you may not be in a situation where you can challenge those thoughts you may not be in a way that you can change your mind you may be so rusted on and fear that your brain is in fight or flight mode and you actually can't deviate from your course of behavior so you just got to get on the phone you just got to talk to somebody talk to anybody just go talk to someone who's not using your brain to think about

the world and then get help just get help and understand that you're in a crisis and you know if you were in a car and smoke started billowing out of it you'd pull over and call the roadside assistance that's what's happening and you can't fix it yourself you mentioned that you were prescribed medication and that you didn't want to take it oh you didn't take it for the first two years and then when you went off it it was a slippery slope again after being off it even though you knew it was effective for you why did you have an aversion to taking medication Nobody wants to be, nobody, you know. Look, there's benefits and side effects to everything, okay?

And there's risk and reward to everything. I was late to talk to you today because I rode my motorbike out to Western Sydney to go and get something for it. And that's far more risky than driving a car, riding a motorcycle on Parramatta Road. It's a bit more fun though. It's fucking fun. A bit cooler.

It's really fun. It's really fun to fang a duke out. get way more respect all right it really is and i'm prepared to take that risk for the reward so similarly there's benefits and side effects to medication at first i didn't want to take it because of you know things in my personal life where i'd seen other people struggle with dependency and i didn't want to be zonked out i didn't want to be on you know unable to operate however i had that completely wrong and the kind of meds that i was offered were not the kind of zonk you out kind of meds in fact they were quite the opposite and um eventually when i did get on

them it was amazing and i couldn't believe that i wasted 10 years not taking them but eventually the thing that you take the meds for is 90 of the problem and the side effects of the meds uh like only 10 of the problem and then slowly as the meds start to work and you do the work with your therapists and you get you know better and better and better and better the actual problem that you started taking the meds for starts to get lower and lower and lower and one day it just dips below the side effects those side effects might be weight gain in my case they were weight gain they were sexual dysfunction like yeah it was great to not be crazy but when you're on antipsychotics they just take a testosterone and they just send it on a holiday trying to have any kind of physical

relationship with a human being with no testosterone is like being on survival with a matchbox but there's no matches in the matchbox like yes i have a matchbox yes look at it i can't do anything with it don't ask me to do anything there's no magic i can shake it and it makes no sound there ain't no fire coming but it's you know and being with someone it's important to understand that and then so eventually the problems that i was taking the meds for dipped below the side effects that the meds were causing then when you come off the meds you're then faced with those problems at full strength which take take a while to manage but you know i did actually i did really well for quite a while in fact i don't want off meds again right before wolf was born i was off

meds for for ages actually it was really it was really great to be off meds again but it became quite evident that i just wasn't coping not on them and i know enough to know okay we've done this before uh yeah the benefits are that i won't slip into psychosis again the side effects are a bit of weight gain so i'm on a different meds with a slow a lower side effect profile at the moment a bit of weight gain i can deal with that but it's so worth it to be able to operate and have a healthy you know as healthy as like any human being can in a relationship with multiple you know humans in a family you know with all the ups and downs that come with that you know having having healthy relationships with the people around me is worth it meds have

been really really good for me and i would only say to you that they can take a it's not like you take an ibuprofen or a paracetamol and 20 minutes later you feel better you take up to six weeks for things to kick in and that can be really frustrating particularly if the side effect profiles don't sit with you because then you have to go and find another kind of meds and another six weeks and it can be hard and i tried i think i tried five different combinations of medication before we found the ones that worked for me and that sucked but it worked and at that point you know it was just all that mattered was getting better all the matter was getting better i started dating audrey when i was on so many freaking meds it's not even funny

and yeah trying to have those first few weeks of being in a romantic relationship with someone when there's no spark because that spark has been like there's been a like a a fire blanket covered in pfos that's been thrown on your sexual drive and then trying to go no no you really are hot i promise you hang in there it'll come nothing's gonna she's like have i been friend zoned here what is this well she did i actually know that audrey told me she thought that she'd been friend zoned for sure yeah she thought that i was gay she thought that i was she thought they were hanging out she's like we're buddies oh my god what is what is going on here yeah she thought that i wasn't why don't you hold hands and cuddle yeah she thought that i wasn't into into girls

because i that that kind of sexual hunger that you feel off another person just wasn't there and it's important to understand that if the person that you love is trying to get better and being on meds to help them get better is a part of them getting better it's important that you know that a part of that may be they are less interested in you sexually you are going to have to be with them for that because the person and the partner you're going to get because of that is ultimately going to it's going to be a far more sustainable relationship and it'll be far better and it won't be forever but they will need you to support them and audrey really did support me a lot through that we eventually figured it out you know i can see our son is proof of that we

eventually figured it out and it did take a bit of work but you know there's ways around that and you know all relationships are work i don't know a relationship that's not work and everyone that looks different to everybody but yeah if your relationship is an absolute walk in the park and you have zero issues i feel like something's you're doing it right but osha thank you so much we we cannot thank you enough for coming on and being so raw and honest and open and honestly to hear you talk about it you're such an inspiration to a lot of people and a lot of people look up to you to hear you talk so openly about your struggles and see that your struggles and your mental health have not defined you and who you are and they don't control who you are and you

really can go and live the best of both worlds it's very humbling and we really appreciate you coming on and just being so open I'm really grateful that you had me on it I think part of it why I do talk like this is because I had never heard conversations around mental health that weren't just full of icky and stigma and weird it's like if you just talk about it matter of factly then it's just a fucking thing that you go and sort out it's just a thing you fix it's no no it's just there's a few switches it's a it's it's biological it's a biological thing that's gone on with your brain it's not because you're a bad person or you did something wrong or something like that there's literally a neural pathway in your head that is wired in a certain

way to perceive situations in a different way to other people and it's causing issues in your relationships you can rewire that it may take a bit of work it may take medication but it will be different and it's just a switch that needs to get flicked in your head it's got nothing to do with who you are you didn't do anything wrong sometimes you're just born that way but brains can rewire themselves and it's really important to know that you just have to put the work in osha thank you so much for coming on we are going to put all the links in the show notes to where people can find you your instagram your book your podcast and maybe even specifically the episode that you spoke about that you did with your wife, Audrey.

Legends. Thanks for having me and congrats, ladies. The show's absolutely nailing it, the podcast world. The rising tide floats all boats, so thank you for getting more people listening to the podcast. In order to really round out this episode, we wanted to speak to a specialist in anxiety and we have Dr Jodie Lowinger who is going to join us on the podcast

and she is an award-winning clinical psychologist. She's worked and trained at Harvard Medical School and is a leading expert in anxiety, resilience, mindset and optimizing performance in leaders and teams. Now, she is also the author of The Mind Strength Method, Four Steps to Curve Anxiety, Conquer Worry and Build Resilience. And this book is brand new. It only came out in March and is already one of the best sellers within Australia. So I'd love to welcome Jodie to the podcast. She is answering some of the questions which you guys have put in the Facebook group and also across Instagram. And it is an absolute pleasure to

have her here with us today. Jodie, welcome to Life Uncut. Fabulous to be here. Wasn't that such a great intro? Well, this is something we've wanted to talk about for so long. Britt and I have, I mean, it's been a topic that's been on the back burner for us talking about anxiety and having someone in who specializes on it and who can really give some insight around it. And what I wanted to start with is like, why do you think anxiety has become such a common topic of conversation at the moment I feel like it's on the rise but I'm not sure whether it's just that we're talking about it more or whether it's something that was undiagnosed in the past like what are your what's your perspective on that I think it's a combination of these factors

certainly the world that we're living in is a world that's filled with uncertainty and it's uncertainty that is just getting more and more intense and this was something that was happening prior to COVID and really anxiety is our discomfort with uncertainty. We have evolved from a much more predictable world than we currently live in and we are used to being able to predict whether something is a threat or whether something is friendly in our environment and so the state of play is unprecedented uncertainty and our brain doesn't sit comfortably with that. So it tips society into anxiety at greater levels. Just for the people that don't really know, because I know for me, I don't think I have suffered from anxiety. We'll get into that

later. I'll ask you a question and you can tell me if I have. Actually, you need to go see some therapy. But just give us an overall description of what is anxiety for those that maybe haven't experienced it or don't know about it. What is anxiety? Yeah, anxiety is our physiological reaction to perceived threat in our environment. So it's something that's really important for us as human beings to have this. It's the fight or flight reaction. It's our body getting set up to prepare and fight or run away from something that is potentially dangerous in our environment. The challenge in an uncertain world is our brain responds to what's called perceived threat as opposed to real threat. It might be a worry thought that's taking hold. It could be something

like going to the party and what if somebody judges me negatively or what if I don't fit in or anything of that nature what if I make a mistake at work what if that guy doesn't text me back what if that guy doesn't text me back what if my children don't love me you know all of these sorts of things so anxiety is part of all of us as human beings so what's the difference or how do we differentiate between having full-blown anxiety and just having normal life stresses because I feel like we are going to cruise through a life with stress no one is going to go through life stress-free but how do we know when that crosses the line and turns into something we need to probably seek help for yeah great question so when anxiety turns into what's called clinical anxiety

is when it's causing prolonged fear suffering and avoidance in a person's life so when it can become actually quite terrifying or debilitating is that prolonged experience consistent avoidance or a worry story that's just absolutely getting in the way of a person experiencing life the way they want to live it as opposed to the way worry is telling them to live it. Are there different levels of anxiety to the point that it's debilitating for some people? Is there a level that people won't want to leave the house anymore, won't want to get out of bed? And then how does that vary from, say, somebody who has experienced depression? Do anxiety and depression, I guess, almost go hand in hand?

They can do, absolutely. They don't have to. but certainly it what's called comorbid is when two clinical experiences go side by side sometimes it's anxiety leading to depression sometimes it's depression that can lead to anxiety sometimes it's just both side by side there are many factors and many different you know variations to this what do you think are some of the biggest triggers like that you see within your clinic that people experience and that really brings out anxiety in people i guess apart from covid the last year like just life more like day-to-day life things you mean yeah i mean like well i think

like for one we talk a lot about comparison culture on this podcast and like how that's rife in today's society and how because we have this voyeuristic view into other people's lives there's this feeling of like well maybe mine doesn't match up or maybe i'm missing out on something like what is it that you're seeing are very common triggers for people's anxiety it's part of our society right this fear of missing out fear of not being good enough compare and despair and it breeds imposter syndrome which says that i'm not i'm not good enough you know so certainly conquering imposter syndrome is front and center part and parcel of what what i work with and what i do cover strategies in the book to deal with this because the good news is that

these are all really helpable i don't even say treatable i say helpable because i want us to feel empowered that this doesn't mean that we're inherently weak or not good enough or flawed you know it's part of being human so back to your question about what are some of the most prominent things certainly social anxiety performance anxiety so social anxiety being a fear of being judged negatively or performance anxiety being a fear of making a mistake they are really intertwined And it is almost a byproduct of the world of social media that we experience because everybody puts their airbrushed versions or many, many people putting their airbrushed versions of themselves out on social media. You know, it's always, it's been there for a long time before social media. We had magazines, which was very much perpetuating this myth of I have to be perfect in order to be okay.

and so it sets up unrealistic expectations of what it is to be okay i mean we often talk about the trap that is social media and that you know we know that social media is not real i don't know if you guys have seen the story floating around this week of chloe kardashian and the photo that was accidentally leaked by her assistant chloe kardashian oh it's so bad i literally i just put it on our stories on life on card so her basically guys long story short the kardashians are the biggest influencers in the world. Hundreds of millions of people follow them. All these young women look up to them. They're perfect. Khloe Kardashian's assistant accidentally just uploaded a photo of Khloe that was completely candid at home by the pool accidentally, but they took it

down immediately, but it had already been screenshot. It had already been shared and she looks beautiful. Like just normal. She looks amazing. That's the thing that's so outrageous by this whole conversation. This is why I think this is a great conversation. She's, I mean, you can see her little bits of cellulite her curves she's got normal skin she looks like a beautiful healthy normal woman but she does not look like the perfectly curated idea that she's put out to the world so they have gone bonkers trying to threatening to sue people trying to get all these photos taken down but the funny thing is the response has been incredible the response was people saying oh my god you look amazing like this is and it made people feel

better and I think that the the idea that we're always comparing ourselves to these people when really they don't look like that and I hope that maybe like the Kardashians can learn something from this that they can take their photoshopping down a notch and you know looking at this photo I was like wow actually does not look one thing like the Khloe Kardashian that she presents to the world like she has made herself into a different human. Jodi in your book you teach the four-step method to dealing with anxiety can you talk me through what that is and what that entails the four steps start with building awareness really because we can only change what we're aware of in the first place so it's awareness of our fight or flight driven thoughts

feelings and actions what is worry telling you how does that show up in your body what are some of the fear-driven behaviors you engage in that are getting in the way of you flourishing and thriving whether it's in your professional world or in your personal world whether it's in your academic world I guess when you say engage in it's almost as well like or you disengage with because I think a lot of people when they have wild anxiety they will step back from doing things they won't go to that social event or they won't you know give the that guy their number or they just don't put themselves out there in the same way that other people might for fear of rejection or for fear of looking silly or for fear of physically being hurt whatever it is that's

holding them back but there is this like stepping back from really living your full life and being like a life that will make you very happy. Absolutely right. And I love the examples that you're giving because there are so many different faces to anxiety. And this is something that is sometimes under-recognized is that it sometimes presents as agitation or aggression or that short fuse defensiveness. How does one determine how severe their anxiety is and at what point should they be going to seek help for anxiety? If you feel like things are getting in the way of you doing what you want to do that's when you seek help you know there's no stigma or shame in seeking help you know whether it's seeking out help with a mental health practitioner

or your GP or leveraging self-help strategies it's not weak to feel it's human to feel and responding to that with helpful actions. I tried to think back if anyone straight off the street said to me have you ever dealt with anxiety or experienced anxiety I would have said no no way and then when we're going to have this conversation I thought to myself think back over the last 10 years has there ever been anything that maybe has happened to me that I just didn't know was because I will be dying before I go to a hospital or go seek help and I'm not proud of that but I'm not that healthy I'm that person that will do everything under the sun to look after myself on my own before I go to seek help and I am not proud of that and I think that I

encourage other people to go seek help but I remember a time I think that I probably have experienced it you can tell me one when I broke up with a really toxic ex after a long time I got into this point of my life where I would start to have panic attacks at home and I couldn't breathe I had to get the old school paper bag thing which I only did because I saw in the movies and because I thought that I would I was worrying about the fact if I would run into him because it just did not end well. Did I have an anxiety attack? Is that what that is? It certainly sounds like that's what that was. And in this situation, it was sometimes actually when we feel trapped in an experience in life. If you think about the primitive survival instinct at play, if a tiger

was stalking us back into a cave and we felt trapped, that's terrifying. And so there are certain situations in life where people feel trapped. They feel like, oh, what to do? And that can be a really triggering experience for anxiety well the other thing that I think a lot of people would experience and that I've realized I experienced a lot was when I was younger I think when I was probably only 10 my dad had two heart attacks he's still alive he's healthy so healthy but I spent the next 10 years every day thinking that he was going to die and I couldn't stop worrying about it until my boyfriend of a few years said you've got to stop doing this and I'm like but what if he dies tomorrow he's like but what if he lives for another 30 years Brittany

like and I was in this state of constant worry and I never at the time would have said I'm experiencing anxiety but once I've like jumped into this research from you I'm like oh my god I have I have you psychoanalyzed yourself I psychoanalyze myself but I think that's an interesting question itself can it be that something happens in someone's life like someone's pretty much coasted through without feeling this overwhelming sense of anxiety and something can turn it on so maybe a life event for example like your dad brit or a really bad breakup can there be a trigger that's like almost like an on-off switch that can cause this to start happening yeah certainly there certainly can be absolutely so how can someone then distinguish

if something is reality and actually a real threat or if it is just this what if conversation that you're having yourself how does someone go oh no no you're being crazy stop not really a giant spider under my pillow I went through a period where I used to be really frightened that someone and it's this sounds so silly now in retrospect but I mean it happens to people but I used to be so it's not silly thanks thanks I will validate your feelings I used to be so frightened that someone was going to come into my house like as in like someone was gonna be inside the house when I got home so when I lived by myself or when I lived with one or two housemates if I was the only one there I would come in I would check under beds I would check in cupboards just like really

proactively checking my house to make sure that there was no one hiding inside but I don't know where that came from and it almost became habit that I would like I would get on the floor and check under the rug in case you were flat before I went to bed bum you know if I was going to sleep at night time by myself and now I look back on that and I'm like wow that was pretty odd behavior really that a fact that I didn't feel comfortable in my own home just to come inside and feel safe and go to sleep but I never recognized it as being abnormal behavior so I guess my question know, you've already covered like how you can acknowledge when something's not necessarily normal, but how do you acknowledge when something's actually a real threat or something is a perceived

threat? Well, it's only a problem if it's a problem, right? So I mean, it was fine that time I slept with a knife under my pillow, guys. It's totally not a problem. So it's a problem if it's getting in the way of you living your life, right? And if it's, if it's causing suffering in your life and so in this situation ultimately we recognize that worry is bossing you around and getting in the way and so we want to lean into the difference between vigilance which is heart-driven action so problem solving and action planning let's say not leaving your windows open and unlocked when you're at home by yourself locking the door or you know doing prudent problem solving actions making sure you turned your hair straightener off is probably a big one guys

making sure you turn your hair straightener off but not necessarily checking it five times you know so that's the difference so another question I have is and this is something that came in from our listeners it was a big one I know that like postpartum anxiety is a really big thing and and I experienced this a lot with my first daughter it originally was when I was pregnant I was worried that there would be something wrong with her but with my second daughter it's really extended throughout not just her pregnancy but now she's nine weeks old and I still have this fear that maybe she's not developing right. Maybe there's something wrong with her. And it definitely hasn't gotten to a point where it's debilitating by any means, but there is a level of irrationality

to it. And there's no real reason for you to feel like that. Well, not anymore. I guess there was at the start, but not anymore. And my question more so is around hormones and what role do hormones play in increasing anxiety? And is there a correlation between your fluctuating hormone levels and your experience and how you perceive the world and how you deal with anxiety there certainly can be you know certainly around around birth I've got three children myself the trials and tribulations of the whole journey of having babies having children that whole process is such a tumultuous time but there can be underlying factors that can play out in these situations these things are a multi-factors that can contribute to the nature of the problems that

we're experiencing we get a lot of questions i mean we talk a lot about love and relationships and dating and we do get a lot of questions with people that have huge levels of anxiety in the dating world in those initial stages in courting and going and speaking to someone in a bar in case they you know I rejected or turned down what's your advice for because it's easy for Laura and I and I preach it all the time I'm I have asked that every person I've ever dated basically I'm quite forward like that but that's because I got to a level where I didn't care about the response of course I wanted them to say yes but if they said no there was no skin off my back I'm not going to lose sleep so it's easy for me to sit there and say don't worry about what they say

who cares is that something that you would also tell people because we've got a lot of questions saying you know what do I how do I approach him what if he says no I can't bring myself to do it people that have turned up to dates and haven't gone in they've walked away they've seen the person in there and they've walked home and they've texted them and said I've come down with a headache I can't make it what's your advice to people that get themselves so worked up before a date in essence it's sitting with that discomfort which is challenging at times because we want to know for sure that it's going to be okay when you approach rather than avoid we typically learn that the outcome wasn't a catastrophe and we build resilience because even if it doesn't go perfectly

there are going to be situations where you start living your life and you recognize that it wasn't a disaster well for me I think I used to think I used to say to myself what would I be more unhappy with and what would be worse if I went up to him and asked him out and he said no or if I spent the next year wondering what he would have said and that's what I used to tell myself I would drive myself insane being like what if I went up and asked him out and he said yes that day that for me caused me more anxiety than the idea of him saying no to me so I just tried to balance and put things into perspective and I guess that's what I always try and tell people I'm like always ask yourself what's the worst that can happen but I guess the interesting thing with

this as well right is like the more you expose yourself to anything in life the less scary it becomes so if I was rejected on national tv I'm fine I've exposed myself I can only go out from year oh you're gonna reject me now whatever please doesn't even touch the sides but no that's true like you know if there's something that frightens you in life the more that you're maybe it's public speaking the more that you do it the more that you are exposed to it if you said the same speech every day for a year I guarantee you by the end of the year you would not be nervous anymore everybody would be very bored but you wouldn't be nervous if you're constantly avoiding putting yourself in situations where you feel uncomfortable you're never challenging yourself you're never

putting yourself outside of that comfort zone and growing and being able to you know in a year's time or six months time conquer those things and do it in a way that's very empowering yeah definitely and you know worry tricks us worry feeds us stories that say the outcome is going to be a disaster you're not going to cope and so when we listen to that story we avoid right but in approaching rather than avoiding you allow yourself to learn that you coped that the outcome wasn't as bad as you thought it would be and you learn to sit with the discomfort of imperfection this is how we live our lives and stretch that comfort zone it is in taking steps out of your comfort zone that you create a new comfort zone one of the big questions that came in and something

that I wanted to ask you personally is if you have somebody in your life who suffers with anxiety and you don't necessarily what can you do to support that person I think that that's a really big one in that, you know, there's a lot of couples out there who their partner suffers with anxiety and they want to be a better support person for that or be more understanding of it, but they're not really sure what to do. They can't connect. They've never experienced it. They don't relate to it necessarily. Yeah. Yeah. Magnificent question. Typically we jumped to problem solving and we jumped to problem solving by saying you should do X, Y, and Z. Now that's not necessarily a really good strategy because the other person might respond

with you know putting a brick wall up and saying you you have no idea what I'm going through so really a superpower in any relationship is starting with emotional validation and it's much easier than people typically think it's really just reflecting on the emotional experience that the other person is going through so something like I get it it sounds like it's really frustrating at the moment or yeah wow that was a really tough day you've gone through so that emotional validation piece is incredibly powerful so step one is emotional validation and step two when the person is out of that headspace they're ready to engage in problem solving and what you can do is really take on a facilitation kind of stance which is problem solving by asking a question

with your end goal in mind to empower the other person towards a helpful solution as opposed to telling them what they need to do so edging them to feel like they've found the answer on their own so you're sort of like guiding them in the direction I guess this is what I have to do with Matt this was you you came up with this idea it was a great idea it was all you baby totally I guess the worst thing you can say to somebody is stop worrying right like you can't just say what are you worrying about stop worrying because essentially that is the core of their being in that moment yes I guess as well another question that came in which was on the flip side to this and I think that sometimes when you don't struggle with anxiety and you don't understand where it's

coming from in somebody else it can literally be hard to understand as in like somebody might be catastrophizing a situation that you personally don't see the issue with and so what do you do if you're the person that's struggling with anxiety and somebody who's close to you just doesn't get it and like they can't understand they can't relate they don't necessarily have the empathy that you're needing from them at that point in time what can you do to protect yourself or to better explain to your partner or to your friend hey I'm having a really hard time I know that you don't get it because you don't experience a hard time in the way that I do but I need you to kind of give me a bit more here like how do you suggest someone navigates that situation? If a

person isn't interacting with empathy we want to help them towards viewing the situation from an empathic and reflective standpoint. So it might be saying, I feel such and such when you do say such and such, and I would prefer that you do X, Y, or Z instead. Trying to bring the other person around to viewing the situation from their perspective. Yeah. So I guess it's just really reiterating how their action makes you feel. So when someone's having a panic attack or an anxiety attack when they're in the situation this was a question that came in from the listeners when you're in that moment what are the techniques that you can do or that they can do to calm themselves down or to breathe out of it do they write something down is it a breathing thing is

it a meditation thing do they phone a friend like what do you suggest for someone in in the moment uh any of those strategies sound really sound really good to me you nailed it in the moment however when we're being taken into fight or flight at pace it really is leveraging the power of the breath the breath is our superpower in that moment and it's it's about the out breath you know long slow out breath will take the brain out of the sympathetic nervous system and re-engage the parasympathetic nervous system okay i think that's good for everyone to know if you're in the moment just to say lastly i really want to know is if someone struggles with anxiety is it possible to totally overcome it or is it something that you will work on and

go through throughout your whole life anxiety is about managing the unhelpful actions and realigning with helpful actions and so it can be really varied in everybody we might have a predisposition towards these sorts of experiences there might be triggers in life that tip a person into more extreme anxiety or it might just go into hibernation or go away completely it's very varied across different people. The fact that not to take away from anything from you right as an author but the fact that you've written a book on anxiety and it has gone to the top of the charts is saying how much of a problem this is at the moment. There are so many people that are wanting and needing and looking for help across the world. It was obviously very prevalent before COVID. I

would love to know the statistics from COVID but I can only imagine. We know you know we've seen the depression statistics come out the other side of COVID and I guess anxiety would only be on that same acceleration. It's obvious how many people you have helped with your book. And I think that's absolutely incredible. And I hope that everyone that listened today has gotten something from it. I know I already have. I learned that I did have an anxiety attack and that I'm not emotionally void. But Jodie, for anybody who wants to find you, let us know like your Instagram handle, where they can get your book, all of the good stuff. so my website is drjodie.com.au and the book is available in all good bookstores it's available

on audible you're available everywhere basically your book's actually sitting up there next to mark manson isn't it congratulations next to markie manson in our bestsellers all right guys you know that we never finish an episode without our suck and our sweet our highlight and our own personal low light of every single week and you are going to kick it off Brittany what has been your suck yeah look sometimes they're really big things and sometimes they're trivial things but it's really important that it doesn't matter how big or small anything is and I think that's why we really like this episode sometimes it's ridiculous and we are bawling our eyes out and sometimes it's like you drop your coffee anyway this week my suck I had a pretty good week because

I'm feeling better so I didn't have a lot of suck so I'm going to say my suck is that I'm just really struggling to be a supportive long distance girlfriend at the moment purely because Jordan's on the other side of the world all his tennis matches are his daytime his afternoon but that's me at 3am trying to get up and be the supportive girlfriend and that leaves me with about three hours sleep before I have to get up for work the next day the other night we finished recording and we watched Dancing with the Stars it was like 10 30 at night and Brent was like okay I gotta go home now because I'm gonna go home and watch Jordan play I was like far out I gotta go to bed and I did and the thing with tennis is though the matches can go for so long and this

match he was neck and neck like it was the longest it was over three and a half hours of tennis and I love watching him play but when it hits three in the morning I'm like babe you either need to finish this or lose like let's get it done so I can go to bed you just need like the highlights real or just get up really early and like plug it in have a google see oh babe I loved you in that second quarter how you did this this and this that was amazing until he's like what's your favorite part and I was like the part where you hit the ball it's my favorite yeah everything you do is my favorite Jordan but my sweet is okay my sweet was actually watching him because it was neck and neck and he did win and it was really great and he was excited my other sweet was I

got to go up for the weekend it was really really quick visit I think I was there for 24 hours total to Queensland so I visited my niece and nephew and my brother and his partner and I just haven't seen them in ages i had a two days off so i was like you know what i'm just gonna be spontaneous duck up there see them and come back so that was my suite for the week also though i think it's very very normal and not just the fact that you have to get up and watch his games in the middle of the night like that in itself is like some hardcore long distance stuff that most people don't have to do but just managing different time frames it's really difficult you know when the person you love is on the other side of the world and their sleeping time is your waking time and

vice versa just being able to have that time to connect with each other it's really fucking hard It is, and I don't want to say that I have to get up and watch him. I want to. Like, I'm obsessed with him. I'm obsessed. And I tell him that. So cute. It is.

I messaged him and I was like, I'm obsessed with you. I Google him all the time. Like, I see what articles are out about him because I want to keep up to date with him because there are some times that we just can't contact each other. And I love, like, I'm the proudest girlfriend in the world. Like, I have zero cool now. I went from trying to play it cool to having a little bit of cool to having not a single ounce of fucking cool left.

Do you want to know, talk about not being cool? I'm going to tell you something funny. His first match that I really saw, I went down to watch him in the Australian Open. There's a tournament before the Australian Open. I went to his practice match and his two coaches were there. Leighton Hewitt was there because Leighton helps to coach him. And just all the people that are just really important were there.

But it wasn't a match. It was just a warm-up before the game. And it's the first time I'd actually seen him play properly. And every time he got a point, I was like standing up and clapping. And everyone was like, it's a train. if this is we're training that's what he said at the end he's like good shot honey he's like babe you need to calm down like this is the warm-up practice and I'm like I know I'm just so proud of you and he was like can you please be cooler I told him at the Australian Open that I was going

to make a big piece of cardboard with a glitter sign and he was like I'll literally get security to escort you out if you start waving a glitter sign in the Australian Open it's like I love you but you're extremely embarrassing anyway so what was your suck and sweet well I kind of mentioned at the beginning of this episode like you know every so often parenting definitely gets the better of me I don't know how else to describe it but like admitting from time to time that I'm finding it really hard is not just like outwardly saying it to other people but it's admitting to myself that I'm finding it hard and I struggle with that so I've had a couple of moments this week last week where I guess because work has been so busy I feel like I'm spread so thin and

that I'm not really doing a good job of either. And I've definitely talked about that before on the podcast, but it is a constant running theme in my life at the moment. But anyway, the sweets for the week, I've had quite a few highlights, so I'm just going to rattle off to the sweet of my week is that we just launched a new collection with Tony May. And this has been like a collection that's been in the works since September last year. And I was super heavily pregnant whilst we were designing it and manufacturing it. And then I was like nine, literally nine months pregnant when we did the photo shoot I was like climbing over I remember he walks like 14 kilometers at nine months pregnant over the rocks walking I think I waddled around the rock platforms but I

mean I just was so proud of myself that we got it finished and and then to kind of like set that baby out into the world it was a really really satisfying feeling so that was like my absolute highlight for probably my highlight since Lola was born to be honest well the collection's actually insane I'm not saying that because I'm biased like I'm biased for sure but I'm not Tony May I'm not saying, we'll add the link in show notes. I'm not just saying this. It's insane. Like every single item, every single piece of jewelry is insane. And you guys have to go check it out for yourself, but just to go in touch on your suck, because I don't want to overlook that. I love that you're finally admitting that it's hard because I know for a long time, it's hard for

you to admit that. I would say to you like, how are you? Cause deep down, I knew that you're struggling. You'd be like, great. Everything's fine. I'm fine. You're fine. We're fine. And I was like one day she's going to implode and did but now but now it's nice one day you're gonna have a breakdown and uh yeah we'll figure that out when it happens but that's the thing and i think that's why it's so important to just say hey you know what i'm not coping and that's not the end of the world that's just like i just need a helping hand for a weekend or a day or a week or someone just to you know watch my back for a little bit and that's so normal and i think for you to go and say that and let everyone know that no one's exempt from it it is hard for everyone

I think that's really really powerful so anyway if you need anything call me you want a cup of sugar or a hug or a glass of wine it's funny because we preach that on the podcast and we talk about like there's power and vulnerability and there's power in saying you're not okay and there's power in asking for help but then when it actually comes to doing it it's a whole other thing like we both suck at taking our own advice yeah and we can sit here all day and say like this is what the experts say but when you actually have to try to implement these things and I think just acknowledging that you know sometimes you do need help or sometimes not even necessarily help like it's not like there's physically things or tasks that I can give to somebody else but just

going okay right now is a bit shit and this is not going to be the constant like you know it comes in waves but right now I'm having a hard day and that's okay and that's okay we'll check back in next week and I'm sure it'll be the same no no no we're on the up guys actually we recorded most the episode yesterday and we're doing the final touches today which is Monday the day before the episode comes out and I'm already feeling a lot better so yeah well guys that is it we hope you loved the episode today we actually loved speaking to both Osha and Jodie we got something from it I hope you guys did too I do just want to add in that if you do need to speak to someone or if you are struggling you can call Lifeline and we're going to put those details in the notes you can

call them absolutely anytime don't ever feel like you can't reach out to someone in your life and ask for help if you need it keep the questions coming in for ask uncut just slide on into the dms with ask uncut at the top and keep those really embarrassing stories and your accidentally unfiltered rolling in because you know how much we froth those so that is life uncut podcast on instagram and also on the facebook group and if you feel so loving and kind and you want to jump onto apple podcast and leave us a review then i mean we would love that but also even if you don't feel loving and kind just do it just do it but like make sure it's five stars if it's less than that we don't want to hear about it guys tell your mom tell your dad tell your dog tell your cat tell

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