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Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to owning it the anxiety podcast with me, Caroline Forren. Now today, I'm just by myself again for another short episode. I think I'm getting a very good

response for these mini ones because you can just dip into them when you feel the need, when you need a

little pick me up. So in between the guest chats, which I have, which I love doing, I will have a few

more of these kind of episodes. So I'm joined here by there. He's my guest today, I suppose. Hopefully he won't be making too much noise.

And I want to talk to you about one of the best tools for helping your anxiety. And it's one that,

to be honest, for so long, I would have just rolled my eyes at thinking it sounded stupid or just a bit hippie-dippy or whatever.

But now, after resisting it for a long time and then giving it a try, I've come to believe it is not only helpful, but actually maybe even essential.

And the thing that I'm talking about is self-compassion.

So if you struggle with anxiety, I think it's fair to say you tend to be your own worst critic, and I am so incredibly hard on myself.

And even though I will be kind and considerate and gentle with any of my friends

who feel anxious for whatever reason, whenever I feel it, I just go straight on the attack. I blame

myself. I self-monitor myself like a mean teacher waiting for a student to fuck up. And you know

those people who you think, I just cannot do anything right in their eyes? It'll never be enough.

It'll never be pleasing. Well, I can kind of think

I'm that person to myself when I'm in an anxious face and maybe you feel the same. And I think,

oh, Caroline, like, you idiot, you should be able to outsmart this. Why is happening to you? I speak to

myself from a place of just complete and utter frustration and even disdain. And if I was to talk to a friend like that, I know I just, I wouldn't have very

many friends left. So there are lots of definitions of self-compassion floating around, but I guess

for me it's about being as kind to yourself as you would be to someone else. And again, that

might sound super simple and maybe a little bit silly and like, you know, okay, if all it took was for me to be nice to myself,

...