Episodes

Do you ever feel more like the parent in your family than the child? You’re the one calming people down, looking after younger siblings or trying to keep things together when the adults around you are struggling. Everyone sees how capable you are, but they may not see what carrying that responsibility is doing to you.

In this episode, we explore how a young person can gradually become the emotional grown-up at home, why being needed can feel important as well as exhausting, and why stepping bac...

Do you ever feel like you’re slightly different depending on who you’re with?

Maybe you’re louder with one group, quieter with another, funnier with some people, more careful with others. That’s normal. We all adapt. But what happens when you start changing yourself because you’re scared people won’t like you if you don’t?

In this episode, we look at the exhausting habit of constantly checking how you’re coming across, trying to read everyone else’s reactions, and quietly wondering whether you...

What if people do care about you, but you still can’t quite believe it?

Someone checks in. They stay. They tell you they care. And yet your mind is already looking underneath it, trying to work out why. Was it guilt? Responsibility? Habit? Did they really mean it?

In this episode, I look at what happens when care starts to feel like something you have to investigate. When watching turns into testing, and even the response you hoped for still doesn’t quite settle the doubt.

Trust rarely comes ...

What if “I’ll always feel like this” only feels true because right now it's so loud?

When you’ve been low, anxious or overwhelmed for a while, the future can start looking like more of the same. You might know you’ve felt differently before, but somehow that version of you can feel miles away.

In this episode, I look at why the present can become so convincing that it starts shaping what you believe about the future. We explore why old struggles look different once we know how they ended, why ...

Some people can tell that someone’s mood has changed before a word’s even been said. A different look, a change in tone, a shorter message, a slightly different atmosphere, and immediately there’s a feeling of, I know what’s going on here.

And sometimes you’re absolutely right. But noticing that something has changed isn’t quite the same as knowing what that change means. In this episode, I look at what happens when being good at reading people starts to feel like certainty, how past experience...

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...