OLIVIA ATTWOOD: How I Became the Happiest I’ve Ever Been | GREAT MOMENTS

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1:34Hello, everyone. I'm Jamie Lang, and this is Great Moments. Hey, guys. Welcome back to Great Moments. I'm super excited this week because I wanted to revisit one of my conversations with my buddy, Olivia Atwood. Now, we all know Liv. She hosts an incredible podcast, Olivia's House. She makes great documentaries. she's built this amazing personal brand and she's really one of the UK's most successful reality stars now I had been asking Liv to come on my show for so long right so long and when she finally agreed earlier this year I was so excited she's funny she's warm she's clever she's smart she's everything and she was brilliant so open and she shared so much good stuff that I had to share this little slice of our conversation with you today now if you like this great moment you can click on the show notes and go to the full episode so sit back and enjoy this great moments with the incredible Liv Atwood I used to actually finding a guest much easier now I find it hard because when I'm a guest I just I talk too much

2:31Olivia Attwood: but also you know from interviewing people the worse the guest that doesn't talk or doesn't expand or just gives you one word it's really like who made you work for it I've done interviews and I feel like I need to lie down afterwards I'm like you made me work for every not so much who's your worst go on give it to you I have to say this is like to be fair this is not so much podcast people in like this industry it's more than your docs because obviously like people it's fair to them they're on camera for the first time is all these cameras and they they kind of shut down so and that's half the art of it isn't it getting people comfortable getting them to open up but sometimes it's hard yeah but that's the superpower that you have right you do you 100 % have it i think that's the sort of an adhd thing right which is yeah where you basically when someone comes into a room especially with interviewing you want to make them feel as comfortable as possible so you sort of you create an atmosphere where you make someone else feel comfortable because you're almost feeling which I do I'm feeling a bit like hectic yourself that you try and calm the situation down weirdly I don't know and do you have do you have this like a hyper feeling and sometimes I think you know I spoke to a life coach about it once he's like sometimes you're too worthy or not creating your own narrative for other people but I feel like I can feel hyper aware if someone's uncomfortable yeah hold on if I feel like someone feels left out I can feel it yes they might be interacting but I can feel that that person feels awkward so I turn your body to open up yeah and I And so that, I think, is something ADHD people were quite tuned into.

3:54Wait, hang on a second. So your life coach told you. So you said this to your life coach.

3:58Olivia Attwood: Yeah, we were talking about different things. I say sometimes I get, which I think would surprise people. I could have these overwhelming feelings of, like, empathy for someone I don't know. So say I was on a shoot and a runner came on and maybe he was young and he was timid. And I start to write a story for him that he's hating work and he's miserable at home and his dog's not well. And he's like, but you've just written what he might be really happy. He might look a bit sad, but he might, why are you writing, why are you taking on emotional baggage people you don't know? Which I think would surprise people for how I present myself.

4:31Olivia Attwood: But yeah, so sometimes I think it can be an in tune thing, but sometimes I add details. I think they're not maybe true for that person at all. Dude, I have that. I'm not, I write their story for them. But do you think this is an, what did the life coach say? So this is an empath thing. Yeah. It's like, it's like a, do you know where it came from actually? it was um again i think would surprise people it's like i was we're talking about advocating for myself yeah so i'll set a boundary for myself and then i i feel guilty for setting a boundary for myself so quickly and then i start to think that think all these things about how i've made that person feel because i've set a boundary for myself so then i try to unpack the boundary i don't quite understand so what do you mean like so i'm not great at setting boundaries for myself in terms of people's access to me or, you know, or saying no to things.

5:19Olivia Attwood: So that's because I'm taking on emotional baggage for someone else that might not even exist. Like he's like, you're, you're over exaggerating your mind, how the impact this is having on someone else. He told me the thing to remember is that we have a responsibility towards other people, not for them. That's like the balance that I try to find. So to me saying, I don't want to do something, I don't want to talk about something, doesn't mean even if that person's disappointed, it's not my job to fix that disappointment, which I have quite a hard time with. That's quite, but that's really also nice.

5:51Olivia Attwood: Yeah. That's a complete empath. Yeah, I think, but then I think you can, I think non-empaths live a lot longer. I never want to like, I never want to disappoint anyone. So I think I over, I overcompensate sometimes, then maybe to my own detriment. So whichever role I think I'm showing up in. So like, you know, I sometimes feel I'm the fun one or I'm the bitchy one from Love Island or on this one. I feel like I want to make sure that what people are expecting they get, but it's about trying to look after myself as well in that process. I think caring about how you show up and wanting to please people is a good thing.

6:29Olivia Attwood: And I think that, you know, if you want to be a successful person, you have to care about delivering something, right? If you don't care, then what's the point? But I think it's about, you know, like boundaries of that. Do you know what? So many people listening to it would like not think that. I know. Because you're outspoken. You are strong. Completely strong. It feels like you don't care what other people think that much. But actually underneath it, you're saying, no, you're actually, you're sensitive. You care a huge amount about people. You probably do get affected by what other people say.

7:00Yeah. Where it betrays a harder stereo than actually is.

7:03Olivia Attwood: I think that I'm in the best place I ever have been in my entire life, like from birth, genuinely. I had a very happy childhood, but I was a very anxious child. It's that typical thing for no apparent reason. Like, you know, I had a happy home life, I was very privileged, had everything a child couldn't even want. But I was a very worried, anxious child. So I genuinely would say this is the happiest place I've been in my entire life. But I give myself, I know everyone says this, but I give myself a really hard time. I'd say like, I kind of like, I can be a bit of a martyr. Like I get a kick out of almost.

7:46Give yourself a hard time.

7:47Olivia Attwood: Yeah. Like I'll look at a schedule or like a day and it's like completely inhumane. And I'll be like, no, I shouldn't do that. I shouldn't do that. I'm going to do it. And then I'm like, I'm gonna go, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna get a massive kick out of being able to do what like 10 people told me. You can't do that all in one day. And then I'll, I'll drag myself to my hotel room at like 10 PM, like weeping, having not eaten. I'm like, I did it. In the mirror, like I did it. Everybody wants this life. So things like that, I know I need to work on a little bit because I don't want to burn out. I don't want to like ruin everything I've worked for by like just being so...

8:30Being so hard on yourself. But that anxiety thing I just want to dive into because that's... When you're in the thick of anxiety, like someone listening right now who's in the thick of an anxious state, right? It's kind of quite scary because you are so kind of... It's so covering you in so many ways. So consuming. So consuming that you can't really see a way out. And because you can't see a way out, you then fear for your future. You probably think you're never going to get a job. You probably think you're never going to hold down a relationship. You think that how your friend's going to stay with you, right?

8:58You think all these kind of like catastrophic things. And you're sort of a prime example of someone who has obviously dealt with a huge amount of anxiety and also kind of come around to understanding and accepting and then coming out some sort of the other side, right? and I suppose my question to you is how did you get to a place yourself where you were more accepting of yourself and understanding that okay anxiety is it's just anxiety and it's

9:23Olivia Attwood: kind of okay to deal with do you know what for me because I've done therapy and I've done like um yeah I've done therapy I've done life coach stuff I everyone's different some people like to sit and talk about feelings and unpack like childhood memories and I did a bit of that and I just didn't feel like it was helping me. If anything, I felt like it was making me feel more anxious. Because it wasn't childhood. I was kind of like, I was opening more Pandora's boxes and it wasn't helping me on the day-to-day with the anxiety I was facing. And actually what I found is me personally, and cognitive therapy is quite good like this, is like practical, actual useful methods of like, one I love, like, so if I'm talking, so my life coach is also, he's a psychiatrist as well.

10:03Olivia Attwood: If he talks like science to me, like if he's like, okay, so when you do this, your brain is like releasing this chemical because I love to kind of imagine the actual mechanics behind it and that's a lot more how I learned to understand myself so once I started to understand things like it sounds so obvious but it's like you know overdoing caffeine intake drinking multiple nights a week not exercising not eating the right diet all the things that were like I'm actively working against myself but there's these things seem so obvious but once I started to have like actual usable methods of like breathing properly.

10:39Olivia Attwood: Like once like, you know, cause I used to have panic attacks when I was at school. Liv, I didn't realize this about you. Yeah. I don't, I've never, I've never actually really spoke about it like in any, in this kind of detail ever. And you were having them at school. Yeah. That's so young. So young. And, and they came like out of the, well, again, nothing's out of the blue, but to us out of the blue and they were kind of in a classroom. Gosh, I must've been, like the first one, like 12 or 13 in a classroom, like what a complete disassociation. Like I was sitting there and one minute I kind of felt like I didn't really know where I was, like hands just literally dripping in sweat, kind of shallow breathing.

11:19Olivia Attwood: And you know what they literally, I went to school nurse and for a couple of weeks they were investigating all kinds of things that it could be. Because again, at that time when we were at school, it wasn't like, okay, this is textbook panic attack it was like is she having an allergy to something is she hypoglycemic they were looking at all the different possibilities of what it could have been because it was so physical and then because i didn't like feeling out of being having a panic attack you're kind of losing control and then i was panicking i was losing control so i'm panicking more than i'm crying and school nurse going what's the matter olivia i couldn't verbalize what was the matter because i didn't know how to explain what i was feeling and to be honest getting the adhd diagnosis this is yeah and do you know what it was it's like I got that officially when I was around 21 years old and I'd my anxiety was impacting me so much that I went to see someone who was specialized in adolescent anxiety depression I was with her for about an hour and I was like thinking just give me a cure for this and at the end of the hour she was like has anyone ever talked to you about adhd and i just had this memory of like as a kid it being discussed like you know because i used to do impulsive things at school and it kind of but no one had ever said yes she has it but it locked into your brain i was like do you know what that's so weird you said that but i would check with my mom but i'm sure this was flow she said you to me i just textbook adhd so it's like a chicken and egg thing she's like your you are your brain is running like 10 million computer tabs at once you're you know overstimulating yourself with you know caffeine you're not sleeping properly you're doing everything to make it worse and then what's happening is your body is the anxiety is coming as like a warning sign that you're in overdrive and so once i understood that i could work back to help myself so that's how i kind of got control of it do you know it's so interesting i know exactly what you mean though because when your brain is wearing on all these cylinders right and you don't really understand what's going on, you basically just try and find certain ways to try and suppress it.

13:20Maybe it's alcohol, maybe it's coffee, maybe it's something like that. Anything to try and suppress those feelings.

13:25Olivia Attwood: And it's also, when you have ADHD, when I try to say this to people that don't have it, you'll probably get it. They have very different effects on us. So actually coffee sometimes can level, like calm me down. Can it really? Because it's a stimulant. It's a stimulant. So certain things that you, like alcohol, it makes me loopy, hyper. So I can't understand when people go, I got drunk and then I was crying. I've never been anything but elated when I'm drunk. Like I am the, nobody's like, everyone wants to go out with me because I am the best fucking time. Like from one glass of wine, I'm literally like, you know, what's the motive?

14:03Olivia Attwood: I'm literally, I'm so happy and I'm so silly. And it's a stimulant. It's the thing, even people go, oh, I have a glass of red wine to go to bed. I have a glass of red wine. I'm trying to redecorate the house at like 1am. That's insane to me. You remember, oh, I just stayed on a Saturday night and drank a bottle of wine. I'm trying to come out the window and go to a club. If I drink on a flight, I'm trying to get in the cockpit. I swear to God, like I don't drink on flights anymore, ever. Because I am a menace. That plane is getting hard landed in like Minneapolis. Well, I'm like, where are you going?

14:41I love that story. that's what he went for I didn't you were thinking somewhere in Europe and then he went straight to Manila I'm trying to get

14:49Olivia Attwood: middle America we're on our way to like the west coast they're like we've got to get this bitch off

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