Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri

Hello and welcome to E3 of S11 of Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri.

This one is a bit of a potentially scary subject: facing fate. But I’m here to hold your hand through it.

I’ve certainly had to do my fair share of facing up to fate in the last year and when Andrew Balfour contacted me telling me about his book Life and Death, Our Relationship with Ageing, Dementia and Other Fates of Time, I rather jumped on it.

There’s a lot of fear about getting older, but then there’s also a lot of fear about not getting older, ie dying. And with increasing rates of dementia, people are also terrified of getting older and losing capacity.
Given that death and ageing of some form is a given why do we fear it so? It’s probably about loss of control, a vulnerability that none of us want and maybe having to rely on people around us. Who wouldn’t be scared.

But, we want to help you think about these things in a calm way and maybe get some coping mechanisms. So, in this episode we talk about why we’re so afraid of getting older and dying and why that might affect some people more than others (perhaps not surprisingly, early life has something to do with it). Make yourself a comforting drink and have a listen.

Andrew Balfour is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist, he was clinical director of Tavistock Relationships and is now its Chief Executive.

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You can also support us by sharing this podcast far and wide, it's available wherever you listen to your podcasts. And leaving a review if you can. Thank you so much.

Produced by Hester Cant. Art work by Lo Cole. Music by Toby Dunham.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/conversations-with-annalisa-barbieri.
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Welcome back to Series 11 and episode 3. What are BFRBs? It's picking, biting or pulling, skin, nails or hair or Body Focused Repetitive Behaviours.

Here I’m in conversation with Professor Clare Mackay, Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford.

Professor Mackay has spent over thirty years studying the structure and function of the human brain. In 2023 she turned her attention to a disorder she’d been living with for most of her life: hair pulling, which comes under the umbrella of BFRBS.

BFRBs are often done unconsciously at first and, as we’ll learn, are a throw back to primate grooming behaviour gone a bit awry. Most of us do have some BFRBs, we may pick the skin around our nails, or bite our nails or even become fixated with plucking that stray hair, but it’s when it goes into overdrive that it can become a problem.

In this episode we find out about a fascinating neuron which surrounds every hair follicle called the CT fibre, which, when stimulated (stroked etc) by someone we trust releases endorphins. This is why we love having our hair or skin stroked or touched (or those fabulous head massages!).

If you'd like to listen to this episode, past or future ones, ad free then consider becoming a Substacker: https://pocketannalisa.substack.com/. From £5 a month or £50 (2025 rates) a year you'll get access to all new podcasts as soon as they are available and before general release and ad-free.

You can also support us by sharing this podcast far and wide, it's available wherever you listen to your podcasts. And leaving a review if you can. Thank you so much.

Produced by Hester Cant. Art work by Lo Cole. Music by Toby Dunham.

So, could BFRBs be a misfire with this neuron? We discuss this and talk in depth about what BFRBs are, what they’re not, how to deal with them if you suffer from them and there’s some really useful advice for parents with children with BFRBs.

Clare’s written a fascinating book called Keep your Hair on, which is published on April 2nd 2026.
I hope you enjoy this fascinating episode and with grateful thanks to Emily Tammam for the suggestion.
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Here is episode 1 of Series 11 of my podcast: Conversations with Annalisa Barbieri.

I’ve long been fascinated with the idea of good enough, not only in mothering but, actually, for so many things. We tend to live in a world of extremes now: things are amazing or awful. Yet most of us live in the ordinary, the ‘enough’.

In this episode chartered clinical and counselling psychologist, psychoanalyst and a fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society Professor Alessandra Lemma and I discuss what it is to be a good enough mother, a phrase coined by the the paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott in the 1950s. We talk about what might matter and what really doesn’t, and it might not be what you think.

Perhaps it will trigger your own memories of childhood and you can ponder on what really did matter.

If you'd like to listen to this episode, past or future ones, ad free then consider becoming a Substacker: https://pocketannalisa.substack.com/. From £5 a month or £50 (current rates) a year you'll get access to all new podcasts as soon as they are available and before general release and ad-free.

You can also support us by sharing this podcast far and wide, it's available wherever you listen to your podcasts. And leaving a review if you can. Thank you so much.

Produced by Hester Cant. Art work by Lo Cole. Music by Toby Dunham.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/conversations-with-annalisa-barbieri.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

One of the things I've noticed in recent years is the rise of anxiety in the young. What do I mean by young? Around secondary school age 11-18/19. It's not, as I say in this episode, that younger children don't get anxious, or that older adults don't - we know they do. But this is the age they start writing in to me at The Guardian with their worries about anxiety. Adolescence, as has been discussed in previous episodes (see The Teenage Brain with Rachel Melville-Thomas) is a very particular time with brain development in overdrive, starting to separate out from your parents and family (a necessary developmental stage) and, well, life. There's a lot to think about and worry about. But there's also a lot to look forward to.

In this episode I talk to child and adolescent psychotherapist Alison Roy about why our young people may be anxious and what we can do about it. In the paid version on Substack (see below) there is a second part to this podcast, where I interview my youngest and she gives us a teen-eyed view of anxiety which I think is fascinating.

If you'd like to listen to this episode, past or future ones, ad free then consider becoming a Substacker: https://pocketannalisa.substack.com/. From £5 a month or £50 (2025 rates) a year you'll get access to all new podcasts as soon as they are available and before general release and ad-free.

You can also support us by sharing this podcast far and wide, it's available wherever you listen to your podcasts. And leaving a review if you can. Thank you so much.

Produced by Hester Cant. Art work by Lo Cole. Music by Toby Dunham.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/conversations-with-annalisa-barbieri.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is quite heavy on the neuroscience, which is one of my favourite subjects and it was recorded in person, in Oxford. I'm in conversation is with Professor Morten Kringelbach, Professor of Neuroscience at Oxford University, director of the centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing, a fellow of Linacre College and Professor of Neuroscience at Aarhus university in Denmark.

I first met Morten in 2024 when I went to Oxford to interview him for a piece I was writing for the Guardian on Anhedonia, which is the inability to feel pleasure, which you can read here.

Professor Kringelbach and I talk about what joy is, why it matters, what brings us most joy and why seeking pleasure for the sake of it is often a road to displeasure and addiction. We also touch on depression and psychedelics. Real, proper, lasting joy doesn’t really exist by itself, it has to have context and that context often means other people. And to experience real joy in life we need a purpose. I ended my anhedonia piece saying something I discovered like a bolt of lightning researching it and I stand by it: the meaning of life is that it has to have meaning. That’s really the root of finding joy.

You can learn more about Professor Kringelbach and his work here.

If you'd like to listen to this episode, past or future ones, ad free then consider becoming a Substacker: https://pocketannalisa.substack.com/. From £5 a month or £50 (2025 rates) a year you'll get access to all new podcasts as soon as they are available and before general release and ad-free.

You can also support us by sharing this podcast far and wide, it's available wherever you listen to your podcasts. And leaving a review if you can. Thank you so much.

Produced by Hester Cant. Art work by Lo Cole. Music by Toby Dunham.
Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/conversations-with-annalisa-barbieri.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.