Episodes

Sometimes the hardest part isn’t what you’re doing. It’s trying to understand what’s going on underneath it. Maybe you’ve lost your temper, walked away, shut down, refused something, or ended up in another argument. Everyone else can see the behaviour, but that doesn’t mean they understand what’s behind it. And sometimes, if you’re being honest, you might not completely understand it either. So what if you’re not just being difficult? In this episode, I explore what can happen when behaviour ...

What happens when getting better starts to feel like you might lose something too? For some young people, being unwell can become the point where people finally notice. Family check in more. Friends stay closer. School takes things more seriously. People make time, ask questions and seem to care in a way that perhaps they did not before. So when things begin to improve, there can be another feeling sitting underneath the relief. If I'm no longer the person everyone is worried about, will they ...

Everyone seems to come to you when something’s gone wrong. You listen, you stay calm, you try to help, and before long you’ve somehow become the person everybody relies on. At first, that can feel like a good thing. It means people trust you, they feel safe with you, and they believe you’ll know what to say. But after a while, it can start to feel heavy, especially when their problem stays in your head long after they’ve moved on. In this episode, I want to look at how that role develops, why ...

Can you love someone and still be scared of them? It feels like a question that should have a simple answer. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that real life rarely fits into simple categories. In this episode, we're not talking about labels or trying to decide whether somebody is a good person or a bad one. We're talking about something much more familiar than that. What happens when someone can make you feel loved and unsettled at the very same time? When your heart seems ...

I've been thinking about friendships quite a bit while putting this episode together, and the more I thought about it, the more I realised this isn't really an episode about friendships at all. It's about what happens when they start to change. Most of us have experienced that moment when someone we were once really close to slowly becomes a smaller part of our lives. Sometimes there's an argument, but often there isn't. Life just moves on, and we're left trying to work out what happened. The ...

Have you ever found yourself wishing that somebody would just notice that you're not okay... without you having to say anything? Not because you want attention. Not because you want everyone fussing over you. But because saying the words out loud somehow feels even harder. That's what we're talking about this week. We're going to look at why so many of us wait for someone else to ask the first question, what we're really hoping for when we wish someone would notice, and why staying quiet o...

After six seasons of Headstraight, I found myself reflecting on something. We've talked about anxiety, confidence, friendships, boundaries, self-belief and so many of the challenges that young people face. Those conversations still matter. But the more time I spent listening to young people, the more I realise that many of the biggest struggles don't begin with a diagnosis or even a clear problem. They begin with a question. The questions that keep people awake at night. The ones that feel too...