The Life Of Bryony - 44. The Life of YOU: Why Upsetting People Can Be a Good Thing

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Welcome to The Life of YOU! The bonus series where we tackle your dilemmas and share advice to navigate life’s trickier moments. This week, I’m joined once again by Owen O’Kane—psychotherapist, bestselling author, and anxiety expert. His book Addicted to Anxiety reveals why so many of us get stuck in worry loops—and more importantly, how to break free. Together, we answer your questions about overthinking, people-pleasing, and how to stop anxiety from taking over your life. Today: 💬 Lucy constantly worries she’s upset people, even when she hasn’t—how can she break this exhausting habit? 💭 Judi struggles to switch off, even when she’s relaxing—how can she stop her brain from ruining moments she’s meant to enjoy? 🤯 Aaron asks why anxious thoughts feel more real than rational ones—why do they always seem so convincing? WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU 🗣️ Got a question or a story to share? Text or send a voice note on 07796657512—just start your message with LOB 💬 Use the WhatsApp shortcut: https://wa.me/447796657512?text=LOB 📧 Prefer email? Drop us a line at [e-mail] If this episode resonated with you, please share it with someone who might need it—it really helps! CREDITS 🎙️ Presenter: Bryony Gordon 🎙️ Guest: Owen O’Kane 🎧 Content Producer: Jonathan O’Sullivan 🎥 Audio & Video Editor: Luke Shelley 📢 Executive Producer: Mike Wooller A Daily Mail production. Seriously Popular. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today on The Life of You, the bonus episode where we tackle your dilemmas and try not to make them any worse. I'm joined once again by Owen O'Kane, psychotherapist, bestselling author and anxiety expert. His book Addicted to Anxiety reveals why so many of us get stuck in worry loops. And more importantly, how to break free. Your questions answered right after this. Like a lot of the listener questions, Owen. They're from other people, but they could all be from me. Okay. They could be from me. Okay.

They could be presented questions. Okay. Lucy asks, and Lucy is a real person, she's not me, but I'm real as well. My brain convinces me I've upset people even when I haven't. How do I break this habit? This is so relatable. I spend my life in a constant state of concern that I've upset people. I think you always have to go underneath the question. So this concern, I worry I've upset people. So then you kind of go underneath that and say,

okay, what would be so bad about that if you did? Oh my god, but I mean, I would have upset someone. And what would be so bad about that if you did? Oh my god, but Owen, I would have upset someone. Can that be okay? No. Why? No, I suppose it could be okay. Okay, so here's what I've left. If you're not upsetting people, here's the thing.

I think if you're not upsetting people some of the time, then you're doing something wrong. Okay. And your role in this planet is not to keep everyone happy. It's just not possible. Okay. Not possible to be liked by everyone. It's not possible for everyone to agree with you but it's not you know and this is a thing for most anxious people going back to that theme

of inflated responsibility. It is not your job to make sure that everyone else in the planet is is well and healthy and that your views and opinions serve them. Is there also something else underneath this which Lucy and I may suffer from which is not understanding that unconditional love means that someone can be upset with you and still love you? They can do but I think it even goes beyond that it goes back again to that theme is that if you're willing to betray yourself and your own needs or your own views and opinions at the cost of pleasing someone else then you're not valuing yourself. Yeah. And that's always worth stopping to check well if I'm doing that because I want to keep them happy but at the cost of me holding on

to resentment or feeling angry that I'm doing something that I don't want to do or I'm just giving them this version of myself because I believe that's what they expect me to be, well then the only person who gets betrayed is you. Why would you do that? There you go Lucy. When you get into an escape plug in hybrid, you get the perfect mix. You can chill in electric mode, turn it up in gas mode, or get the best of both in hybrid mode. Choose how you move in the all-in-one Escape. And right now, get a $3,000 rebate on the Escape Plug-in Hybrid and all 2025 Escape

models. For details, visit your Toronto area Ford store or ford.ca. Judy, let's gone in touch and she says, I've struggled with anxiety for years. And the thing that frustrates me most is that even when I'm supposed to be relaxing, my brain won't switch off. I could be watching a film or on holiday or spending time with friends. But in the background, my mind is constantly scanning for problems. It feels like I'm never truly present. How do I stop my brain from ruining the moments I'm supposed to enjoy?

The operative word there is stop. Stop. You're never trying to stop your anxiety. Right. And I think that is a cardinal mistake I see people making because they're trying to either stop their anxiety or they're trying to control it, or they put conditions around the fact that I shouldn't be feeling anxious. The minute you strip all of that away and say, okay, I'm not going to try and stop this. I'm not going to work with the judgment that this is wrong and I should

be feeling something different. The minute you can surrender to the fact, okay, at the moment I'm anxious, I'm going to allow that to be. I'm not going to judge it. I'm not going to push it down. I'm not going to run from it. I'm going to accept that that's here at the moment. Then what will happen is the anxiety will drop off. Right. Because you've given them permission. Think again about the simplicity earlier when I talk about the anxious self. If all of the energy, because if you listen to that question, everything in the question is about how can I resist, how can I stop. It's about resistance. Yeah. So suffering comes from resistance to what is. So there's a really simple message here, stop resisting.

Right. And I'm not going to say any more about it because it is about- Because that's the next book. Yeah, exactly. But it is also about what would be so bad. I believe that anxiety is an energy. I really believe this wholeheartedly.

And it's an energy state. And like all energy states, it has a beginning, middle, and end. So if anxiety moves in, it's moved in. It's OK. Doesn't matter whether it's here, watching telly, whatever the moment is. If an anxious state has moved in, your job is to get out of the way and give it permission to pass through. Listen to the words of that question.

It's asking the opposite. How can I control this? and give it permission to pass through. Listen to the words of that question. Yeah. It's asking the opposite. How can I control this? What do you find with everyone who struggles with anxiety and need to control and need for certainty? So what I would say to Judy is, Judy, get out of your own way. Oh, that's bad.

Aaron asks a very good question, if I say so myself, which is why do anxious thoughts feel more real than rational ones? Because they come with thoughts come with qualities. I really believe that. So anxious thoughts come, they're quite dramatic. They're quite intense. They often focus on predicting. They will often go for the worst possible outcome and they'll often be more extreme than general thoughts. So of course with that comes when psychology we call it heightened emotional arousal. So with the extremity of the thought then you get a heightened emotional arousal state which is normally you know fear, angst, dread. And of course when people then get that feeling they start to worry about the, which then in turn feedback loops into thought and exaggerates it even more.

But this is what I've tried to do here. I've really tried to break down the mechanics of anxiety so that people get, okay, this is what's happening in my brain. This is what's going on emotionally. This is what's going on in my body. This is what I really wanted to do in this book because I do think there's a lot of stuff out there and we, I just think there's a lot of fluff around anxiety and there's a lot of tiptoeing around it. We're afraid to defend anybody. I mean, why aren't you in charge of the world? A huge thank you to Owen for his insight and clarity today. His book, Addicted to Anxiety, is a massive game changer, whether you're someone who constantly overthinks, feels completely trapped in anxiety loops, or just wants to understand how to quieten down your brain a little bit more.

If this conversation resonated with you, please send it to a friend, especially someone who might be stuck in an overthinking spiral. And of course, don't forget to hit follow or subscribe so you never miss an episode and an opportunity to lessen your anxiety. Take care, be kind to yourself and I'll see you next time.