TEDxWarwickSalon Fear: Overcoming Uncertainty — An interview with Sam Owen
We spoke to Sam Owen, ahead of her Talk at the first #TEDxWarwick2020 Salon, Fear: Overcoming Uncertainty. Sam is a leading relationships and mental well-being coach, psychologist, BBC contributor and published author who frequently works as a relationship expert for big brands and media and spoke on anxiety, how it affects our lives and what we can do to change that.
For those who don’t know you, can you tell us who you are, what interests you and what you do?
Sure. I’m Sam Owen and I’m a relationships coach and mental wellbeing coach. I’m also a published author of self-help books, particularly two at the moment on resilience and anxiety and a third one that is coming out soon on happy relationships. I do a lot of work with big brands and media, I am a BBC contributor and I love what I do.
So, to begin, what has motivated you to speak today under the theme of Fear: Overcoming Uncertainty?
My latest book is called Anxiety Free. It is about how to overcome anxiety within a few minutes or week. It is the exact process I use with clients and it works every single time.
I know that it can be life-changing for people, because some people suffer with anxiety for years. They go to doctors and get anxiolytic drugs to resolve it, but that never actually solves it, it only relieves symptoms, so today I am excited to be able to share some of those tips and research with lots of people because it might just be the thing they are looking for and I love helping people.
Especially at a university, I think that is very fitting. You’re well-known for your science-based approach. I was wondering whether you could go into more detail about that approach and actually entails?
Wherever possible in my coaching work, which is reflected in the books I use science from different disciplines, so it might be neuroscience, it might be cognitive behavioural science. The whole point of it is that if we can understand how we function biologically, physiologically and neurologically, then it helps people to really get behind solutions that are going to work for them because they understand why there is some credibility behind it.
So then when I suggest certain approaches to certain clients it means they are much more likely to go away and implement those tools and achieve a lot of results from them really quickly. They come back for the next session and they have moved forwards leaps and bounds as a result.
I have never agreed with the idea of going to therapy for months and years. It just does not sit well with me at all. At the end of the day if you have got a problem, you want to fix it quickly and in a positive way with a positive environment and a positive mindset, so that is really what my work is about.
On the topic of anxiety and how a lot of people seek treatment in different ways, we have seen a record number of people coming out and speaking about their anxiety, especially in the last few years. It is becoming quite a common feature in peoples’ lives, especially here at university. Why do you think anxiety has become such a big issue for people, more now than before and is it an upward trend?
Sam: Modern lifestyle, for example social media and the fact that we are now living a really fast paced life where we want to cram so much into a small amount of time. We talk about it more which means that more people are identifying with it. The emotions are contagious as well. Online and offline, research shows that.
Ultimately, maybe we are talking about it more, which adds to the figures, but also I’m sure there is an increase in it as well as we have things like social media forcing us to compare ourselves with others and telling us about things going on around the world at the click of a button which means we are suddenly worried about the state of the world, the state of mankind and our futures.
We are trying to do so much in small pockets of time, for example, a big thing that has got a lot of traction recently is mindfulness because we spend so much of our time thinking, thinking, thinking, doing, doing, doing and we don’t stop. One thing I say in anxiety free is that just because we can achieve so much in little pockets of time doesn’t mean we should and just because we can doesn’t mean it’s good for us.
That is very good advice. On that note, do you feel like you still have any fears present in your life considering that you help people with it?
Sam: Anxiety and fear can often stem from your thoughts, whether they are real or not. We are always going to experience fear and anxiety at some point because things happen, you have challenges. As long as you are always growing there are going to be anxieties up ahead.
It is not about never having anxiety, it is about when it happens it is your brain trying to tell you something, to alert you to a threat. Your mental and physical wellbeing survival. It is about saying “thank you so much brain, I am going to get on and resolve it,’’ whatever the threat is.
Of course I experience anxiety sometimes, sometimes when you least expect it. But you know it is there for a reason, it is there to serve you, not to sabotage you.
On a final note, what do you think will be the takeaway message from your talk later?
You’re in control, you can resolve it using my three pillar system. It doesn’t need to be long winded and arduous, if you just use a pro-active, common sense approach to solving your anxiety or fears.
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