Embracing Anxiety: An overactive ally with Psychotherapist Owen O'Kane

Today, I am delighted to be joined by Owen O'Kane, an expert psychotherapist specializing in anxiety. Owen shares his unique perspective on viewing anxiety as an ally that can be positively harnessed when understood properly. We dive into his latest book, which provides not only a deep insight into anxiety but practical steps to manage it. Owen opens up about his personal experiences with anxiety, his professional insights from working in palliative care, and his childhood in Northern Ireland. We also discuss the therapeutic benefits of connecting with animals and simple moments of contentment in life. Join us as we explore transforming anxiety into a source of strength and clarity.

01:20 Discussing the Book and Anxiety

02:18 Personal Experiences with Anxiety

04:15 Therapeutic Approaches to Anxiety

06:41 Analogies and Real-Life Examples

07:46 The Role of Animals in Therapy

13:10 Final Thoughts and Reflections

You can hear more episodes of Lady Carnarvon's Official Podcasts at https://www.ladycarnarvon.com/podcast/

New episodes are published on the first day of every month.

Transcript

 Welcome to my podcast and I'm sitting here in my beloved Highclere Castle and my guest today is Owen O'Kane, psychotherapist, expert with most mental health problems but his speciality is about anxiety which he thinks of as an ally which we can best use in certain circumstances but we don't need to have riding with us all the time.
 And as well, it's something which was very useful when he grew up in Northern Ireland, where you had to be much more aware of everything. And yet in today's world, we also want to find a measure of contentment in much of our life. Welcome, Owen. Thank you so much for joining me today. And I'm just going to go straight to your books. I love the fact that the print is big enough that it's so easy to read. My goodness. I have to confess, nothing to do with me.
 publishing decision but i think because we had we deliberately made the decision that it was going to be a really clear cut book that i guess the publishers decided that they wanted the text to just to be very readable i think the order you get as well i don't know about you but i have to really squint if i'm reading something unless i've got my glasses with me yes but i think the decision around the print was actually this is all about clarity so i think we wanted the print to match that see if i can just share the starting point about
 feeling anxious because you're writing a book. I'm copy editing my latest book. So all those anxieties were straight here. It's, will the publisher like it? Oh my God, they may not like it. Will the reader like it? Oh my goodness, I'm going to panic. And it's all those panic situations. Will I get it done? I'm going to be late. I'm going to be late. I'm not going to be late. I think I become a nightmare. I hope you do too. And then in the end, you work your way through it and you think, oh, it's dark. You get a lot of irony about doing this book. It's my fourth book.
 And on day one, when I sat down, you've got the title, you've got your concept. And it's a book about anxiety. And I was really aware of that beginning. Where am I going to go? I'm just noticing my own anxiety. And I was really struggling about where do I go with the beginning of the book. And suddenly I thought, why don't I just be honest about my own anxiety? Where my head's gone to, what I'm feeling in my body.
 what emotions are around at the moment, because I thought it was a really good inroad to talk about the humanity of anxiety, really. We all carry anxiety around at some points, but sometimes for people, anxiety can feel unmanageable or it can feel overwhelming. And certainly in my world, as a therapist, I see people struggle a lot with anxiety and that's increased over the last four or five years. So I wanted to do something with this book that would not only just be about helping people understand their anxiety, but more importantly, about what they can do.
 and where the breakthroughs are. And I think the first thing when you pick up a book about anxiety is you realise many people are anxious. That was my first thing. Oh, look, I feel just like Owen does. And that is quite a relief, actually. And then you think everyone is dealing with it. And I think all being in the same boat together really helps. I had somebody contact me during the week that I know really well, and they said, oh, I've read your book.
 And they said, I really enjoyed it. And that was lovely. And they said, the one thing I realised is that I'm more anxious than I thought I was. They would never have used the word anxiety to describe themselves. But when they were reading the book, they realised that they had a lot of the characteristics of anxiety in terms of the overthinking and that sense of threat and that sense of being on watch or on guard the whole time. And they said, I'm more anxious than I realise. And of course, that came up in COVID big time.
 Firstly, we were isolated, which I think is always devastating. And secondly, so anxious, if not for ourselves, for those we loved dearly, with either good reason or not. But it was very hard. I've certainly been very anxious at different moments of my life and then consciously thinking I am going to get through it. I think your bullet points in the book are very useful, Owen, because I like bullet points, because you think if there's...
 a certain number of bullet points, I can do it. Yeah, that's true. You work your way through it. And one of the things I try and do here is because a lot of anxiety books, you'll hear stuff about techniques and tools and various things you can do. And what I've tried to do here is I fundamentally believe treating anxiety isn't like treating a kidney or a lung or something. It's just not that. It's much more nuanced. Even though anxiety physiologically is something happening to the body, into the mind, I believe it's more about everyone has an anxious part within them.
 Yes. Everyone has that anxious, scared part within them. And sometimes it will come up and it will make itself known in the mind or in the emotional states or in the behaviours. And people often don't really know what's happening some of the time. And I guess their immediate instinct with anxiety is to push it down or to get rid of it or in some way to move it on as quickly as possible.
 And I think the problem with that is that when you do that, what you're doing is you're rejecting and you're almost abandoning a part of yourself. So the first part of the book, I talk about getting to know that part of you, that anxious self, that it's meant to be there. There's nothing wrong. It's not a problem. But sometimes it's working way harder than it needs to. So the beginning of the book really works hard on this anxious part of you. Don't run away from it. Be alongside it. Learn to negotiate with it. Learn to get to know it.
 and what it's trying to communicate, because anxiety often is communicating something. And if we're running away from information that's important to know, then we miss something really important. So the anxiety could be encouraging you to slow down, to readjust, to tweak, to rethink, to reevaluate. And if you're not willing to listen to those cues, then you're missing important information. For me, rather than see anxiety as an enemy, which a lot of people do, I think just try and think of it as an ally that's just working too hard.
 because then you can do something quite transformative with it rather than it becoming this awful thing. But the problem is, and this is the addiction component, people do get addicted to the process of anxiety. That heightened sense of awareness. Yeah, they become addicted to the way of thinking. Anxious thoughts are quite tantalising. What if? They will predict the worst, they will imagine the worst, they will catastrophize. So it's a bit like watching a movie that's quite engaging. People get caught up in it.
 And the more thoughts the mind produces, the more we get engaged. And of course, the more attention we give the thoughts, then it spirals and develops quite quickly. So you're helping people realise that actually the majority of these thoughts don't really mean anything. I've grown up with horses, ponies and Arab horses. And I had a lovely one, Azzy, who lived with me for much of my life. She's rode her for about 20 years.
 And as we came out of some woodland area into a large field, she would always start to dance because deep in her psyche, that was where the lion or the tiger might be lying along a branch as she came out into the savannah. Now, I don't have any lions or tigers, but within her, there was that anxiety, that anxiousness. I never trained her, but we would start to dance quite hard because at that point,
 she wanted to make a rush. So I knew that her anxiety in dancing would accelerate at that point. And it's not always easy to ride. And I would go with her. I couldn't tell her to stop because she wasn't going to listen to me because she's thinking, oh my God, there's a lot. And we would dance quite quickly out there and I'd either think, okay, let's gallop or let's not. But that was the anxiety which I was riding. And I always think...
 Animals help a lot, and my husband and I support a charity called Heroes, which takes retired racehorses and helps young, troubled local people in St. Berkshire work with the horses and, again, go alongside them, because I think you can learn so much from them. It's a wonderful charity, which I want to carry on supporting, actually, for those reasons, because you can capture that anxiety on a horse and understand it.
 and go with it rather than not. So that's my best analogy. Yeah, it's a brilliant analogy. Animals do teach us. I spent the day once with people who work with horses in terms of emotional communication and leadership. I don't really know much about horses or anything and these horses were just incredible what they would teach you.
 And how they would respond to you if you were working too hard with them, or you were going too close, or you were trying to form a relationship with them when they weren't ready. They would turn away, or you had to really work and negotiate with them. It's exactly the same when we're dealing with the anxious selves. There's a lot of negotiation that has to go on. There's a lot of stepping back. There is stepping back and not doing something sometimes. Yeah, or been driven by, or letting anxiety be in the driving seat.
 Because I think that often happens and that it can be in the driving seat of people's lives where they believe that, OK, this might happen, this will happen. I must do this. I've got to do that. When actually, if you're able to pull back and almost look in and say, OK, this is just a mechanism that's just activated, then you can regain that sense of control. And that's really what this book is about, is helping people realise that they can regain a sense of control and get back in the driving seat of their own life.
 It's like that wonderful phrase in Dan's army. Don't panic, Captain Mannerick. It's always just stepping back as they rush forward. I think we use a lot of laughter to try to deflate anxiety-making situations here. For better or worse, and that's part of our culture, because in the end, happy days is what you're after.
 balance where you can deal with them and find pockets of happiness amongst it all. But I know you grew up in Northern Ireland, which must have been probably a more challenging place to grow up, and perhaps it is now, but nevertheless, some of the emotional currents running underneath it must have been quite challenging and either taught you a lot or made you anxious. As a psychotherapist, you learn about trauma and anxiety, and they've always been my interest areas.
 And when I write these books, there are three areas really that I write from. So I'll write as a psychotherapist first and foremost. Secondly, I worked in palliative care for 10 years. I worked with people who were terminal. So I always use that experience in my work. And the third element is my own experience of growing up in the war zone, essentially, where you don't realise it at the time, actually, but you're primarily hardwired to be on guard the whole time. And actually...
 That's anxiety working well because without anxiety, growing up in an environment like that, you could end up in trouble quite quickly. Anxiety was a healthy mechanism for me when I grew up there because it was like that being vigilant, being on guard, being watchful, being mindful of what was happening was part of survival for most people who grew up there. But then the problem is when you leave and you've gone away and you're growing up and you're getting on with your own life and you realise it.
 Some of the patterns that you'd established back then are still playing a part in your life. You then realise that you just repeat them and they're there. And I think a lot of people who struggle with anxiety have maybe come from environments where there was anxiety at home or there was anxiety in their communities or there was social anxiety or even anxiety from religions and churches or there's a lot of rules about good and bad and right and wrong. So we can often learn to become anxious.
 I'm not saying it's the entirety of the story, but for many people, they've learned to become anxious. And we crash land into adulthood, many of us, and I think we don't really stop to evaluate what's useful to take along or what's not. Because if you're not going to go into therapy and work this stuff out, I think most people carry the patterns along. And suddenly they live most of their adult lives with patterns.
 or maybe installed when they were a young kid or in their teenage years, but those patterns don't serve them well anymore. It's another big kind of component of this book about recognising what these patterns might be. Because I often joke to my husband that I'm trying to upgrade him from computer 1.1 to computer 4.2, and my upgrade isn't working very well. At least he then starts laughing as I said he is stuck in a groove.
 I sometimes think because women are often in the middle of an emotional situation trying to balance many different people, you end up having to adapt and you naturally are forced to upgrade. Whereas those around you don't always go along with it. That's the problem, isn't it? It is the problem. And then it's trying to...
 use the different metaphors and I often use horses and my son will say, mommy, I'm not a horse. Will you stop using that analogy? You're not trying to catch me in a field. But by the end, at least he's laughed, which is broken the ice. But I think it's very interesting because what I took away from your experience with palliative care as well, and I think after my parents died, they both died very young.
 I and my sisters were very scared of death the whole time. And you see it around every corner. And it takes time until you accept it is around a corner, but perhaps not the corner that you're turning around now. But the minute anything was wrong, you went from A to Z. And it was just a disaster. And trying to take that away a little bit is very difficult. And that's the same for most patterns with people.
 Unless you're willing to look at what the challenge is and what the patterns are, then they'll just continue. I mean, our brains are hardwired in a very particular way and our kind of neural pathways, once they're set up, responses will just play out over and over again. So very often what you're trying to do as a therapist is you're trying to, it's almost like building a bridge. You're not going to recreate a new pathway, but what you can do is you can almost bypass the old one. What you're helping people do is you say there are different ways to respond.
 You don't need to always respond from the old pattern. Good therapy is about helping reinstall new patterns so that you're bypassing the old ones and then people then again. You were talking earlier about happiness and freedom and stuff. I guess that's what most people want to feel in their life. Just a bit happier and a bit calmer and just a bit more at ease. I like the word contentment above happiness. Yes. I think contentment's underrated. Because I think we're not always going to...
 You're not happy all the time. I don't know what the word happy is. But there are moments when you look out or you're sitting down with a cup of tea and you're hearing the birdsong and you are very contented. Yeah, but there are the simpler moments as well. I don't know about you, but the older I get, I realise that I'm happiest when things are easy and simple. It doesn't need to be.
 You're younger, you go off on holidays. Sitting here, and whenever people come and visit Highclere, I just always say, don't rush, if I can, on email, respond to them. Give yourself time and allow time just to sit on the grass, look up at the sky, turn over and look at a daisy in the grass, or have a cup of tea.
 Don't do anything. Just be there. But it's the hardest thing in the world, isn't it? As Lady Canargon, I end up being quite bossy and say, sit there now, and I'm joking. Tie people down. It's one of the things, actually, when I do a lot of corporate events and speaking events, and often I'll start off an event and I'll get people to do nothing. So before I even start speaking, I'll ask the audience just to have a minute of doing nothing.
 And that's simple instruction. And for most people, you then get feedback afterwards what happened in that minute of doing nothing. And it's crazy what you hear people describe. They couldn't stop. Their mind was in overdrive. The minute felt like it was too long. They felt they should be doing something. They felt they were missing something. They were impatient. So it's like even that simple thing, can you just take a minute of just allowing your mind to be quiet?
 can be a huge challenge because we do live in a world where it's just stimulus driven the whole time and that is a big part of the anxiety subject which is what i'm most interested in is it's a two-way street really because you've got the external stimulus which is a world which is just on overdrive the whole time and tells us that we need to be stimulated but we've also got the inner world which is very often overstimulated
 So you've got a double whammy there where you've got external stimulus on high alert and you've got an internal stimulus on high alert. So no wonder we're an anxious generation. And then I think some people turn to drugs to try and decrease the stimulus, which obviously increases everything inside and outside. I'll tell you a brilliant story about this book, actually. This book came about, I was in the NHS at the time.
 And I was running an anxiety group for 16 people. And there were people who had been around the block. They'd had all sorts of different treatment and hadn't really recovered. And a psychiatrist I was working with at the time said, I want you to set up a group and see how you get on with these people. So anyway, about eight weeks into the program, I noticed that they were all starting to improve and do quite well. And there was banter in the group. And the group was lighter. You could feel it the minute you walked into the room. At the end of the session, I said, look, I've noticed.
 everyone seems a lot lighter and i've noticed a lot of improvement and you wouldn't have heard a pin drop everyone just went quiet and this one guy in the group who had previously been a drug addict he then said this is quite scary and i said what do you mean and he said he said look i'm a drug addict and he said i thought stopping drugs was hard but giving up anxiety is even harder he said i'm hooked he said because what am i without anxiety what what if
 I stop worrying and something goes wrong. And then, of course, the group were laughing at him, but then they all identified and they knew what he meant and I knew what he meant. Because suddenly, and this is where the addiction component of this comes in for me, that there is a belief sometimes that if I'm not worrying, then something might happen. I had a client a few weeks ago said to me that she woke up for the first time in four years without a knot in her stomach recently. And she sat on the bed and she said, oh, I don't feel anxious today.
 And I haven't had this feeling in a long time. And then she said immediately, she then started to worry about why she didn't have them on the stomach. Because we become dependent on this belief that if we're not on watch and we're not on guard the whole time, then we may be missing out on something going wrong. So that is what the anxious mind will do. That's what the anxious self will do. It will step up in a very helpful way, making you believe that.
 It's a necessary relationship. And of course, it creates a lot of discomfort in the mind, the body, the emotions, which is why it is almost like addiction in the sense that it's a love-hate relationship. People really want to push their anxiety down, but at the same time, when you try and take it from them or you try and move them through it, they will resist you and they will fight you because they believe actually it's too important. So it's a complicated dynamic in the sense that people don't want to feel.
 Anxiety is an emotion, but at the same time, they're also very reluctant to let it go. Yes, I think I get back to my horse analogy. Once she's out of the barrier between the woodland and the field, she's in the middle of the field, she doesn't bother about her anxiety at all. Because she's out of danger. She's out of danger and it's just that moment. But do you know, 90% of what we worry about in life, the neuroscientists have looked at this, 90% of what we worry about will never come to fruition.
 And even the 10% of worries that might have some natural follow through, even those worries, they're never going to be as drastic as we predict them to be. So we spend a lot of time engaged in worry when actually that worry is often not warranted. I have all my beloved Labrador dogs and I think they're very good for de-stressing and reducing anxiety because...
 They obviously live in the moment. They simply want to remind you that they love you. They want to go for a walk now. They're not bothered at all. They know you're going to give them food tomorrow, although they'll look for it now. I think dogs are an enormous help. I think people found them, again, very helpful in COVID. They're rather stressful sometimes afterwards.
 But they are an important part of so many people's lives to try to get that thing of walking and talking and remembering this is the moment now when I want to kiss you from a dog. I have a dog. I have a little Westie. He's four now, but I had a Westie for 15 years before him. And interestingly, with both dogs, I've always had them in the therapy room.
 So if I'm working with a client face-to-face, particularly if I see them at home, the dog's always in the room. And to date, I've never had a client refuse to have the dog in the room. And it's always really interesting for me, particularly if I'm working with someone who's got trauma or something going on, it's fascinating to watch how the dog will just pick up on the energy in the room. And they'll either move closer to the client or they'll lie at their feet.
 Or the dog who died about five years ago, she was incredibly intuitive. She would sometimes jump up and sit beside someone or move closer. Extraordinary stuff that we'd see happen with that dog. I was working in a hospice at the time when I was in palliative care doing some work. My other half was picking me up from work one night and he brought the dog into the hospice. We had a young guy there at the time who was in final stages. He was dying. He was in his 30s.
 And having a really tough time towards the end. And he was heavily sedated on a lot of medication, but we could not get him settled at all. We tried everything and he was just very agitated, very restless. Not uncommon, particularly with younger people, but we were really struggling with this young guy to get him comfortable. And the dog came in and when the dog came into the room, she immediately jumped in his bed. She wasn't meant to be there, but she'd seen me and then come running. And she jumped in his bed and sat on his chest.
 And he immediately calmed. Wow. And he stroked a dog. Anyway, long story short, he had a good night's sleep and he died the next day. And when his wife came to say thank you afterwards, she came with a thank you card because she had a picture of a Westie on the card. And I think scientifically it's hard to, how do you kind of prove that evidentially? I witnessed it happen where actually the animal's compassion and gentleness with him enabled him.
 to just settle and relax. So all of the scientific stuff we were using, the drugs and medication, various interventions weren't having any impact. And yet this dog comes in, jumps in his bed and instantaneously soothes him. So I think there's a lot. I agree with you with the horses and stuff. I think a lot of the work in this book is about how do we self-regulate and how do we self-soothe? And it's something most of us aren't taught.
 I don't know about your upbringing, but certainly I wasn't taught. You had lovely parents and they did their best and they looked after us and they loved us very much. But we're often not taught how to self-soothe or self-regulate. No, I know when my son was coming back from school or whatever else and if he was a bit caught up or it's clearly been difficult at school, I would just put him to bed with two dogs and they'd be on his bed. And when he was tiny, he'd go and sit in, and all my nieces and nephews, they'd go and sit in the basket.
 With the dogs. And I think there's nothing better. And if I think my husband's had a difficult day in the office, Poppy and I would come and sit on the sofa with us. And Poppy's just determined to sit on his knee. And curiously enough...
 I knew he was contemplating various problems last night, and so she didn't want to sit on my knee. She's determined to sit on his knee. Because she pegged up on it. And in the end, she was on his knee, whether she wanted it or not. I know. And he had to stroke her. And Anaila's just like sitting behind me. It's extraordinary, and I think they are very good, and they do help, and they do say it's going to be okay.
 Well, they teach us a lot, don't they? Because I talk about loads of stuff in this book about what helps and what's useful. But animals will stop when they need to. They'll communicate very clearly what their needs are. But I think that's what your book does. And I think that we have a book club here every month because it's a way of learning, sharing different people's journeys in life. We only wear one pair of shoes, fit our feet. And other people can wear different shoes. But we're all on.
 Different paths at different times. And I think books are so helpful, particularly when they've got a big typeface and I can read them so easily. So it's great. So I do hope people pick up your book. I'm absolutely sure they will and enjoy it. I put it down and my husband started reading my copy actually last night. The way you've set it out, it's reassuring to read because I think if you're anxious.
 You want reassurance. Yeah, I think if you overwhelm people, they're not going to... They're going to be anxious. Yeah, no. In a nutshell, it's about, you know, the book's in three parts, really, isn't it? The first part is getting to know your anxious self and being able to go towards it. Second part is really about understanding what goes on in the mind, what goes on in the emotions, what behaviours help, what behaviours don't help. And I also talk a bit about energy as well. Anxiety is an energetic state.
 Which I had never thought of at all. But perhaps in a sense, my whole scenario, you could think of me dancing at the woods. It's an energetic state. And of course, we need to acknowledge that. We're trying to interfere with that energetic state. We're interfering with natural flow. And then, of course, the final stage is acknowledging that most people do relapse. So there is no finite. You are always going to have anxiety. There will always be difficult moments. There are always going to be challenges. So I really focus on...
 the kind of prevention and recovery and prevent and relapse, really, so that this becomes more of a way of life. And that we're all going to have anxious moments. And it's like, again, if I fought my Arab mayor on that edge of the woodland, she and I would have a difference of opinion. I'd probably be on the ground. Yeah, of course. If I go with her, then we'll make it across the field at perhaps a faster rate than I might choose. But nevertheless, we're out of it. Exactly.
 In a nutshell, if you treat anxiety as an enemy, that's what it feels like and that's what it becomes. Where actually if you see it as a part of you that may need a bit more attention and care and that you need to go towards rather than running the other way, people can have monumental breakthroughs where they start to get their life back. And this is what the book is about fundamentally, about reclaiming life. And I love all your different examples because that's really interesting. Yeah, it's real life. This is real life. And it's all of us. It is all of us.
 It is all of us. Every summer, I have a summer garden party for friends of Highclere Castle, which I love. It's hopefully summer, roses, my Labrador dogs, potter outside, tours inside, a proper traditional afternoon tea with lots of cream and scones and jam and yumminess and champagne, of course, too. So if you could ask any guest to this garden party with you, and please do come to the next one this June, who would you bring, Owen?
 You know, the immediate thought that comes to my mind is my mum died quite young. My mum died in her 50s and I was walking around the grounds earlier and I was thinking she came to mind actually and I thought her spectacular, the grounds were how much she would enjoy that. But I guess when you lose someone, you often think about conversations that you would have liked to have had or time that you would have liked to have spent with them and things that you would have done differently. So I think I'd have my mum. I have a rose arbor I built in memory of my own mum here in the garden. So perhaps...
 The four of us, two in spirit and two for real, can go and explore that. Lovely, that sounds nice. Thank you so much, Owen, for coming in today. Thanks for having me. It's been such a joy. You'll have to come back at summery times of yours. No, it's beautiful. Thank you so much for coming. It's so beautiful, thank you. Wonderful.