Befriend Your Beast

us over here at Anxiety Bites. Well, I mean technically this is being recorded the week before, and I will allow myself some time off as well the producers of this show, but we all felt it was really important to just keep the train going, have new episodes every week. Why take time off? So I hope that you appreciate and I hope you enjoy having something new to listen to. Hopefully you you got this when you really needed it.

And speaking of recording in advance, my guest today is Sarah Wilson, and I will tell you more about her in a minute, but we recorded this interview I think the summer of about six months ago. And you know, we've recorded a lot of interviews in advance so that

we could get ahead of things. But sometimes I don't air things right away, and I was saving Sarah's for I don't know, I just was trying to find the perfect place to put it and I think we've landed on the good place for this episode, which is that awkward week between Christmas and New Year's Even if you don't celebrate either one, there is just this kind of way to mark time. It's the last week of the year.

Maybe you've just seen family, Maybe you skip seeing family due to this crazy wave of amicron that seems to be evading sometimes vaccines. I I don't even want to get into it because personally it is bringing me down, to put it mildly, and but that's okay. I'm letting myself be in that kind of melancholy place. You know. Um, I'm not five years old. I don't have to be overly excited at Christmas time. I will be fine. It'll just be a little bit a melancholy, but overall very

grateful that my family and I are healthy. But I don't know. This week I always think is is interesting. I can see where it might bring up a lot of things for people. Maybe you've just seen your family and maybe that was upsetting. Maybe it was great, and you're sad to go back home because you missed them. Maybe you're looking at your credit card statement and thinking, oh boy, how did I spend all this money. Oh god.

You know, maybe you're dreading New Year's Eve because you don't have plans, where because you do have plans, maybe you're looking forward to making resolutions, or maybe you're not. I think this week can bring up a lot of things for people. For me, I actually kind of like this week because it's a nice limbo. The world seems kind of asleep, kind of shut down. I don't like the first week of January. I feel bombarded with other people's goals and resolutions and challenges and energy coming at me.

It's a lot. But I like this week because it's this sleepy kind of time where it's the last week of the year. People are tired, exhausted, had too much sugar. Maybe they have the week off work. It's just sort of eat leftovers where your pajamas. That's that's at least how it is for me because I happen to have the week off of work. So I kind of like this week. I kind of wish the whole year could feel like this week. Just kind of lazy. It's not

time to take the lights down yet. I still have our Christmas lights up, and yeah, you can eat pie for breakfast. I mean come on, it's left over from Christmas. You know, there's something about this week. I like, yeah, throw on another movie. And I tend to get very sad when this week is over because I feel like it's never enough rest and relaxation. And so there's something about being in that middle and sitting in something that I feel is really appropriate for airing this episode this

week with my guest Sarah Wilson. She is the author of many books, but the book that we focus on really in this interview as her book Abudding Sety called First We Make the Beast Beautiful, and a lot of her book is about sort of just living with it, living with anxiety, living with your feelings, you know, letting it just be a part of you, a companion in your life as you go about things. And yeah, sometimes we feel like we don't know what we're doing and

we feel stuck. We feel in between. The way I feel, you know, during this week, we are in between two big important dates and I just kind of want to stay here and hide. And sometimes we feel like we're in between something in a bad way where we feel stuck and we want to get out. And a lot of it comes down to acceptance do we have to label everything? Do we have to figure everything out? And

that's what I really loved about Sarah's memoir. It was just so first of all, just beautifully written, but I really related. I mean, she's every time I have a guest on or read their work, there's always something that

is a totally new thought for me. And Sarah talks about traveling, and I always I am kind of curious about my own life where I travel a lot for someone with anxiety, and you know, I've gone on and on about my fear flying and how I'm overcame it, but it's still totally didn't used to line up to me that I loved traveling and traveling by myself so much, and and reading Sarah's book it put it into perspective that that's actually kind of a part of my anxiety

is like keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, you know, um, that sort of restlessness with when I do sit still that especially this week, I think I love it. I think I love eating pipe for breakfast, watching movies on and I don't want to go back to Ork and I don't have to do anything. But I don't know if that's necessarily true. You know, I think. I think what I can do is appreciate this week for what it is and not worry about maybe I won't like

it when this week is over. It's like, just be here now in this week and appreciate it for what it is, and don't try to I don't even know, don't even worry about what you might feel like next week. And once once you feel a certain way next week, great feel it. Go about your life. And that's what I liked about Sarah's overall message, which is, you know, anxiety exists and we can live with it and we can also thrive because of it. So I will let you just hear my conversation with Sarah Um A little

more about her. She's a multi New York Times and Amazon bestselling author. She's a podcaster, philanthropist, a climate adviser. She has written books uh like the New York Times bestsellers I Quit Sugar and First We Make the Beast Beautiful. She's an author of eleven cookbooks, and her recent book is called This One, Wild and Precious Life. It won a Gold not A List award and was seen in USA Today in Washington posts ten new books to spotlight in this book. Um this one, wild and precious life.

She talks about climate change, mobilizing individuals, climate change anxiety. So maybe we'll have her back to talk about how we how we deal with the very real anxiety of climate change. But for today I talked to Sarah about her book First We Make the Beast Beautiful. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Sarah Wilson. I won't catch you on the other side. Sarah Wilson, Welcome to Anxiety Bites the podcast. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure

to be here. You're in Australia, which, um it's tomorrow for people with anxiety. Can you tell us anything you're one day ahead of us? How is the future? Yeah, that's right, I speak from the future. Well, listen, there's nothing to worry about, or at least nothing more to worry about than what you're worrying about right in this

very instant So um, yeah, I love that. I love that kind of existential positioning that we're starting off with, because, of course, anxiety is a fretting forward right into the future, and depression is a sort of ruminating about the past. So yes, it's very fitting. So I wanted to start off,

I was just reading your book. I know you have a more recent book out called This One Wild and Precious Life, UM, but I am referencing your other book called First We Make the Beast Beautiful, UM, A new conversation about anxiety, and I want to quote you to you. This was towards the end of the book, actually, but it seemed fitting to start the interview. You were talking about. Uh, you know you give you give such great advice in this book, and you also bring up a lot of research.

I mean, it's so well researched it's crazy. But you say at one point also getting older does help. And you talk about a forum you held with younger people in their in their teens and twenties. UM, you and I are roughly the same age in our forties, and you said that they bristled around the idea of sitting in anxiety, accepting it and seeing the beauty and it. One girl blurted out, it makes me really angry. It's bullshit,

and it makes me more anxious. And I thought that was so fitting because you and I are both Generation X, and our anxiety, from what I read about you and from what I know about being me started before there was an Internet. Yeah, there's a there's a bunch of things to unpack there. I think the generational divide is really worth worth talking about because I'm sure you've got listeners of different age groups who will relate to the

various aspects of what we're talking about here. So on the one hand, we didn't have the stigmatization of having a name put over the top of stuff, and I think there is a problem in the sense that you put a name to something and then sometimes you can stop your mindful investigation. UM a lot of what we had to do, I maybe go to a library or come across something in a magazine, which then saw us go and have conversations three months later with somebody who

might have heard of this thing called anxiety. It was actually a practice in in resilience, you know what I mean, and which could also be seen as a practice in mindfulness. So the journ any of actually investigating your anxiety took you to a place where you had to harden up a bit around it, and you had to develop techniques. Plus you you had things like delaying gratification because you didn't get the answers straightaway. And in that space there was a lot of um sort of stuff that you

worked out for yourself. So there's definitely that. But going back to that quote from my book, you know, from That's a discussion group, you know, that young person was just like the idea of having to sit in it and kind of wrestle it out. You wrestle with your demons for a bit. Um. Honestly, as every spiritualist and I don't know Youngian psychotherapist throughout history has said, we

have to sit in the discomfort. The definition of anxiety is very much an inability to sit with uncertainty and discomfort. And at least we were probably rendered choiceless pre Internet because we had to We had to sit through listlessness, autumn, not being able to fix things automatically, not having an answer straightaway, um, not having a name and a drug that we could turn to. And so I think there

was a lot to be said for that. At the flip side, as you say, is we got a lot of stuff wrong and we had to go through a very long journey of ups and downs to arrive at something resembling a sweet spot. And as you said, I think I said to these young people sometimes the fixed to anxiety is shear years on the planet. And it's because you've you've gone through these trials and tribulations and you've worked out your own, your own sort of formula.

But it's also, as I say in the book, it's kind of the whole gist of the book, sorry to give it away to anyone who's not read it, is that this very wrestling is the meaning that we're searching for. Anxiety is that kind of desperate like grasping for something else, and that something else is the meaning of life And ironic clear it's through the grasping, through the journey of getting it all wrong with anxiety, that we end up arriving at the best, best place for understanding that meaning

within ourselves. I think that that can be tough for people. Now for me, honestly, I feel like it's kind of a relief. And I don't know if that's the inherent laziness that I have, but really truly finding out and honestly believing it that the answer is there is no answer was such a relief. I don't think that's lazy, that's not lazy. Gosh, it's a huge gangean um. I mean it means then it's it's this, it's an acknowledgement of the ultimate freedom right that we have then to

determine our own path. And as you recall, actually set off the journey by realizing there is no guide book to life and no one knows what they're doing, which, of course another thing you realize when you reach a certain age, don't you look around and go, oh my god, no one actually knows what they're doing. And that is a relief because then you've got the possibility. It opens up the possibility to the fact that you can reposition something like anxiety. You can choose how to frame it.

And as I say, a lesson that I got from his holiness, the Dalai Lama's never a part. I know exactly what you're gonna say, I said, doing my I got an interview with him. I was the ambassador, the Australian Bassador, the Dalai Lama. Don't you love it? Um?

Great title, um, And I just had to mention it here because if you get a title like that, you've got to share it with therefore on right, So um, I got to do an interview for a publication and they suggested I ask one question and one question only, so it turned out to be how do I stop my mind from chattering so frenetically? How do I shut my mind up? And his answer was don't bother. He said,

there's better things to do. You Like if you went and sat in a cave on a mountain, you know, for two years and meditated, perhaps you could do it. And he said that of time, waste of time. Um, you know, I love his I love his like casual, just sense of humor almost and just sort of like whatever, like silly, silly, like we're not doing that, you know. And he said, I don't do that because my focus is living a life of service. And his word for

that is altruism. He thinks we should be focusing on altruism. And what I took from that is that you can actually, like why wait to be less anxious, to live a purposeful, beautiful life. You can be both. So that was kind of the revelation, the realization that I got from that opening of realizing recast things as I need to. It's not like, um, for for anyone who's hoping that someday they'll cure their anxiety, and of course you can. I mean,

I've I really don't suffer anxiety. Every day like I used to, Um, But it's part of me, and it exists. It's always there, whether or not it's being loud or quiet one day. But I have a great life. There was not this Oh my life got good when the anxiety went. It was like when I started fading it, you know. And and again I do think that that

can be really scary. I don't know if someone had said that to me a long time ago, would I have liked that answer, you know, because they didn't realize how good I could feel, just feeling even a little bit better. Well, yeah, And I think what I tried to do in that book is to show that once I stopped trying to fight it and make it better, so that I could then get onto this wonderful other life. Right.

I thought it was all run up, Right, All the run up was about me, um, sorting myself out, you know, being like everybody else, finally finding that guide book to life, this mythical guide to life. I think, I say, at the beginning of that book, I think I was on the toilet or putting the hanging the washing out for mom the day that God handed out the guide Book to life. You know, Um, I sort of just missed

it somewhere along the line. So I think that what I what I try to do is explain that not only can you live with anxiety, but I switched it up a gear even further and say you can actually thrive because of anxiety. And that's where the title comes

into play. First we make the best beautiful, which comes from a Chinese proverb, and it's this idea that if we can reframe anxiety and stand back from it and see what it's truly about, Like, why does anxiety exists as an emotion in the human experience, Well, it exists because it keeps us safe and it has also progressed

the human experience. It was the neurotic um O c D bipolar person who probably walked over the hill and saw people with these things called a wheel and came back and went, hey, guys, they've invented a wheel and we should get onto that kind of thing. So it was the anxious person that pushed boundaries, that was particularly cautious and would keep a clan safe, but also push boundaries,

as I say, and the statistics bear out. Um seven percent of poets have anxiety, seven percent of scientists have anxiety, almost ad of world leaders who led during a time of high intensity crisis like a war, were anxious and in fact, in most cases were bipolar. If you think of Winston churchill Um and so forth, Artists, philosophers all had um what in many ways where crip was crippling anxiety. Their contribution and their art form, their inventions came about

via their struggle with that that that inattention. So once you start to see it through that lens, you go, Okay, this probably isn't something I should fight, how but I harness it and actually make it into my superpower. And that's the artful, more joyous way to do the dance. And that's what I'm interested in, yeh. And I love that because it's different than the other. Um. The thing that sometimes people can get stuck in is if I get help for my depression or anxiety, then I'll lose

my spark and I won't be a great author. I have to be tortured to be great. And that's not what you're saying there. It's it's saying that you don't you can be um suffering with something like an anxiety and use it to your benefit or just let it sit with you, you know, let it ride in the car with you while you're I mean, like you were saying in your book, Darwin had panic attacks, which I just love. Yeah, that's right, I mean, and I'd say that he was able to come up with these theories

and these contributions because of the panic attacks. Now that's not to say that you should just let out the string on that wild cut of your anxiety, um, because you can get very, very wobbly. And really, again, if we're going to talk about the artfulness of this, the beauty of this, it is about finding that sweet spot where you can modulate it so that it serves you, and then that becomes that becomes your journey. And I

describe it. You might remember the bit in the book where I talk about how having the mental illness is like carrying a shallow bowl of water around for the rest of your life, and that usual works for me. You've got to stay steady, so um, and if you don't, then you start to get a bit unbalanced and the water starts to slosh and it's flying all over everybody else, annoying loved ones um, and you have to keep going back to the source to refill. I love taking analogy

too far. No, I keep going. So and so you spend your life doing that, you know, crushing burning, crushing burning, rather than getting on with what you really want to be getting on with. So it is, Um, it's not about just going, oh, don't take your medication, don't see a therapist, just let that anxiety go at the full throttle. No,

you do need to find this nice balanced place. And part of the balanced place comes about from having compassionate understanding of the place that anxiety plays in history but also in your own life. So it's this kind of lovely gentle wrestle with all of these factors. Um. But mostly,

mostly it's about understanding things through a different framework. I mean a lot of people get blown away when they find out that anxiety only became an official mental disorder and entered the d s M, which is the diagnostic tool using the States and in Australia. Um in and what do you know, it was one year after the first anti anxiety drug was invented. I don't know if

anyone finds out an odd coincidence. I found that fascinating in your book because I thought, well, my god, you know it was only five years after that that I had my first panic attack. I mean, you know, it wasn't even defined into what you're saying it was. It's kind of odd that it was defined right when the drug was invented. And it's not to say anxiety isn't real, but it made me think reading that part. God, what if anxiety is sort of just the human condition, you know,

and it's not this disorder in the everyday sense. Yeah, well, but the thing is it is the human condition. To be anxious is to be human. To go back to that thread that I was that I lost temporarily, it probably as a result of my age and my varying closer to to that existential end point. Um is that. Yes, So in nineteen pre night anxiety was seeing as part of the human existence, right, it was. It was what

we did, We got anxious and so on. Now, Um, the thing is is when we actually pathologize anxiety, when we put it into the d s M, when we invent drugs for it that dampen anxiety. What that does is two things. First of all, it actually stigmatizes anxiety as a problem, as a bigger problem than it is. And so what we do then is it then creates imperative to not be anxious, So then we get anxious

about being anxious. And as we know, the worst thing about anxiety is that horrible death spiral of being anxious about being anxious, than being anxious that you're anxious about being anxious, and so on and so forth. And that's how anxiety gets out of control and ruins ruins your life. Because whileever we we dampen or hired from, or run from, or pathologize anxiety, we stop ourselves from going into the very place we need to go into to resolve and

naturally quieten our anxiety. So we have an fear and existential fear of our death. But by talking it through and going into well what matters, okay, and creating a meaningful life, we are actually able to resolve our anxiety. But by pathologizing anxiety, we never get to close that loop. We never get to resolve the thing that anxiety is telling us to do. Yeah, it's like look at me, look at me, I'm I'm you know, I'm here, I'm

here to show you something. But yeah, it's like putting a It's like there's a there's a doorbell that's going it's telling us. We've got to show up and and ask these wonderful questions, right, and there's a silence up put on the doorbell. So that is one of the

problems with um up and temporary understanding of anxiety. It prevents us from going to the actual point of I don't know, sharpness and edging nous, right, which is scary and it's uncomfortable, but ultimately it's that place and then that then kind of leads us to a less anxious life.

And yeah, I try to try to encourage people to not stop taking medication, don't stop going to your therapist, but start to see from this other perspective, and the whole package can start to modulate things into a softer place where over time, your anxiety does become your superpower. It becomes the very thing that resolves all that internal angst that many of us have from a very young age, like what's my life about? And what happens when we die?

And you know, what is love about? What matters? I mean, the question that I'm asking myself at the moment, Jen, is if we lose everything? And I'm a climate activist, I'm very engaged in these kinds of questions, but if we were to lose it all, then then what is left?

And to me, it's through years of being anxious and delving into this space and read its soul, murding my way through the great writers who are anxious, right Virginia Wolf Um nature, you know, the various artists and so on, that I've been able to find beautiful answers to these kinds of questions. And for me, Um, it's really love and work is what my life is reduced to now. It's a practice, a vigilant practice in love and work

for the rest of my life. Yeah, an anxiety enabled me to arrive at that definition of a meaningful life. I'm here today living the most wildly exciting, wonderful, rich life only because I've gone down into that ship. You know, I've seen it. I've wrestled, I've done the dark wrestle. And Um, I feel that the trigger, I mean, anxieties are little um warning mechanism, you know, the door also to speak basically, what the planet and the state of politics and the climate and a global pandemic, what is

trying to tell us? It's the warning system that's telling us things aren't right. Pay attention, UM, get mobilized and and be of service step up. So I took the inward journey outwards, which I actually think ultimately is probably one of the best cures for anxiety. We'll be right back. There's a lot of silly, what I call it, offbeat solutions in your other book. Um, First, we Make the

Beast Beautiful. And I loved this part where you were talking about how you were feeling a little as you said, I think it was wobbly, little anxious in a mall, and you just knew that you needed human contact right then, just the touch of someone, and you went to get um, you went to the shoe shoeshine person. No, it was a shoe store running a running shoe store. Yeah, because um, I just was all over the place and I didn't know what to do. And I'm not a very tactile person,

but I just knew I needed to be grounded. So I went in there, and I think, like this twenty one year old kid, Um, I basically said to him, I don't know what size my feet are. And I said that because I knew we'd pull out one of those little metal things that measure. That's right, yes, to measure? Yeah, yeah, and all, I mean, that's all I did, and and my whole motivation was I just need someone to touch me. Oh, I know there's a shoe shop. I'll pretend I don't know, watch,

you know. And so he got out of his little measuring thing, he measured my foot. I tried on his shoes. Then I felt really terrible, so I bought a pair of socks. But I think that is so great, you know. It's these little things, you know, when we're talking about the world has anxiety, and sometimes people need therapy or medication.

And yes, we know about meditation and we know about this and that, but what does someone do you know when they're starting to have a panic attack and the mall And I really think it's it's just like you said, run to the nearest person. And if you're if you're not going to literally go I'm having a panic attack, I'm sorry, I don't know you just like you said, you know, um, get a manicure, have the shoe attendant

measure your foot. We've all had that experience, haven't we, where we felt really anxious and then somebody might just stop you in the street and ask for the time and start talking to you. Yeah, and you're fixed, right. I used to have a real only just I mean, the terror I used to have, the phobia of flying I had was so insane I can't even describe it.

And I remember my psychiatristying, well, why don't you just see that the flight attendant, I'm anxious, And I went on and on there's anything they can do, and blah blah blah, and he's like, I get it, but just saying it out loud will take its power away. And then you realize, oh, I guess I'm kind of ashamed to say that to someone. It's a primal need, it's it's beyond our rational mind. And if we work out that we can just attend to that with a couple

of things like that. The other thing is, of course, is um, you know, I'm just thinking of some of the other really dorky things that I do. I will go and choose the wobblist table of the cafe. You probably remember that chapter where I will have a day off. I'll suddenly have this incredible opportunity to go and sit in a cafe and do what I see all these other people do. When I you know, I'm running late from meeting I'm like, who are these people that see

at cafes on a weekday, you know? And so I'd finally go and do that, and then then the experience, the overwhelming kind of desire to make it as perfect as possible would see me have a panic attack in the middle of the street. So what I worked out was that I would on purpose choose the grimace looking cafe on the strip. I would then go and choose the wobblist table at the cafe under the spinker that's crackling, and then I just choose whatever coffee I wouldn't like,

um and are. I just choose whatever came to me. And I would use it as a practice in grim in sitting in the ship, you know, and just seeing

how bad it can be. And every time I did it and I ran it as an experiment, and I have a little phrase in my head, let's see as in let you me the universe whole kind of lovely flow of life, see what happens next, right, And I would sit there and I remember the chef came out and he had made an extra muffin that it's sort of crumbled, and he said, oh, would you like this?

You And then Um, somebody who I hadn't seen any ages happened to walk past and they sat down with me for a bit at my wobbly table, and um, it was a really it's been a really great way for me to conquer my perfectionism, which is often goes hand in hand with anxiety. And um, so yeah, in many ways, being playful, being experimental and curious around it

is another fix curious, that's right. Yeah, you meant you've talked about that where there really is a connection, you know, between anxiety and curiosity in terms of turning it into Oh you know, it's funny we talk about getting in our bodies, but sometimes we have to kind of disconnect with our anxious thoughts rates start looking at them. That's right, and that process then becomes a mindfulness process or a practice.

And of course you've mentioned before that the deep breath in the meditation it can be a bridge too far when you're anxious, Like that's a great way to put it. Yes, yes, when you're in the middle of an anxious spell. It's kind of like, don't tell me to drink rammermal tea and deep breathe because it can and it can actually make things worse. So what I do is these other things, and curiosity is a really great thing. So optimally you choose a habit that's going to be more charming, because

you'll choose it now, curiosity. If you switch out ruminating and fretting with curiosity, curiosity is a very charming alternative, and it becomes the habit you go into. And what do you know, it's a mindfulness technique, so it amps up its powerfulness, you know, exponentially. So that's a technique that I use is let's see, let's run the experiment, and my meditation teachers, somewhat ironically says to me, he says this phrase all the time. Keep the camera rolling,

the cameras still rolling. You know what if you mean by that? I think I know what you mean. But tell me what is that? Well, we don't know where this great film of yours is going to end up, so you know you might have a story in your head. Oh that's not gonna work, or probably table is gonna lead to a horrible experience. I'm just gonna get piste off with everyone. Um No, just keep the camera rolling, and what do you know, the muffin comes out. Oh

that's great. Yeah, you just keep the camera rolling and and and I find that that's curiosity. Oh well, I can probably keep it rolling for another ten seconds, longer, another thirty seconds. I'll just keep it And what do you know, that becomes it becomes your way of living. That is a great and it's funny too. I love the way that you called curiosity charming. You must picture on a date, you know, with a charming person who is asking you about you instead of blah blah blah

about themselves. You know, it's like it's it's such a great way to think about it, Like be a fun date with yourself, you know, ask yourself questions. Don't just tell yourself the same old story over and over. You know, if you're anxious, I love I love that. Yeah. And it's open as opposed to close. It goes in the opposite direction to anxiety. Anxiety is close and rigid, whereas

curiosity is open and fluid. And this is what we're doing with anxiety when you're in that rut and we're trying to modulate it so we get to that nice sweet spot where we're doing anxiety once, you know, it really is about stopping that being anxious about being anxious and going down that loop. And you do that by opening up, softening around it, allowing yourself to be anxious for a moment, sitting at that table, but you don't try, you know, the wobbly table, but you don't try to

shut it down. You just remain curious and open, and then you just do the anxiety once it gives you the permission to let the anxiety do its thing um, and then you move on. Because anxiety lasts maximum minutes. Yeah, and it's such a good feeling when it ends, and you go, oh my god, that's it, that was it. But we prevent ourselves from seeing it end because we get anxious about not being anxious. We've already been done. The next anxiously anxiety bites will be right back. After

a quick little message from one of our sponsors. What I was reading about. You had mentioned that you felt it was easier for you and I don't know where you're at today with this to be not in a relationship, and you talked about anxiety in romantic relationships where sometimes the anxious person can be, you know, acting anxious but has nothing to do with the partner. You know, it is not that you're anxious at them, is that you are trying to control the world and they just have

to be in the way. You know, that's not what you said. I'm just paraphrasing. There's two things you can say to that. I think another human holds a mirror up to your your weaknesses, your dark side, and and that's a wonderful thing. And so we should always seek out those people that hold a mirror up to us. So i' I think we should run from relationships. But I would also say that we need to foster meaningful relationships with ourselves and to be able to sit alone.

And that might be while you've got a husband and kids, or it might be while you know you're you're a single person who's feeling loneliness. Um. So, really having a relationship with yourself in all kinds of circumstances out with people in an intimate relationship, when you're seen at home feeling a bit fretful that you've got nothing on for the weekend, um and there you are on the couch with your cats, Developing a relationship with yourself is really

really important. There was one part in your book where you said it was just a little thing that I really keyed into you. You just said quote, I got pulled up on something too personal to mention here, sorry, And you just mentioned like you had a little personal as you worked it out. And I thought that was so interesting because I'm sure people see this to you,

they see it to me. Um, I've written books and I do comedy for a living and and I talk about my life, but it's they say, you're very revealing and honest, and you know, is there anything you don't talk about? And I'm like, of my life I don't talk about. You know, as an artist who has a relationship to anxieties, had anxiety, has anxiety, did you have to learn at some point the difference between revealing what needed to be revealed in your work and oversharing Because

I think oversharing right is a big anxiety thing. It's a big symptom. I think, Um, it was that something that was hard. Um, yes, and no. For me, I write to ensure that to be of service in the best way I can. And so the lens that I put it through is will this help people? If it will, then absolutely I go there. And I have no problem going there. I mean, as you know, I talk about suicide and my suicide attempt in quite some detail. And my publisher, when she was about to publish the book, went,

do you know, are you sure about this? And I went yes, because I had time to. I mean, the great thing about writing a book is it's not like social media. You reflect on it, you go through several copy EBITs. Um, you have to lie awake at night ruminating, and then you get up in the morning go, I'm going to modify that. But with my latest book, I actually talk about miscarriage and I talk about abortion, and um, I went through that whole thing again. Is this something

that I'm trying to get sympathy from people for? Or is it because I feel like and I really did. I've heard on the side of I do need to say something here because we're always talking about how women need to talk about this, and here I am with a public forum, three hundred odd pages in a book

that will get published around the world. And my book is about getting radically, wildly intimate about this one, wild and precious life we have, and about radical connection in a in a time where we're all scared, we're all standing around the edges, and we need people to go first so it's no heroic thing. And in fact, what I love is that the story just becomes something that people take on board for themselves. I never have people coming up to me and going, you poor thing, are

you okay? Which is great. That means my message has been all about other people drawing their message in via via the weft and the weave of mine. Yeah, that means you really did a great job as an artist like you. You actually communicated it exactly how you wanted it. Yeah. And I don't want people sympathing. I don't want people sympathy. So when people come up to me in the supermarket they tell me their story, I can tell you now that we have are you okay? Day here? I think

it's international now. But it's so funny. You know, I was ambassador the first year and I don't think I've ever been rung by anyone ever. You know. The whole premise is you ring somebody, or you contact somebody and ask them are you okay? And it's so funny everybody. I mean, there's several hundred thousand people around the world that no, I have anxiety, right, and yet I've never

I've never been wrong on you okay? Day. That's because I don't think people see me as that person that you need to do that for and so, and I am super glad. All I am is a vehicle through which you know I'm a conduit. All I do is I stay with the problem long enough, partly because I don't have a relationship, and my relationship is with my writing. And so I stay with a problem longer because I have that luxury and I can put it onto paper and other people go, That's exactly what I was thinking.

I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Sarah Wilson. And again, if you enjoyed this podcast, please leave me a five star review on Apple Podcasts. I only want for Christmas, and I know that Christmas has already come and gone, but that's okay. You can get me a belated gift five star review on Apple podcast What that does is

it doesn't fancy and magic to the algorithm. It makes more people find the podcast, and the more people to find the part cast, the less people we have freaking out on airplanes who need to be duct taped to their seat. So it's a win win. You're helping me, you're helping society. So please go do your part when you have a second, or you can find me on Twitter at Jen Kirkman and tell me how much you love the show. And let's get into some of the

takeaways we learned from speaking with Sarah Wilson today. My favorite takeaway is that even the Dolli Lama cannot stop the noise in his head, and that the Dolli Lama things that we should all be focusing on all truism and of being of service to others. Sarah believes you can be anxious and live a purposeful, beautiful life at the same time. Sarah believes that not only can you live with anxiety, but you can thrive because of it. Think of our friend Darwin who had panic attacks. We

make the beast beautiful is from a Chinese proverb. Sarah believes that for herself, being playful, experimental, and curious or end anxiety can help us in a moment of great anxiety. And as Sarah's mentor taught her with the analogy keep the camera rolling, we can prevent ourselves from seeing an end to our anxiety because we are busy getting anxious about being anxious. We need to try to have a compassionate understanding of the role that anxiety plays in our lives.

And that's all I got for you today. So I hope you again. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope you're loving the show. New episode next week, and just remember, yes, anxiety bites, but you're in control. For more podcasts from My heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.