Get Booked – Dr Lauren Cook, Generation Anxiety 040923

Hello, you're listening to Get Booked with me, Hazel Butterfield, and welcome to the show. I have got an incredible show lined up for you today. I have been reading like no one's business, so I've got Lots of reviews to tell you about. Today's guest is Dr. Lauren Cook, talking to us about her book Generation Anxiety. I have been working my way through this book and I have found it so incredibly helpful. Dr. Lauren Cook is a licensed clinical psychologist, keynote speaker, and company consultant. Dr. Cook has a private practice where she serves individual adults, teens, and couples. Dr. Cook completed her doctorate in clinical psychology from Pepperdine University and has her master's in marriage and family therapy from the University of Southern California. She definitely knows her stuff, and, and, haha, the book is brilliant. I really found it quite helpful. She's been featured in New York Times, Forbes, Bustle, and Medium, among many, many other outlets. Now, Generation Anxiety, it is a millennial and Gen Z guide to staying afloat in an uncertain world. So incredibly uncertain. Millennials and Gen Zers are considered two of the most anxious generations in history, with many generation-specific stresses facing them, such as climate change, systemic racism, financial instability, and so on, it's easy to see why these generations are being diagnosed with anxiety at alarming rates. Anxiety presents itself in many forms, and Dr. Cook, a millennial herself who lives with anxiety, advocates for empowered acceptance, where we change our relationship with anxiety rather than seeking to eliminate it. She also takes a more tailored approach to treatment and believes it's not a case of one size fits all, definitely evident in the book. Through a feminist and intersectional lens, Dr. Cook provides easy, actionable steps to help readers ride the waves of anxiety rather than constantly swimming against them. Please do go and check it out. We're gonna have a cracking chat with Dr. Lauren Cook very shortly. Quick reminder to all you book fans out there, I I know lots of you love to read, but do you know just how important it is for us authors for you to write reviews, probably good ones, um, on Amazon, Goodreads, and whatnot? Yeah, reviews are super, super helpful for all our indie authors out there, all authors actually. And so let's kick off with some of the reviews. Now I put all my reviews up on hazelbutterfield.com and if you pop onto Instagram, I have a book-related Instagram, @getbookedwrs. Obviously the dog's got an Instagram, uh, and I've got a more generalized Instagram because, I mean, who has one page these days? Um, and I like to start my book reviews with— I section them together in groups of about 4 or 5, and I like a little quote, something that I've come across recently, generally from scrolling through Instagram. Now, one that I loved recently is, "We read to know we're not alone." It's not a new quote, it's a, it's a good oldie, and I absolutely love it. It's C.S. Lewis. And I like that we can learn about other people's lives, or we can find comfort in other people's stories, and it, it's brilliant for those of us that sometimes feel like we suffer alone. Now, the first one I want to tell you about is A Game of Lies by Claire McIntosh. She actually had her book published on the 20th of July of this year, and it's so much fun. Um, I mean, we all lie, right? Some are bad lies, some less so, or are well-intentioned. Others are for survival. Imagine if your lies were made the subject, unknowingly, of a televised reality show. Unscrupulously embedded in the terms and conditions, thinking the aim of the game was more agility-based. Miles Young is a power-hungry TV producer keen to make his mark and money, obviously, regardless of the fallout. But you can only push people and their vulnerabilities so far. Local detective Fionn Morgan, with her inimitable Welsh charm and sarcasm and unique modus operandi is. But is she too close to everyone involved, or is she too distracted to see what is right in front of her? This is actually the second book in the series, but I'd not read the first, and I can wholeheartedly say it's not necessary to enjoy and understand the dynamics in the book. Ffion is brilliant and leaps off the page immediately as someone you want to follow and get on board with. Oh, and Dave, her dog Dave. I was really invested in Dave. He was brilliant. Um, now another book I want to tell you about— this is actually somebody we're going to have on the show, I think next month at some point. Um, and this is called The Secret Life of Carolyn Russell by Gayle Aldwyn. This book, it was perfectly timed for me, having only recently listened to my first ever unsolved crime mystery podcast in the last few weeks. I know I'm very, very late to the party. Um, it is 2014, and Stephanie has just been made redundant from her position at the local paper after many years of service. Yet Doug, her boss, thinks this is a great opportunity for her to flex her creative muscles in new media, namely podcasting. Back in 1979, when Stephanie was starting out in journalism, a girl from her school went missing, and to this day we still don't know what happened to her. Could modern communication and a less newbie approach to investigative journalism be the answer? To uncovering the truth. While delving into the past and forging a way through with her future, Stephanie gets to encounter new people, gain a better understanding of small-town ignorances, learn about resilience and humanity. But will she get to uncover what happened to Carolyn Russell? I love that. It was, it was a really good fun read, and, um, I like seeing possibly the other side of these extremely increasingly popular true crime podcasts. Now the next one I read, which was actually released on the 3rd of August of this year, this is by Laure van Rensburg, The Good Daughter. This is an eerily suspenseful novel that takes you on a traumatic ride through the grief, persecution, and entrapment of being a good daughter, and how institutional abuse can lead you to do Crazy things. The more people treat you like you are crazy, how long before you start to actually believe it, or even worse, become it? Religion isn't for everyone, and not all religions have everyone's best interests at heart. In fact, what crosses the line of a religion to a cult? Are you devout or brainwashed? Good or subservient? But when feminism is a bad word used to describe moral decline, Your own family can no longer be trusted to have your best interests at heart, and you have more in common with strangers, getting you to question your own way of life, all you have ever known. The alarm bells have got to start ringing, but how the hell do you escape being good? And another one on my latest book review blog is Seven Exes by Lucy Vine. This was one of those novels that I kind of— I read it on holiday and I was by the pool and giggling to myself. It is one of those ones, and I didn't want to put it down. I was actually queuing at passport control, um, and kind of giggling to myself, and I got a few dodgy looks, but they still let me in. Um, yeah, one of those ones. Now, many of us have had a cacophony of exes that have been dodgy in a meticulous amount of ways, both truly and self-preservedly. Hey, subjectivity is actually a thing. Can you imagine if we all felt the same way, uh, about all our past relationships? With hindsight, looking back at the ones that you remember for whatever reason, have we remembered them correctly, honestly, and sympathetically? Does experience make us regret the decisions we made, or nostalgia cloud our judgment? Well, I guess there is only one way to figure that out. Visit them all like a messed up voluntary Scrooge epiphany, but in real life. It's very funny, it's relatable, and full of great characters. Um, just a quick reminder for all those books, you can just pop on to hazelbutterfield.com, click on the blog, and there's Soyons de books that I've reviewed, and those are all from the latest one. Enjoy! Okay, next. Next up on Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station, embrace yourself for what I know so many of you will need to hear about. We have the author of Generation Anxiety, Dr. Lauren Cook. Now, this book came at the perfect time for me, just as one of my episodes was kicking off, the Relatable Pros. It's really helpful in consuming the knowledge and guidance that Lauren has to impart. A voice that guides without judgment, in fact, very openly incorporating, um, Dr. Cook's own issues with anxiety, unpacking and reframing our sadness and anxiety, looking at harnessing and focusing on the good in our life, learning to seek out joy where we can and is appropriate, and helping us to run towards our issues rather than running away scared. If we face our fears, we take away its power. And I'm so excited about this conversation. Firstly, congratulations on Honestly, Hand on Heart, a very good book, and welcome to the show. Now, I'm so happy to be here. Thank you. Great. I mean, honestly, it was, it was so interesting because I went on holiday recently and I started having these anxiety episodes, and it was just when your PR person said, Hazel, do you want to read this book and interview? And I was like, oh, I need this now. And it genuinely really helped me. You should be so incredibly proud of the way you've put the information together. I think it's so easy for people to follow the information and to find something within the many chapters that's relatable to themselves. A lot to me. Thank you so much. And you're welcome. And I think the best way to kick off today is possibly talking about why is anxiety so prominent in today's society everywhere? Yeah, everyone is noticing a spike up in their anxiety, and that was why I decided to name the book as such, Generation Anxiety. And, you know, sometimes people will say, well, every generation has had stressors, traumatic events. Why are we more anxious just now. And I write a lot in the book about that. You look at what's called the Generational Power Index. These incidents that are happening very much feel out of control. You know, when we look at what's happening with the climate crisis around the world, we're seeing higher incidents of violence happen. I'm, I'm here in the US, and you know, the gun violence that we have here in this country, for example, is incredibly concerning. So you have all these situations. It's understandable that people are feeling anxious because the situation feels out of control. And what happens when we feel out of control? We feel helpless and we feel hopeless, which is a recipe to be anxious. And it's where the fear comes in. And unfortunately as well, another reason why it's so prominent is just because we have access to the information so quickly, so readily. And actually it's not just coming through the main news channels. It's coming through, I don't know, Dave down the road through TikTok. And anybody with access to social media can say what they want with whatever spin they want. And I'm constantly policing the information my children are telling me about things that are happening. I'm saying, that's just not real. It's not the facts. Or they're completely Well, it's clickbait, isn't it? Um, but I mean, it's not just about TikTok. There really are some horrific things out there, and some things maybe in the past we didn't necessarily know about so much. But life is more hectic. The more we see each other's lives, the more pressure we feel to be that person on Instagram, or to show that we're having it all and killing it all, or, you know, bullying is now not just— you can't just walk away from the playground to get away from it. You can't just stay indoors because, you know, you can see why people are anxious because you sometimes can't get away from— yes, yes. And at the same time, people are so isolated, right? Like, we're inundated with social media, so we see people talking in their faces, but we're not actually having like real deep face-to-face conversations and engagements as much anymore. So many people feel so lonely and isolated. And I think that's a big difference for these generations too. There's always been hard things going on, but at least we had community in that. People don't have community as much anymore and who their best friends are. They're, they're missing those people. And they have too much time, as you say, when they are lonely or isolated to ruminate over things that possibly we wouldn't have time to think about. And it can send us a little bit crazy. I mean, um, I'm very lucky that I live in a part of London that has quite a high level of community spirit. Even like the local shops have hundreds and hundreds of people who are fully aware of who they are, and it just seems to be a little bit more friendly. You can walk into any one of 10 pubs and you'll probably know somebody in it. It's, it's kind of a bizarre sector of London. And I do feel quite lucky, but you know, I also have friends who, they don't go out anywhere and all they have for their information, for their interactions is online. And it's scary. It's really scary. Right? It is. It absolutely is. And that's something I write about in the book is we have to build deeper relationships with people where, like you say, you go in and you know someone at at the store and you can have a conversation. I think that's part of the anxiety too. When we don't know each other, we lack trust with each other. And so now everybody is on edge with everyone else. Are you someone I can trust? Are you someone that's safe? And that just keeps our brain on constant high alert, and that's exhausting mentally but also physically too. It's the fear of the unknown. And if we're intentionally staying away from people because we're keeping— keep on being told, you know, don't go out and do this, don't do this, it's too dangerous, don't travel abroad. It's, yeah, it's kind of something that is a really dangerous circle, I guess. Um, but, but something that I found quite interesting, I mean, I suffer with different levels of anxiety. Sometimes I can really get my head in a good space and I can think rationally. And I do want to talk about how you talk about deciphering between rational and irrational fears, but sometimes you just need someone to speak to you properly and calmly. And I kind of, I got this in this book, the one thing I was worried about, it would just happen to be, I was reading that chapter about, okay, think about that happening. What would be the, what if the worst happened? Unpack it and think about how you deal with it. You know, if your partner of 10 years did split up with you, what would happen? And you would survive. Why would you be splitting up anyway? So I think it— what I think you talked about, the kind of the 10 minutes, the 10 hours, and the kind of the 10 years. Yes, the 10, 10, 10. Yeah, exactly. If you actually break it down and say, actually, if this did happen, or if you did get ill, how would you deal with it? And then you suddenly realize, but I would deal with it, and it would be okay. It would be a bit rubbish for a bit, but you'd figure it out. And then you suddenly said you stop panicking, and then the levels come down, and then you can think rationally again. And I must say, I found it so helpful because in theory I know that information, but we need someone to tell it to us as well in a way that's going to get a reminder. Yeah. And I found that— I'm so glad that stood out. It's so— well, and you know, I, I see that with clients, they struggle with that, right? Of like, what if my worst fears came true? And that's one thing I wanted to include in the book, why we include very confidential, you know, de-identified narratives of client experiences, you know, really protecting people's identities, but to show the reader, I do see people's worst fears come true. And they do get through to it on the other side. You know, I think we often really doubt our human grit and resilience, but it's pretty powerful. And I see that a lot as a clinician, just how capable people are. And they look back and they say, oh, yeah, like, that was really hard. But I got through it. I got through it. The problem is, is that when we are suffering with anxiety, rational thought doesn't necessarily come that easily to us. And I also thought it was good that you talked about— I mean, there are the benefits of talking therapy, but you also talk about the alternative ways of gaining your power back, whether it is using, um, medication or facing your fears in such a variety of different ways. And I did— one thing that I absolutely love doing, and I try and do it with my friends all the time, is reframing. And not only did you talk about reframing, but you gave scenarios where people could actually identify themselves in a scenario and try and think about how they can best— either if they're helping a friend who's got anxiety and being an enabler, or, you know, different ways that people can actually help themselves or help other people. It's helpful, right? Right. Oh, good, good, good. Yeah, you know, I'm a bit of a behaviorist at heart because our brain gives us all kinds of unhelpful messages all the time, and that's something that I wanted to normalize because a lot of people think, what's wrong with me that I'm having these negative thoughts? And it's like, no, this is just the human brain. Like, this is what it tends to do. It's a nightmare. So you can— right, you can either Show yourself behaviorally that you are capable of those things that you're afraid of doing. And also, like you're saying, reframe those thoughts, shift perspective, because we can't control the initial thought. What we can control is the response to that thought. That's the intervention point. Uh, so I'm so happy to hear that part stood out for you because I think a lot of people, they really buy into the negative thoughts the brain is telling them, and then understandably we feel anxious or depressed as a result of that. Well, that's when it comes into again what you talk about in the book, about reconditioning the brain, you know, focusing on daily gratitude. And it is just a case of relearning a nicer way to speak to ourselves as well. And if we focus on what's good rather than what's bad, and it does take, it does take practice because, uh-huh, you're brain is just one big muscle and you've just got to kind of work it and work it to get it to work in a better way. Um, but it's— we do need a reminder. We know we need to speak to ourselves better, but I think sometimes with the science behind it, it pushes us forward to do it more and understand what it's actually doing to us. Um, Now I found it interesting that, um, all the different chapters, they had a kind of focus on water analogy. What was the reasoning behind that? Ah, well, I love using metaphor in my work, just in general with clients. Um, I really think it gives these concepts a new kind of life. You know, we hear this movement of things being too therapized lately, and I think if we can connect it in some real way, I That really helps. And I think it makes it a little more playful too, you know? I mean, even when I'm speaking on this and I'm speaking about the sharks, I literally bring out like my shark hat and everybody always laughs and it's a good time. But it just, I think, I think it paints it in a different way. And so, um, we all have some experience with water, whether we've been in the ocean or we'd swam or, you know, many of us, we have a fear of the water. And I write in the book about how there's actually a lot of parallels between the fears we have in our minds and the fears that we have of the ocean, the unknown, the unpredictability. And I do talk about metaphorical sharks. So, uh, hopefully it gives it life in a new way for people reading it. Yeah, I think it kind of made you feel like you were going on a journey somewhat more so that you could actually envisage the different parts of that and you could identify with it. So it was, it was interesting and I think it works. I really liked it. Just quite intrigued as to how, why you decided to go down that route. Um, and I'm quite, I'm quite interested in, I was reading about the irrational fears and the rational fears and kind of deciphered between the two. How can you decide whether the fear you have is real and to listen? Because, you know, you say in the book, anxiety is sometimes saying, hey, watch out. Was something that you should be scared about. How do you go, that's, that's a normal fear, and that's a, my, my brain's just kind of messing with me? How do you decide? Mhm, mhm. That is the perfect question, and I think that's something so many of us are struggling right now. Where do we draw the line? Because there are these different fears that are happening, right? For example, Is it safe for me to go to a concert? Is it safe for me to send my kids to school? You know, these kinds of things. And we have to validate and legitimize, you know, these are understandable fears that people experience. You know, I mean, here in the US, over half of people know someone who has been impacted by gun violence. So that's a significant statistic where we can't just say la la la, like that's a silly fear to have. No, it is a legitimate fear. At the same time, you think about something like the availability heuristic, right? With the shark attacks, for example, we hear about those stories on the news, right? And so that feels so prominent in our brain that that's going to happen to me. That's where we need to bring some of the logic in. What is the realistic chance that this is going to happen in my life? And do I want that small percentage to stop me from still living a full life? And I write about that a lot, this idea of empowered acceptance, that we do need to accept the reality of our world. We can't just put our head in the sand. At the same time, we still need to be empowered in our lives. We still need to get out there and live the full lives we wanna live, because if we don't, anxiety is going to make our world very, very small. We're never gonna wanna leave our homes. We're never gonna wanna have new experiences. And most people would tell you that's not necessarily a full, enriching life. So we have to sit with that discomfort. And I'm very open and honest about the fact that there's going to be things we do and we feel anxious doing it, and that's okay. The important thing is we don't let the anxiety win and stop us from getting out there and living our full lives. So I think it's more about trying to find ways to put provisions in place and doing the research. I mean, if you have a fear and you think it's irrational, how many other people think it's also irrational. I mean, there's, there's squillions of people out there that have arachnophobia. I would say that's probably quite a rational fear, or at least a very common one. Whereas you talk about in the book about there was some statistics, and some— it's sometimes you just need to do the research about what you're scared about. And wasn't— I think it was like accidents on airplanes, and I think it was something like 0.000045%. It was so low. And then something else was so low that it didn't even have a percentage from the Department of Statistics because it was that unlikely. And yes, so research, and maybe there's, there's different ways to find out whether it is irrational or not. It's absolutely research of really doing your homework of like, what are the chances of this actually happening? And do I want that very small chance to be the thing that stops me from living my whole life? You know, I I just had a baby. And so, you know, the whole experience of pregnancy, right? There's so many things where don't do this, don't do that. Right. And, you know, even reading about like Listeria, for example, I love a good turkey sandwich. They said, you know, don't eat turkey, deli meat because of Listeria risk. So I'm like, okay, let me look up what the actual risk is. Like that stat you were just saying, it's like 0.0005% or something like that. Don't tell anyone, but I definitely ate a few turkey sandwiches and I'm here to tell the tale, you know. So you have to, you have to weigh it all out, right? But we do need to logically look at these things because otherwise the brain can absolutely magnify these fears to much bigger than the reality of, of the chance that they would actually occur. Well, fear breeds fear, doesn't it? So the more we take control of it, the rest, all of the more the rest of it has less power. Now, there's some cracking lines in this book, and it's a very— it's like some very English and Northern terms, cracking. I'm trying to use my context because I'm like, what does that mean? Cracking, smashing. The thing is, I actually live in London, but I'm from up north originally, and sometimes I've got to check myself because some of the phrases I can come out with are interesting. I've actually been interviewing met a lot of people from Northern England recently as well, so it's kind of changed my accent and I've just got to rephrase and just remember. I love it, I love it. It's awesome. Well, so one of the great lines in the book that I thought was just so succinct, and it didn't provide an answer, but it just, it really got me thinking, is, is that you, you talked about how so much of our anxiety is rooted in not wanting to disappoint other people. And I just thought, that's a tough one to negotiate. Oh yeah, that people pleasing quiz is fun, isn't it? Did you see that part in the book? I went through all— I did every last bit of it. I actually, I kept on leaving the book out in the kitchen at work and people kept on saying, I've just read page 66. I was like— and they were really enjoying just kind of picking up and doing little bits of it. I was like, I quite often leave certain books books, um, that are quite relevant, just, just for people to kind of pick up and kind of absorb a little bit of it. And I mean, anxiety— everyone, I don't know many people who don't have anxiety at the moment. Um, but yeah, we just, we don't want to disappoint each other. We have anxiety because we're worried that we may come across incorrectly and disappoint somebody, or we might offend somebody unintentionally. We're disappointed that if we excel at something, that somebody's going to be upset or jealous or treat us a particular way, and we're Well, it's other people's response to us. And Mark Manson, you know, his big thing is the subtle art of not giving a fudge, is about not caring what other people think anymore. And yeah, you know, we want to have empathy, we want to care about other people, but not just adjust, care about other people, but not necessarily what they think. It's, it's a very fine line. We can torture ourselves in the brain. Yeah, if we are so living for other people's approval, and that's so much of what anxiety is. We engage in so much mind reading, right? When we think we know what everybody is even thinking of us. We have no idea what people are thinking about us unless they explicitly say or we explicitly ask, you know? So I, I wrote a, a whole chapter on that about how to not people please, how to set healthy boundaries., because otherwise we really can get ourselves pretty worked up. And, uh, and I write too about what do you do if someone in your life has anxiety? Because a lot of us, we can really enable those fears unknowingly. You know, someone will say like, is this all going to be okay? And, and we'll want to say like, yes, it's all going to be fine. Sometimes it's not always fine, right? And how do we have conversations around that to help people learn to live with that distress than just try and make it go away for our own comfort, you know. Well, again, that's another fine line because the amount of times my friends have said, I'm going through this, I'm anxious and I know it's ridiculous, what am I going to do? It's like, well, let's go down the pub, have a glass of wine, and then you'll forget about it. And you— but then she's hungover the next day and then she's going, I feel even worse now. You do just need to let your hair down and completely just chat, and a problem shared is a problem halved. Sometimes we just want to get it out of our heads, but it's a fine line, you know. Just keep on reassessing how you're helping people. And I love it that you've put in ways that people can be less enabling and more positive in trying to help people address their issues. It depends on how severe the issues are and what they are, I guess. Um, there's so much, right? Right. But, you know, that's why you have so many different sections in the book, because hopefully not every chapter is applicable to everybody. Hopefully. That's true. That's— we've got a little something in there for everybody. Some, some work on body dysmorphia and anxiety about the body, anxiety around grief, because that's something that was really interesting to me too. I'm seeing so many young adults struggle with separation anxiety. You know, and grief of like, what if I lose my loved ones? What if life changes? What if life ends? Like, there's a lot of death anxiety right now. And so, um, I, I'm kind of matter-of-fact and honest about the fact we all are going to die, you know. And yeah, I think that's something that we want to avoid talking about sometimes, endings and things like that. Um, but that important for us to address too, because I think a lot of people have this deep existential fear of that as well. Well, I mean, to add to, you know, generation anxiety, we could turn around and say, no, a superbug isn't going to wipe us all out. We are fine if we don't wash our hands obsessively. And then obviously this COVID comes about, we're like, oh, oh, okay. So this is kind of exacerbated so much for people, but You, you gotta learn to live with things, otherwise it's just gonna take the joy out of everything you do. Um, what, what would be your favorite section of the book? There must have been a section when you were, you were writing this and you just went, I am loving imparting this bit of information. Oh, well, you know, actually my favorite piece to write didn't make the book, which I'm a little sad about, but Oh, I know, I know. I need to— I think I'm gonna do a blog post to, to show it. But you know, a lot of the book was very healing in my own journey of anxiety. I write a lot in the book about my experience with emetophobia, which is a phobia of vomit, uh, which is actually like pretty debilitating for those of us that struggle with it. And you know, I wrote the book at a really interesting time in my life before I was pregnant and then going through the whole editing process being pregnant and now having a 2-month-old. So it was very much facing my fears head on while I was writing the book. And I talk about in one chapter, chapter 5, generational anxiety and the trauma that can come with that and why each of us have our own story with anxiety. And I write about, you know, my specific fear, how that came about from my mom having cancer when I was a toddler. And I, you know, I wrote a letter to myself as a 32-year-old writing to my younger self in the book. And that, that didn't make it too much to the level that I wanted, but for me, it was such a healing process. And I write in the book about how important it is for each of us to address our inner child, even though that may be a little woo woo, but to really try and heal those wounds, because for a lot of us, the anxiety is pretty deep, you know, from a young age. And so that was, I think, the most healing part of the whole experience for me was writing that particular section. Well, we don't get born with anxiety. We learn to kind of feel that way, don't we? I did read a book once called Be More Kid, and it was all about trying to harness the carefree attitude of being a kid and how we thought we could do anything. And we thought we could go anywhere and say anything and just giggle ridiculously, and the egos don't come in until later. And it was a brilliant book, and the way that you kind of reminded me of that book, it was a couple of years ago that I read it, just, it was quite helpful. Um, yeah, we, there's so many different ways that we just need to try and find a way through that works for our lifestyle. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And ultimately, that's what the book is about, is not letting your anxiety stop you. Like, case in point, in my own life, I could have said, I'm way too anxious. What about having a kid? Like, one, my fear of throwing up. There's that. How am I going to be a parent? How am I going to have a career and you know, and still be a mom, all those fears. And, you know, I see so many people letting those fears stop them from living their lives. And, you know, the, the whole book really is about saying, you know, hey, there's never going to be a perfect time for you to do the things you want to do. But if you want to do them, if you want to write a book and have a baby, you can do both those things. For example, that's, that's the case in my life. And I, I'm very passionate about not letting our anxiety stop us from living our wild dreams. Can you imagine how dull life would be if we went along and never ever made a mistake? We never got to learn something. We never got to appreciate how it feels for our friends to make mistakes. We should embrace making mistakes because that is how we grow, we learn, and we get to actually understand other people. And so don't fear it. Kind of literally go headfirst, go make some mistakes. I love that. I love that. And trust that people will have compassion when we do, right? You know, and if people do judge us and are mean, then they're not our people. Do you know what? I actually watched an episode of Ted Lasso just this morning. Are you a fan? Do you watch it? Big-time fan. Big time. A line that he said that just I loved it, and it said, um, let's hope all of us or none of us are judged by our actions in our weakest moments, but how we respond when we're given a second chance. And I had to write it down, kept on going back so I could write it down. Oh, Ted, you're so good. I love that. I love Ted. I'm so curious, I have to ask, is Ted Lasso as big in the UK as it is here in the States? Yeah, it's pretty big, but I actually live— I live in Twickenham, so that's where it's— half of it's filmed in Twickenham and half in Richmond. So Richmond is actually about 5 minutes away from me. So I go to— so where he actually lives, I actually go to the Italian below it all the time, and I go in all those shops, and they're all real shops. So there's even— I'm fangirling big time over here. That's so cool. We just kind of— everyone walks up Richmond Hill, and like Jason Sudeikis has been seen walking up and around there so many times. I bet. I bet. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I heard this summer that there have been many tourists in your area just to see like the Ted Lasso sites. It's more this year than any previous year. I have friends who actually live in Boston and they used to live in Richmond for 10 years. They came back and were taking pictures in streets they've been hanging out in over a decade and taking pictures so they can show their friends back at home in Boston. I was like, that's amazing. This is your hometown. They're like, you've no idea, you've no idea. They love the mustache. Um, but I just, I think Ted Lasso covers anxiety, panic attacks, dealing with how we treat other people. I love it how season 3 really kind of focused on actually footballers are real people too, and they really suffer. And if you shout like horrific abuse, maybe they're going to react because you don't know what's going on at home. And I know it's supposed to be a comedy, but it covers so much. I think it's fantastic. Oh, it's, it's a beautiful show, and it does it in, in a way that doesn't feel like, you know, so in your face. It's just so accessible. No, not at all. Um, and I know we're running out of time, so I do apologize. And so if we if we finish off today's— you know what, I could carry on talking about Ted Lasso for at least another 2 hours, but I don't think I'm going to get away with it. If I could just finish off with maybe 3 of your top tips on managing anxiety. Yeah, absolutely. So this first one is— I'm breaking it down into the first 2, and that's empowered acceptance. One, accept your anxiety, which is so counterintuitive. We're trying to make anxiety go away. And instead embrace and accept that the anxiety is there. That's all right. The second piece though is still be empowered in your approach. Live a meaningful life. And that's kind of a two-pronged approach. One, take action in your own life. Those things that anxiety is telling you you can't do, go out and then do them because that's when the brain starts to buy in. Okay, maybe you can do this thing you were afraid of after all. And take collective action too. Be a member of society that's contributing, that's giving back. That's going to help alleviate the anxiety too. And my last tip, because towards the end of the book is talking very much about a holistic approach to healing and really healing the whole body, not just the brain— get your blood work done. So many of us, we miss this. Yeah. And it can be a real big trigger for anxiety. There's a lot going on in the body, so don't forget that very important data point of what your blood work is trying to tell you. I love that. What is wrong with me? Why can't I function? Mate, because you've not got enough vitamins. Give yourself the vitamins and you'll be fine. Exactly. It's so interesting. Um, thank you so much for your time. I thoroughly love chatting to you. Um, and congratulations on the book. Thank you so much for joining us on Get Booked for Women's and Men's Radio Station. Thank you, Hazel. Good to be with you. It looks different for each person, but ultimately, our brains love to introduce all kinds of wacky, unpleasant, and worst-case-scenario thoughts and images that make us do a double take on ourselves. That is simply what the brain does. While there are findings indicating a wide range in the number of thoughts we have in a given day, at a minimum, the brain churns out about 6,000 thoughts a day. Better yet, most of those thoughts are considered to be negative in nature and repetitive in context. This is how the brain has held power over you. Each time an upsetting idea or image pops up, you may have said to yourself, "What's wrong with you? You're so disgusting, weird, stupid, messed up. How could you have had this thought?" You start worrying that it's just you who's had these thoughts, and before you know it, you've got a classic case of what we call meta-worrying. What's meta-worrying? It's when you start worrying about how much you're worrying. Sound familiar? You notice yourself obsessing about that interview, that date, or that conversation from 7 years ago, and before you know it, you're freaked out because really, you shouldn't be this freaked out, right? Then start the mental cues: But why am I so worried? What does this mean that I'm so worried? Is this a sign because I am so worried? Or the best: I'm noticing that I haven't been as worried lately. Perhaps I should be worrying about that. Notice a key word there: should. As the saying goes, when it comes to anxiety, so many of us are shoulding on ourselves. We internally scold ourselves for something we have literally no control over: our minds. I don't mean for that to unnerve you. I say it to help ground you. Because once you know that it's not your fault that you feel anxious or that you have uncomfortable, scary, or gross thoughts sometimes, that's when you take the wheel again. That's when you start to actually feel like you have some control in your life again. The brain is a wild and free agent. It comes up with all kinds of odd, quirky, frustrating thoughts. But that's just the brain being its true self. In fact, the brain loves to come up with the worst-case scenario where we lose our job, we found out our partner is cheating on us, and we all die from a huge meteor hitting the Earth. Okay, I'll stop there with the examples. The great news is that we are not the sum of our thoughts. If we were, we honestly wouldn't make much sense. A thought is simply a thought.— it doesn't mean it has actual truth. Let me say that again in case you missed it: a thought is just a thought. It doesn't mean it's valid, real, or accurate. It could be, but it might not be either. Starting to get curious, and even a little cautious, about the data your brain is trying to give you is going to help you stay afloat in your water that much longer. The sooner we can realize this, the more liberated we are to engage with our experiences and relationships. We are no longer a victim to the mind and what it's trying to tell us. In other words, the jig is up and the brain can get in line because you're no longer buying the BS. Speaking of BS, I'm calling out positive thinking, changing your thoughts, or training your brain, because as much as we may want to control our thoughts, our brains can be unruly. That's why, for example, mindfulness is a practice that's about building awareness of our thoughts. It's never an act of mastery. You may have found yourself especially frustrated because you've tried all the brain hacks to change your thinking and it's just not cutting it. People can get into some really dangerous territory because they've been told that if only they could think positively they would feel better, or they've been told that they can pray it away, ignore it, or change it. And you know how this goes, thanks to Meta Worrying— that tends to only amplify the thoughts and corresponding distress when we can't in fact change our thoughts. So let me say this loud and clear: there's nothing wrong with you if you have anxious or obsessive thoughts. We all have them from time to time.. For some, it just happens to be a little or a lot more frequent. This isn't by happenstance either. There are literally mechanisms in the brain that contribute to people experiencing ruminating thoughts. Specifically, with obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD, we see overactivity in the orbitofrontal cortex, or OFC, anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC, and caudate nucleus. So while you may be feeling like you've been responsible for giving yourself these upsetting thoughts that just won't seem to go away, it's actually your brain doing the work for you. How kind. Now I know, I'm gonna put it simply, this plane sucks. This is the part of the acceptance work that's the struggle. Many of us go through a period where we resent our minds, compare ourselves to others, and say, "Why me? Why do others seem so unbothered by their minds and I'm over here losing sleep, second-guessing everything, and feeling miserable?" If you feel like it's unfair, it is. Just as some people are not able to use their legs to run or their eyes to see, some people have minds that auto-populate with indecision, morbidity, and catastrophe. But just as a person does not have a choice in the matter of their legs or their eyes, the same goes for how the brain functions as well. Thankfully, there are approaches we can take regarding how we respond to these thoughts, but at an entry point, we have to acknowledge and accept when the brain feels like a relentless tyrant inside ourselves. When we come to terms with this reality, it's common to go through a grieving process. I've seen it with many clients, especially those who have had decades-long battles with anxiety and/or depression. It makes sense that we feel this sadness. If we could make the anxiety go away, we would, wouldn't we? And we've tried valiantly too. Just in 2019 alone, we spent $225 billion on mental health services, an increase of 52% since 2009. Many of us cycle through therapists, medications, and the latest trend treatment fad, hoping that will cure us finally. But the struggling sometimes is what it means to be human, what it means to have a brain. When we can allow ourselves to feel the sadness that the brain hands us, we can learn how to cope with it. We're no longer living in a space of denial where we doubt ourselves. Instead, we're acknowledging it for what it is. Now, at first this may feel like defeat, that by accepting your anxiety, you're losing the battle in your brain, but it's actually winning the war. I get what it's like all too well. Anxiety has tried to rule my life in so many ways, but I would say none more so than with respect to my decision about whether or not to start a family. Anxiety has told me, "You wouldn't be a good mother. You have no experience." It's also tried to tell me, "You like control too much. Babies are the definition of a lack of control." And my favorite, "A baby would change everything. Why would you want to mess everything up?" Really fun being inside my head, right? It doesn't help that my experience with emetophobia has added on some nice excuses for why I could never become a parent. Parent. After all, when you're basically deathly afraid of vomit, who would willingly enter into potentially 9 months of morning sickness— yep, you know I've researched hyperemesis gravidarum, which is when you basically throw up every day of your pregnancy and sometimes get hospitalized because it's so bad— to then have a child who could projectile vomit on you and at you at any given moment? So you can see that as I'm now in my 30s, this tape has played out for a while. All these thoughts floating in my head and churning in my stomach, it's all really confusing. Even more confusing is that anxiety often makes us want to be everything to everyone. It tells us to conform, to wash ourselves away entirely. It tells us not to stand out, speak up, or share our true identities. It tells us that we are only loved and accepted when we agree and go with the crowd. As someone who has straddled that line, I can tell you it's much better to be on the side where you embrace yourself fully. And counterintuitively, people tend to connect with you even more when they see you allowing yourself to be true to you. It's okay to own and accept who you are. I know your anxiety, and especially your perfectionism, may have told you for years that no one loves you that you're ugly or that you're an idiot. It doesn't mean there's actual validity to these thoughts. Once we break this association, the guilt and shame can start to go away. We begin to learn that you may have the thought that you are stupid, but it does not mean you are actually stupid. You may have the thought you're not creative, but that doesn't mean you're not actually creative. Now you may be asking, but Lauren, What if my thought is actually true? And sure, I'm not telling you to invalidate yourself completely, but could it be that you're being way harder on yourself than you would with anyone else? Could there be evidence that you may in fact not be the ultimate failure or loser you've told yourself that you are? You get to decide what you believe, who you want to be, and how you want to live your life. There is no number of anxious thoughts in your brain that can ever stop you from being the person you want to become. So while you can't control the thoughts, you can control what you do with them. How you respond to your thoughts is where you get your power back. That was today's guest, author Dr. Lauren Cook, chatting to us about her book Generation Anxiety. If you are suffering with anxiety, or you have friends that suffer with anxiety, or maybe you just want to understand each other a little bit more then this is a fantastic book for you. I've read the whole thing and I found it truly helpful for myself, but also to help understand my own behaviors and how I can possibly support my friends a little bit more productively. And sometimes we just need reminding of things that we kind of already know that we need to be doing. It's a great book. You can buy it from all good bookshops. Please do pop on to drlaurencook.com to find out more about today's guest. I hope you enjoyed listening to mine and Dr. Lauren Cook's chat today, and I am super impressed that she loves Ted Lasso as much as I do. Um, we love Ted Lasso. Please do keep your book recommendations coming in to me. I love it when you get in touch, and I hope you enjoyed today's book reviews. If you have missed the first half of today's show, you can out all the books I've been reviewing either on my Instagram @getbookedwrs or on my website at hazelbutterfield.com. Coming up in the next few weeks, I am going to get a guest presenter to interview me about the book that I'm releasing because I thought I don't really know how I was going to do that. I can't really interview myself and it could be quite a one-way conversation. So, um, that's going to be coming up soon. 20 Weeks was released on the 18th of August. If you want to get hold of it, you just type in the title of the book and my name, and it's available in various other places. Um, and yeah, please do get in touch with me about all that you love about Get Booked, the books that you've been reading, the guests that you've loved, or maybe you're writing your own book and you want to come on the show. Please just get in touch at hazelbutterfield.com or through my various social media bits and bobs. Thank you for listening in today. I really do appreciate your support. Happy reading!