Hello and welcome back to Dial Emma! Today I want you to think about the last time you felt guilty. Maybe you actually did something you regretted. But I wonder how many other things make you feel guilty too - saying no, cancelling plans when you're exhausted, buying something for yourself, resting on a Sunday, or even feeling happy when someone you love is struggling.

We use the same word for all of these very different experiences. And once we've called it guilt, we tend to assume it's telling us something true. If I feel guilty, I must be guilty. But feelings aren't verdicts. So perhaps the more useful question isn't why do I feel guilty, it's what is this particular guilt actually trying to tell me?

Today's dilemma comes from a listener I'm calling Rachel. She feels guilty about almost everything - saying no, not seeing her parents enough, working instead of being with her children, being with her children instead of working, resting, spending money on herself. She doesn't think she's a selfish person, and she knows rationally she can't keep everybody happy. But knowing that doesn't make the feeling go away. She wants to know how to tell when she should actually listen to her guilt.

I don't think the goal is to become someone who never feels guilty. I think it's to become someone who knows what to do when guilt arrives. Sometimes you listen and repair, and sometimes you recognise an old rule knocking at the door and decide it doesn't get to run the house.

Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook.

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This week on Dial Emma, I'm tackling a question I suspect most of us have asked ourselves: why do I care so much what other people think?

We're often told we shouldn't. "Stop caring," "you do you," "other people's opinions are none of your business." But I'm not convinced that's actually the goal. I care what my children think of me, what my friends think, whether the people I love feel respected in their relationships with me. Other people matter to us, so their experience of us matters too. The more interesting question is why, for some of us, other people's opinions become so powerful that they start to override our own.

Today's dilemma comes from a listener I'm calling Sophie. She's 38, confident by most measures, with a good job and a lovely group of friends - but she constantly monitors how people respond to her. If someone's quiet, she wonders if she's annoyed them. She struggles to say no without a lengthy explanation attached. She asks everyone's opinion on everything, and once someone questions her choice, she loses her own sense of it. She thinks she should be past this by now. She wants to know how to stop.

Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook.

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Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app

Social media:

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Email: contact@dial-emma.uk

This week on Dial Emma, we're stepping slightly outside of relationships - although, as you'll hear, they find their way back in anyway. I'm tackling one of the internet's most Googled questions, and one I suspect a lot of you already know in your bones: why do I overthink everything?

Maybe you send a message and read it back six times. Maybe you get home from a meeting and start conducting a full forensic investigation into a two-second pause that nobody else even noticed. If any of that sounds familiar, you're not alone - and I don't think you're overthinking because your brain is faulty. I think your brain has taken on an impossible job.

Today's dilemma comes from a listener I'm calling Lucy. She's exhausted by her own mind. She analyses conversations, messages, what she said and didn't say at work, and even after she finally makes a decision, she starts worrying she's made the wrong one. She wants to know why she does this, and how to make it stop.

I don't think Lucy is really asking why she thinks so much. I think she's asking why she can't ever feel certain enough to stop. And that's a much more interesting question.

Dial Emma is hosted by Emma Reed Turrell, produced by Lauren Brook.

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Book my 2027 women's retreat at Bliss House in Crete: https://bliss-house-experience.replit.app

Social media:

Emma Reed Turrell @emmareedturrell

Email: contact@dial-emma.uk