Anxiety in a crowd/busy place
Owning It: The Anxiety Podcast
Caroline Foran
4.4 • 654 Ratings
🗓️ 1 January 2023
⏱️ 10 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Access Owning It Real Time HERE
Overwhelmed on a bus? Panicked at a concert? Plug in your earphones and find some real time reassurance with this audio guide. The aim is to help you in the moment, as well as helping you move beyond it and how to approach the next time you find yourself in a similar situation.
Order yourself (or for a friend) a copy of my new book, Everything I Wish I'd Known About Anxiety: A Roadmap out of the Overwhelm and Back to Yourself here
Follow me on Instagram @CarolineForan and @OwningItPodcast, on Tik Tok here
Subscribe to my weekly Substack here (not always anxiety related, often parenting related)
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Thank you for listening to Owning It. If you would like to support the series, the best thing you can do is just tell a friend or better yet share it on social media. If you really, really want to support, you can subscribe to me on Substack where I write a weekly column. Listeners of the pod get a 20% discount forever at carolinephorun.substack.com. Thank you. |
| 0:20.2 | Hey, welcome to owning it real time. In this audio guide, |
| 0:26.2 | I'm going to talk through the feeling of anxiety when you're out in public, maybe stuck on a bus or train, |
| 0:32.3 | or at a venue busy with lots of people. I didn't think this was something that affected me personally, but when there are enough |
| 0:41.0 | vulnerability factors of play within you, it's something anyone can experience, even those |
| 0:46.3 | most confident in crowds. |
| 0:49.3 | I first want to tell you a story about an experience of this kind that I had and how I got |
| 0:53.3 | through it. I then want to talk about how you can move beyond this moment and what you can do right now to soothe yourself back to centre. |
| 1:01.0 | In March 2020, right before lockdowns were enforced, I went to a gig. |
| 1:07.0 | It was a small, intimate venue, but we were all packed in quite tightly. |
| 1:12.1 | I was about four months pregnant at the time as well. |
| 1:15.7 | Maybe it was what I was beginning to hear in the news about COVID, coupled with the fact that |
| 1:19.6 | I hadn't been in a crowded environment in quite a while, and I felt, for some reason, very |
| 1:24.3 | protective of my bump. |
| 1:26.2 | I started to feel very overwhelmed, and it really took me by surprise, and I felt a strong urge |
| 1:31.6 | to flee. |
| 1:33.4 | I excused myself to go to the bathroom, where I sat in a cubicle trying to gather myself. |
| 1:37.5 | Now, had this been a few years previous, I would have said nothing. |
| 1:41.5 | I would have tried to ignore the feeling, and forced myself to stay right where I was. I would have told myself. I would have tried to ignore the feeling and forced myself to stay right where I was. |
| 1:46.0 | I would have told myself to get a grip. I would have compared myself to everyone else in that same room who seemed to be fine. |
| 1:52.0 | I would have thought I was weak. And what started as panic in a crowd would have become a much bigger thing. |
| 1:59.0 | But because I have done so much work on myself, and I've really embraced the idea of self-compassion, |
... |
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