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

Olivia Attwood is one of the UK’s most successful reality TV stars. From winning the nation’s hearts on Love Island to hosting her amazing podcast, Olivia’s House, and presenting award-winning documentaries, she’s built a career that’s completely her own. To the outside world, it might seem like there’s nothing Liv can’t do. But behind the scenes, she faces the same pressures and worries as the rest of us. In this Great Moment, Liv opens up about why she no longer feels bad for setting boundaries and she shares how she’s learnt to manage her anxiety to become the happiest she’s ever been. Listen to the full episode HERE https://open.spotify.com/episode/7J0YVy0xXnQiulmSMuWQHG?si=_08xq66lS1WZJsdylJGOdw! If you enjoyed the show, you can also follow us: Instagram-@greatcompanypodcast https://www.instagram.com/greatcompanypodcast/# TikTok -@greatcompanypodcast https://open.acast.com/networks/611e511b4ec6dc00134bced2/shows/65d737dfdc02e00016c413b2/episodes/www.tiktok.com/@greatcompanypodcast And if you've got thoughts, questions and comments, you can email us at: [email protected] THE CREDITS Producer: Helen Burke Assistant Producer: Issy Weeks-Hankins Video: Josh Bennett Social Media: Laura Coughlan Exec Producer: Ewan Newbigging-Lister Great Company is an original podcast from JamPot Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of The Best One Yet.

• 0:02Speaker 01

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• 2:38Jamie Laing?

  Hello, everyone. I'm Jamie Laing, and this is Great Moments.

• 2:44Jamie Laing?

  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 Moments, 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.

• 3:28Jamie Laing?

  I used to actually find being a guest much easier. Now I find it hard because when I'm a guest, I just, I talk too much.

• 3:34Speaker 06

  But also, you know, from interviewing people, the worst, the guest that doesn't talk or doesn't expand or just gives you one word, it's really like, they make you work for it. I've done interviews and I feel like I need to lie down after it. So I'm like, you made me work for every, not so much.

• 3:47Jamie Laing?

  Who's your worst? Go on, give us it.

• 3:48Speaker 06

  I have to say, this is like, to be fair, this is not so much podcasts, people in like this industry. It's more on your docs. Because obviously, like, people, and it's fair to them. They've like, they're on camera for the first times, 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.

• 4:06Jamie Laing?

  Yeah, but that's a superpower that you have, right? You do, you 100% have it. I think that's the sort of an ADHD thing, right?

• 4:13Speaker 06

  Do you think?

• 4:13Jamie Laing?

  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, you're feeling a bit like hectic yourself that you try and calm the situation down, weirdly.

• 4:29Speaker 06

  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 have to, where I think you're not creating your own narrative for other people. But I feel like I can feel hyper aware if someone's uncomfortable.

• 4:42Jamie Laing?

  Yeah, hold on.

• 4:43Speaker 06

  If I feel like someone feels left out, I can feel it. Like, they might not be interacting with you, but I can feel that that person feels awkward, so I.

• 4:50Jamie Laing?

  Turn your body to open up.

• 4:51Speaker 06

  Yeah. And so that, that, I think, is something ADHD people were quite tuned into.

• 4:58Jamie Laing?

  Wait, hang on a second. So your life coach told you, so you said this to your life coach?

• 5:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, I was talking, 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 then 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, well, 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 for people you don't know? Which I think would surprise people, but how I present myself. But yeah, so sometimes I think it can be an in tune thing, but sometimes I add details, I think, that are not maybe true for that person at all.

• 5:41Jamie Laing?

  Dude, I have that. I'm not.

• 5:42Speaker 06

  I write their story for them.

• 5:43Jamie Laing?

  But do you think this is an, what did the life coach say? So this is a.

• 5:46Speaker 06

  He said, don't, you know.

• 5:47Jamie Laing?

  This is an empath thing.

• 5:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, he's like, it's like a, do you know how it came from, actually? It was, again, I think would surprise people. It's like, I was, we're talking about advocating for myself.

• 5:56Jamie Laing?

  Yeah.

• 5:56Speaker 06

  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.

• 6:11Jamie Laing?

  Wait, hang on a second. Explain this to me. I don't, I don't quite understand. So what do you mean?

• 6:15Speaker 06

  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. So that's because I'm taking on emotional baggage for someone else that might not even exist. Like, he's like, 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.

• 6:40Jamie Laing?

  Correct.

• 6:41Speaker 06

  That's like the, the balance that I try to find. So to me saying I don't want to do something or 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.

• 6:52Jamie Laing?

  That's quite, but that's really also nice.

• 6:55Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 6:56Jamie Laing?

  That's a complete empath.

• 6:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think, but then I think you can, I think non-empaths live a lot longer. I never wanted 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, I sometimes feel I'm the fun one or I'm the bitchy one from Love Island or I'm 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.

• 7:28Jamie Laing?

  I got it. Makes sense.

• 7:29Speaker 06

  I think caring about how you show up and wanting to please people is a good thing.

• 7:32Jamie Laing?

  Yeah.

• 7:33Speaker 06

  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.

• 7:44Jamie Laing?

  Do you know what, so many people listening to it would like not think that.

• 7:48Speaker 06

  I know.

• 7:49Jamie Laing?

  Because you're outspoken. You're, 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.

• 8:04Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:04Jamie Laing?

  Where it betrays a harder stereotype than it actually is.

• 8:08Speaker 06

  I think that I'm, I'm in the best place I ever have been in my entire life, like from birth, genuinely.

• 8:17Speaker 06

  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, had a happy home life, had, 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, 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.

• 8:49Jamie Laing?

  Give yourself a hard time.

• 8:51Speaker 06

  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. And then I'm like, I'm gonna go, and 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 10:00 PM, like weeping, having not eaten. I'm like, I did it in the mirror.

• 9:19Speaker 06

  Everybody wants this life.

• 9:23Speaker 06

  So things like that, I know I need to work on a little bit. Cause I don't wanna burn out. I don't wanna like ruin everything I've worked for by like just being so.

• 9:33Jamie Laing?

  Being so hard on yourself, right? But that anxiety thing, I just wanna 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 kinda quite scary because you, you are so kind of, it's so covering you in so many ways.

• 9:48Speaker 06

  So consuming.

• 9:49Jamie Laing?

  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 gonna get a job. You probably think you're never gonna hold down a relationship.

• 9:58Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:58Jamie Laing?

  You think that how your, your friend's gonna stay with you, right? You, you, you 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 kinda come around to understanding and accepting it and 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 kind of okay to deal with?

• 10:28Speaker 06

  Do you know what, for me, because I've done therapy and I've done like, um, yeah, I've done therapy, had like done life coach stuff. I, uh, 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.

• 10:45Jamie Laing?

  Cause it wasn't childhood.

• 10:46Speaker 06

  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. 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. Cause I love to kind of imagine the actual mechanics behind it. And that's a lot more how I learnt to understand myself. So once I started to understand things, like it sounds so obvious, but it's like, you know, overdoing caffeine intake,

• 11:25Speaker 06

  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 actionable, usable methods of like breathe, breathe, breathing properly. Like once like, you know, cause I used to have panic attacks when I was at school.

• 11:45Jamie Laing?

  Liv, I didn't realise this about you.

• 11:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't, I've never, I do not, I've never actually really spoke about it, like in any, in this kind of detail ever.

• 11:52Jamie Laing?

  And you were having them at school?

• 11:53Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 11:54Jamie Laing?

  That's so young.

• 11:55Speaker 06

  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 twelve, twelve or thirteen 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 breathe, shallow breathing. And you know what? They literally, I went to a school nurse and for a couple of weeks, they were investigating all kinds of things that it could be. Cause 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?

• 12:36Speaker 06

  They were looking at all the different possibilities of what it could have been, because it was so physical. And then, cause 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 the school nurse going, what's the matter, Olivia? Like 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 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 specialised in adolescent anxiety depression. I was with her for about an hour and I was like thinking, just give me a cure for this.

• 13:21Speaker 06

  And then 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, cause I used to do impulsive things at school and it kind of, but no one had ever said, yes, she has it.

• 13:34Jamie Laing?

  But it had locked into your brain.

• 13:35Speaker 06

  I was like, do you know what? That's so weird. You said that, but I would check with my mum, but I'm sure this was flowing. She said, you to me are 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're 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 a bit.

• 14:14Jamie Laing?

  Do you know, it's, it's certainly, I know exactly what you mean though, because when your brain is worrying on all these cylinders, right? You don't really understand what's going on. You basically just try and find certain ways to try and suppress it. Maybe that's, maybe it's alcohol, maybe it's coffee, maybe it's something like that, anything to try and suppress those feelings.

• 14:28Speaker 06

  Also, when you have ADHD, and when I try to, it's like to people that don't have it, you'll probably get it. They have very different effects on us. So actually coffee sometimes can like level, like calm me down.

• 14:40Jamie Laing?

  Can it really?

• 14:40Speaker 06

  Cause like, you know, it's stimulant. So certain things that you, they're like alcohol, it makes me loopy hyper. So I can't understand when people go, I, you know, I got drunk and then I was crying. I've never been anything but elated when I'm drunk. Like I am the, no reason, 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? I'm literally, I'm so happy and I'm so silly. And it, and it's, it's stimulant. It's the thing, when 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're gonna go, oh, I just stayed on a Saturday night and drank a bottle of wine.

• 15:25Speaker 06

  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. So I swear to God, like I don't drink on flights anymore, ever. Cause I, I am a menace. That plane is getting hard landed in like Minneapolis.

• 15:43Speaker 06

  Well, I'm like, where are you going?

• 15:45Jamie Laing?

  I love that tweet. That's what he went for.

• 15:49Jamie Laing?

  You were thinking somewhere in Europe and then you went straight to Minneapolis.

• 15:52Speaker 06

  I'm trying to go to middle America. We're on our way to like the west coast. They're like, we've got to get this bitch off.

• 16:17Speaker 00

  Hey, we're Nick and Jack, hosts of the best one yet. Behind every episode, there's research, emails, spreadsheets and our shared Google Doc, the headline hammer. With Google Workspace with Gemini, Google's AI is built right into the premium versions of tools we already use, like Gmail, Docs and Sheets. No new tools or extra logins, just personalised AI for the way we work. That means less time on the work around the work and more time finding the stories worth talking about. Get AI tools for work. Upgrade to Google Workspace with Gemini at goo.gle/workspacewithgemini. That's goo.gle/workspacewithgemini.

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• 17:20Speaker 04

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