The Laura Dowling Experience

Anxiety author Caroline Foran joins Laura for a deeply personal conversation about parenting a young son recently diagnosed as autistic with a PDA profile, alongside her own long history with anxiety.

Caroline talks openly about the years before the diagnosis, the blame she turned inward, and everything she has had to unlearn about parenting. She explains what PDA — Pervasive Drive for Autonomy — actually looks like day to day, why traditional approaches can make things worse, and the social pressure of being seen to "manage" a child whose nervous system is set on high alert.

She also shares her own anxiety story, from a frightening breakdown at sixteen in Italy through to the severe physical anxiety that took over her twenties. Caroline talks about medication, CBT, and the years of work behind her new book Everything I Wish I'd Known About Anxiety, and why so much of recovery came from showing her body safety rather than trying to outthink her own mind.

🔑 Key Points

Discovering a PDA profile — Caroline explains Pervasive Drive for Autonomy and what it means for her son's nervous system day to day.
Why traditional parenting backfires — Holding firm boundaries can push a PDA child straight into fight or flight, even at five.
Lowering the demands — A low-demand, declarative-language approach has reshaped everyday life at home.
Performative parenting — The urge to respond to her son for the benefit of onlookers, even with close friends.
The years before the diagnosis — A bumpy COVID start, severe separation anxiety and two preschool attempts that left him distressed.
Caroline's anxiety story — A breakdown at sixteen in Italy and a severe physical episode at twenty-five.
Medication, CBT and self-compassion — Prozac, behavioural therapy and learning to respond to anxiety with kindness rather than self-attack.
Showing the body safety — Why walking, rhythm and bottom-up regulation worked better than trying to master her thoughts.
The cost of constant stimulation — Social media, the pleasure–pain balance and collective anxiety since COVID.

📚 Resources

Everything I Wish I'd Known About Anxiety
Owning It
PDA Society
Casey Ehrlich (Peace Parents)
Dr Anna Lembke — Dopamine Nation

⏱️ Timestamps

02:00 — "Is he non-verbal?" introducing her son
02:30 — Autism with a PDA profile
03:00 — What PDA stands for
04:30 — Nervous system disability and perceived demand
06:00 — Why traditional parenting can backfire
08:00 — Performative parenting in public
10:00 — A pillow on the grass and what dysregulation looks like
13:00 — Blaming herself before the diagnosis
17:00 — Sensory overwhelm and rethinking exposure
20:00 — Preschool, school and what comes next
30:00 — Family life, marriage and never a date night
33:30 — Caroline's anxiety story begins in Italy
39:00 — A severe breakdown at twenty-five
45:00 — Starting medication and what Prozac actually did
51:00 — CBT, behavioural experiments and getting her life back
56:00 — Showing the body safety
59:00 — Social media and the pleasure–pain balance
01:04:00 — Caroline's new book
01:05:30 — Advice and the meaning of life
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, comedian Kyla Cobbler shares an honest, no-frills account of how her drinking quietly turned into dependency — while she was still training, working, and gigging five nights a week.

She tells Laura how being a regular performer in Barcelona blurred the lines between socialising and self-medicating, and how Dry January cracked the whole thing open. What started as a simple challenge ended in withdrawal, therapy, AA, and a completely new relationship with fear, nerves, and joy on stage.

🔑 Key Points
How "high-functioning" drinking can hide a much bigger problem
The cycle of running, gigging, free drinks — and waking up groggy every single morning
What withdrawal actually felt like by day two of Dry January
Why it was never about the red wine — it was about wanting to feel different
Performing sober for the first time, and learning to feel everything instead of numbing it

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Barbara Scully sits down with Laura for a wide-ranging conversation that starts with her own recent run-in with the medical system and opens out into what it actually means to age as a woman in Ireland today.

Barbara talks about months of hip pain, a string of MRIs, a suspected stroke that turned out to be nothing, and the moment she decided to step off the treadmill of tests, hand back the prescription and rebuild her strength in the gym. She also shares her type 2 diabetes diagnosis in her mid-50s and the two years of remission she achieved through diet and exercise before her mother died and life became harder again.

The conversation moves into menopause, brain fog, mood swings and the language used about older women. Barbara reframes brain fog as an information retrieval slowdown, makes the case that women's anger after menopause is real and warranted, and argues that being underestimated as you get older is closer to a superpower than to invisibility.

There is also room for the story behind it all. Growing up tall in a male-dominated house. Becoming an unmarried mother in 1987 and listening to politicians and clergy describe women like her as a scourge on the radio. The close, unconventional friendship she had with her mother, who set up her own business teaching women word processing in the late 1980s. And the comedy career she fell into in her 60s, now touring with her one-woman show Older Bolder Wiser. Her best-selling book ‘Wise Up’ is available now in Irish bookstores nationwide & on Amazon.ie 📚

🔑 Key Points

Trusting your gut with healthcare
After months of MRIs and a hip replacement referral, Barbara declined the surgery and rebuilt her strength through physio and the gym.

A diabetes diagnosis as a wake-up call
A type 2 diagnosis in her mid-50s pushed her into healthier habits and into remission for two years.

Brain fog reframed
Women in their 60s have decades more information stored than younger people; what is labelled brain fog is information retrieval slowdown.

Anger after menopause is real
As life pressures lift, you have the headspace to notice ongoing inequalities, and that anger is not a hormonal mood swing.

Underestimated, not invisible
Being overlooked as an older woman gives you the element of surprise and the freedom to take risks without caring what people think.

The cost of conformity
A senior CEO told Barbara she would love to let her hair go grey but feared not being taken seriously at work.

Becoming an unmarried mother in 1987
Barbara remembers her father going upstairs to be sick, three weeks of silence, then a quiet "we'll stand by you" on a snowy morning.

A friendship with her mother
Her mother bought her her first baby cham at 12, set up her own business in her 50s and was a collaborator throughout Barbara's life.

📚 Resources

Wise Up — Barbara Scully
Memoir reflecting on the years after menopause.

Older Bolder Wiser
Barbara's one-woman comedy show currently touring Irish theatres.

Funny Women Ireland
Set up by Orla Doherty and Val Troy to promote women in comedy.

⏱️ Timestamps

00:00 — Hip pain and the MRI run-around
03:00 — Stepping off the treadmill of tests
07:30 — Type 2 diabetes and remission
09:30 — Why brain fog is not what we are told
11:00 — Anger after menopause is real
13:00 — Underestimated rather than invisible
17:00 — Letting the hair go grey
22:00 — The freedom of getting older
28:00 — A first smear test in the 80s
36:00 — Growing up tall and the slow set
44:00 — Giving up red wine and finding gin
48:00 — Her mother as collaborator
56:00 — Losing her mother in 2022
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
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In this bitesize moment pulled from the Laura Dowling Experience back catalogue, GP and menopause specialist Dr Sarah Callaghan explains why perimenopause so rarely arrives with a bang — and why so many women spend years "muddling through" before they realise what's actually going on.

She tells Laura about the slow, sneaky creep of symptoms, the patterns she sees most often in clinic, and the women who mistake their perimenopause for postnatal anxiety, burnout, grief, or "just life". It's a powerful reframe: if something feels off, you deserve more than "just cope".

🔑 Key Points
Why perimenopause symptoms rarely arrive all at once — and why that matters
The fluctuating, "good week / bad week" pattern that makes women doubt themselves
Common mislabels: postnatal anxiety, stress, grief, COVID, burnout
The "I just don't feel like myself" phrase she hears in clinic over and over
Why you don't need to be in crisis to ask for help — even a 20–30% drop in functioning is worth investigating

🎧 Listen to the full episode here.
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Laura sits down with MEP Maria Walsh for a wide-ranging conversation about women, power and what is shifting in Europe right now. Maria has just returned from the UN Commission on the Status of Women in New York, where for the first time in seventy years member states could not agree a final text on access to justice for women.
She talks honestly about online misogyny, the deepfakes already circulating in Irish secondary schools, conversion therapy, and the website created about her during the 2019 election that is still live today. Alongside that, she opens up about internalised homophobia, the loneliness of political life, and growing up as the gay Rose of Tralee at a time when Ireland was shifting on marriage equality.
The conversation also moves through period poverty, FGM, the underfunding of women's healthcare, the pink tax, and what it would take to close the gap on cardiovascular care, menopause and reproductive health. It is a frank look at the work still ahead and the toll it takes on the women trying to do it.

🔑 Key Points

The UN couldn't agree on access to justice for women — For the first time in seventy years the Commission on the Status of Women failed to find consensus, after the US tabled eight late amendments including the definition of a woman.

Deepfakes are already in Irish secondary schools — 99% of generated deepfakes are pornographic and 96% of victims are women and young girls, with nudification apps making explicit content from a single photo.

Online attacks follow women in politics
A website created during the 2019 election is still live, and Coco's Law catches those who share content but not those who build or host the apps.

Conversion therapy is still legal in most of the EU
Only eight EU countries have banned it, and Ireland's commitment sits inside the programme for government.

Women's healthcare is underfunded
More research funding has gone into male baldness than endometriosis, and there are only six menopause clinics across Ireland.

Cardiovascular care is still built around men
Heart attack symptoms are taught through male presentation, leaving women under-treated when it matters.

The pink tax keeps quietly costing women
Razors, dry cleaning and a 23% VAT rate on sunscreen all add up across a lifetime.

Politics takes a real personal toll
Maria speaks openly about loneliness, comfort eating, and learning to take up space in Brussels.

📚 Resources

UN Commission on the Status of Women

Coco's Law

ILGA-Europe

Belong To

Women for Election

See Her Elected

Riley

Hope Foundation

Ruhama

Esker House

Her Last Search (Croí)

⏱️ Timestamps

03:39 — Back from the UN Commission on the Status of Women
07:33 — Why the US tabled eight amendments at the eleventh hour
12:37 — Deepfakes, disinformation and the 90% statistic
15:04 — Conversion therapy and the EU debate
19:23 — The Burke website that is still live
27:38 — Deepfakes in Irish secondary schools
35:43 — What policy needs to do, and Ireland's chance to lead
40:53 — Cardiovascular care and Her Last Search
45:06 — Pink tax, menopause clinics and the funding gap
49:29 — Why women are still underrepresented in politics
53:01 — Period poverty, Riley and Any Time of the Month
58:25 — Loneliness and learning to take up space
59:30 — Calcutta, Hope Foundation and human trafficking
Thanks for listening! You can watch the full episode on YouTube here. Don’t forget to follow The Laura Dowling Experience podcast on Instagram @lauradowlingexperience for updates and more information. You can also follow our host, Laura Dowling, @fabulouspharmacist for more insights and tips. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and leave a review—it really helps us out! Stay tuned for more great conversations.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.