Overcome - A Mental Health Podcast

The SECRET to Healing Relationship Anxiety | Tzara Attwater

• Travis White • Episode 15

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In this episode of Overcome: A Mental Health Podcast, host Travis White sits down with relationship development coach Tzara Attwater to unpack the deep roots of relationship anxiety and how attachment styles shape the way we love, fear, and connect.

Tzara shares her powerful personal story of betrayal and emotional rock bottom, which led her to a transformative journey of healing and coaching. From anxious attachment behaviors to self-sabotaging relationship patterns, she offers practical tools and empowering insights on how to build security, set boundaries, and develop lasting self-love.

Whether you’re navigating heartbreak, trying to understand your patterns, or simply looking to build healthier relationships—this episode is for you.

🎧 Topics include:

What your attachment style says about your relationships

How to stop mind-reading and overthinking

The link between childhood wounds and adult anxiety

Daily habits to build self-trust and emotional resilience

Practical strategies for healing after betrayal

👉 Take Tzara’s free attachment style quiz
👉 Grab her eBooks: 52 Creative Dates & How to Meet Someone in Real Life

📍 Find Tzara at: www.myconfidencecoach.com.au

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Travis White (00:01)
Hello and welcome to Overcome a Mental Health Podcast, a place where you can share your story and be yourself. I am very excited about tonight's guest. I am speaking to Zara Atwater. She is a relationship development coach. And let's just get right into it. I'm just going to let Zara tell a little bit about herself.

Tzara (00:22)
it's wonderful to be here, Travis, and a warm welcome to all your listeners. It's one of these things I say, it's wonderful to be sharing heartbeats with people because our heartbeats are the only currency that is really important, right? So what we're choosing to spend our heartbeats on is of value. So lovely to be here and sharing heartbeats with you.

Travis White (00:45)
Well, I'm happy to have you here. So why don't you just get us started?

Tzara (00:51)
Okay, yeah. So look, I'm a relationship development coach. And what that means is that I really look at anxious attachment styles or attachment styles in general. And so for any of your listeners out there that aren't sure what attachment style they have in relationship with other people, I've got a really beautiful, fun little quiz, which I'm more than happy to send you the link to so that you can take the quiz and just to determine what kind of attachment style they are and that

generally will be secure, anxious or avoidant. There is a sneaky little fourth one that came along a little bit later on, but just to keep it very simple, we'll just focus on those three. So I am an anxious attachment theorist. I deal with clients that are running this anxious attachment style and really help them break through those patterns so that they can become more secure in and of themselves and

Yeah, but get into healthier relationships and putting themselves first more than anything else.

Travis White (01:58)
And how did you start your journey as a relationship development coach?

Tzara (02:04)
That's a great question. know, they say that our mess becomes our message. And for me, I really wasn't aware of my attachment style. And we're talking a good 10 years ago now. And I was in what I believe to be a beautiful relationship. I always give the metaphor, you know, if you're really excited and you're about to go on holiday and you're on the airplane and you're...

drinking margaritas and you know your destination is going to be coming up soon and it's that perfect paradise. I felt like I had won the relationship lotto. I was on that aeroplane going to my ideal destination with my beautiful partner. But unfortunately, he was obviously on another plane going somewhere completely different with my best friend. I ended up walking in on them embedded together, which was an incredibly impactful visual.

the betrayal on so many levels. And so, you know, to use the metaphor, felt like we just lost cat and pressure and I just crash landed.

Travis White (03:07)
Yeah,

I can't imagine what it would be like to get over something like that.

Tzara (03:13)
Mm, it was just, I think there's all sorts of emotions that, you know, I personally went through and the kind of clients that I help nowadays and who realize the plesura of emotions, the guilt, the blaming, the anger, and the stupidity that, you know, that we felt like, you know, that someone could assume that we were stupid enough to believe their lies and keep this story going for as long as it did. And just the...

the ignoring of all the red flags because of the fear of not wanting to be alone, not wanting to be single. And that's the unhealthy part of the relationships that I was ignoring. And I was ignoring it through my own fears. And when I crash landed, if we'd use that metaphor, and I really hit rock bottom, it really felt like, you see people in hospital with broken bones and they're healing.

When you go through a betrayal like that, there really is a significant trauma that occurs in the body on a cellular level. And it really does feel like you've been hit by a bus. But unfortunately, you can't see any of the broken bones and there's no bruises and there's nothing to sort of show the pain that you're going through. And that healing can take any amount of time. Some people don't get over that healing. It's always something that they hold on to because of the impact of being hurt.

So that's really what I have dedicated my life to, to help women and men overcome that kind of trauma, to help them get their mojo back and really give testimony that you can become secure, that you don't need these relationship dynamics to affect you for the rest of your life, that it's quite possible to become less anxious, less avoidant and more secure in and of yourself.

and to stop and break these patterns. And it's also just, it's a gross generalization here that we're talking about betrayal, to kind of, I spent a long time blaming myself, feeling like I was a bit stupid for not seeing these things, but it's to recognize in the situation what I was responsible for, you know? And...

to not, you know, there were two people here. So there's two partial truths, right? Someone is being, you know, one might say quite selfish in doing what they want to do. And I was also ignorant to what I was ignoring. I wasn't standing up for my worth. I wasn't articulating things that potentially contributed to the breakdown of the relationship. So it's about owning what you can and what's yours and letting go of the rest, blaming.

and taking responsibility for that. So that's what I did. I got a mentor, I got some help because I kind of realized, well, I'm the single thing that's consistent in all of the situations that I'm in, right? And if it's not working, then I got to put my big girl pants on and work out what I've got to do here. And that's what I did. And that's how I became fascinated with attachment theory.

And a plethora of other, like, you know, a lot of other different lenses as well that look at human behavior, like the Enneagram, the Integral lenses, the Aqual development. There's all sorts of lenses that I use to help and help break down the kind of unresourcful patterns for my clients. And so, yeah, I hope that sort of sums up what my journey was, where we went.

Travis White (07:02)
No,

that's great. I love when people use their own experiences and their own challenges to turn around and help people. I just think that's like one of the best things.

Tzara (07:14)
Yeah, and so, you know, I've got direct experience and, know, can really give testimony if you're in a situation where, you know, you might be you're fearful of being single, you don't want to be single and you might be putting up with situations that aren't necessarily healthy or resourceful for you. But because of your desire to not be single, you're staying in that kind of relationship. And I talk about men and women.

I mean, I've coached men that been in situations with women who are constantly cheating on them and they're ignoring it because they don't want to be alone. You know, there could be an age gap involved. There's all sorts of reasons why we develop the behaviors that we have. And for me, what a consistent pattern that shows up is this attachment style. So I'll give you an example, right?

with someone that runs an anxious attachment style, they might be overthinking what the other person is thinking or feeling, right? Let's ground in something super tangible that if you're at work and your boss says, Travis, come into my room. I want to have a chat with you. Now, if you're running an anxious attached style, you might start thinking, what have I done? What's he going to talk to me?

he or she are going to talk to me about, did I say something? Did I not get these figures in? So the thing to catch here is that the narration, the narrative, the story that you're telling yourself is that I've done something wrong, right? That's the immediate thing to catch, which is real classic anxious attached behavior. So the boss could be calling you in to give you a pay rise, be calling you in to put you on a new project or...

any number of reasons. So if you're creating the worst case scenario about something that's happening and making it about you, that's a classic thing to catch. The other thing is not being comfortable with space. And so, you know, if the if your boss has said, I want to speak to you in 10 minutes, or, you know, they're given a timeframe, and then he doesn't turn up.

or he gets called away or she gets called away on a different meeting. And that timeframe doesn't occur. The anxious person will start to think, my God, they're gonna fire me. They said I'd be there in 10 minutes and they haven't called me. What's going on? Running all of this kind of narrative again. And so it's to just to catch when you're not comfortable with space, whether it's physical, emotional.

or mental, right? We're wanting to kind of close that space. And all of this is because of a fear of being rejected, a fear of being abandoned. And ultimately it relates back to our experiences in childhood and how our primary caregiver gave us love, you know. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the Mary Ainsworth

study that was done back in the 70s.

Travis White (10:35)
That

one I'm actually not familiar with.

Tzara (10:38)
Okay, so the Mary Ainsworth study was called the Strange Situation Study and it's in a fascinating study that she did in the 70s. And she basically, this is going to be a very abridged version, but she basically got mothers, caregivers, to bring their toddlers into a controlled environment, which essentially a room full of toys for the toddler to play with. And what they did was ask the caregiver or the mother in this case to leave the room for a few minutes.

and then to come back into the room. The study was on how the child behaved, how the child reacted to the absence and then the return of the primary caregiver. Now the anxiously attached child became very hysterical. When the mother returned, they became very clingy, they needed constant reassurance, was this real fear that they were being abandoned, if you like. And then there was...

The same occurred for the avoidant child. And the avoidant child pretended like they didn't need any care. They didn't need, they weren't bothered by the fact that the parent had left or come back. But internally, what they were noticing was that the heart rate and the anxiety that was occurring inside was equal to the anxious child, but they just didn't show it. And then obviously we have the secure child who was quite comfortable with the...

parent leaving was obviously aware that the parent had left and was a little bit discombobulated, if you like, but they were able to regulate their emotions. And when the parent came back, they were quite comfortable in knowing that they got a hug, they got the comfort that they sought, and then they went back to playing with the toys. So there was a much more emotional regulation for the secure child. Now what happens is,

that the child of the parent, the anxious child experiences the caregiver being sometimes there and sometimes not there. So there's an inconsistency that the child experiences. So sometimes the parents giving them lots of love and sometimes they're not. So the child can learn that

They've got to earn their love. They've got to prove it in some way. And they fear this abandonment. They fear this rejection. They're constantly on high alert, feeling like maybe they've done something wrong. What can they do to get that love back? Because a child at a young enough age, mean, let's agree, right? That your primary caregiver is your main source of survival. Without that caregiver, you're gonna die. You're not gonna be able to survive.

Travis White (13:25)
Yeah.

Tzara (13:27)
And so that child is learning that sometimes my caregiver is consistent and hear for me and sometimes they're not. And the child learns to blame themselves as a result of that. So now if you fast track back into adult relationships, that's how it manifests. what's happening is the childhood wounding is coming up. If I don't hear from my partner, if he tells me he's going to be home in six o'clock and he's not, then

I start to get anxious. I start to think I'm going to be abandoned. Was it something I said? Was it something I did? Because it relates back to this experience in childhood. so, you know, like, don't get me wrong, the reason that a parent, you know, they did the best that they could, you know, we all are doing the best that we could with the skills that we have available to us. for a caregiver that is not being consistent, that might be because

they're holding down two jobs, right? Or they're a parent or any kind of reason why that's actually occurring. So it's not to attribute blame here, it's just to recognize that these are the results of that. And as adults, we have a responsibility to heal that wounding so that we're not repeating those patterns. That was a lot for me to just say.

Travis White (14:26)
Mm-hmm.

No, that's I think it's I

love stuff like that. It's just like, just makes me think about myself and how my parenting like I'm hoping that I'm not leaving getting wounds on my Children, should say.

Tzara (15:01)
Yes, how often? Oh, beautiful.

I think it doesn't matter what we do or don't do as, you know, if you're a parent that you're going to be gifting things to your child rightly or wrongly. And, you know, it like I say, it's up to us as adults to be able to swipe what we want and let go of what we don't want. And I'm just that our parents are doing or did the best that they possibly could.

Travis White (15:14)
Mm-hmm.

Yep, I agree.

Tzara (15:30)
100%.

Travis White (15:31)
Yeah, and I think that's the good thing to take out of this. If you're doing the best you can, I think that's what counts.

Tzara (15:37)
Yeah, yeah, yeah,

Travis White (15:40)
And

going back to relationship anxiety, what are some of the common triggers?

Tzara (15:46)
Yes, so I guess there would be three things that I would deal with with clients that come to me. The first would be the mind reading. That's making an assumption about what somebody else is thinking or feeling. So in the analogy that I gave about the boss, right? So the facts are boss has called you into their room. They want to speak to you. Boss wants to speak to you. Everything else that you create around that is an unknown.

It's not a fact, it's just a mind read that you're creating and you can choose to create anything that you want. So I draw attention to what are you telling yourself that's not true and is that serving you? So that's the first thing. So that's about just catching any mind reading or assumptions that you're making, you know? And I will just caveat here as well that the anxiously attached

people have an incredible superpower. They're super vigilant to any changes in the environment, any kind of physical changes or emotional changes. They're hyper vigilant to it because that's what they learn as children to survive. They had to be very, very aware of what any changes in the environment if mum or dad got upset or they were tired or they were grumpy with each other. The child...

really is highly tuned into those kind of changes. But as an adult, that's a superpower. But as I was explaining before, it's all very well to see that change, but then to stop yourself from blaming yourself that it's got something to do with you, right? So that's where the mind reading comes in. So it's super important to just check in and work out what do you actually know about the facts and

you know, my key takeaway for any of you listeners, if you're experiencing that would be to just ask yourself, what am I telling myself that's not true? What am I telling myself that's not true? And you'll probably catch all of the layering of a story, which is about you in the negative and just to let that go, right? So just to bring awareness to that. And then the second one be about space, what I touched on before.

So being comfortable with space. One of the biggest things for someone with an anxious style is this fear of being rejected. And so there is a, you know, they're often referred to as being needy or clingy because they need that constant reassurance. They need to be in close proximity to their partners, to the people that they care about. Because if they don't get that proximity, they think that they're going to be rejected. There's this fear of abandonment.

comes in. So the stretch and the really big developmental edge here is to really start being comfortable with space. And I invite people to, you know, dip your big toe into that discomfort of creating that space. you're

you're sending, you you want a response on a text message and you realize you've just sent 10 text messages in the space of five minutes. This is about getting some space, hold off. It's not just physical, it's mental and emotional space. Put your phone somewhere, put a timer on it, don't touch it, put a timer of 10 minutes on it, put it somewhere so you can't reach it. If you're in that kind of looping of I need a response, I need a response, I need to get a hold of this person.

and just see if you can regulate your emotions after 10 minutes, after 15 minutes. And that will help regulate and emotionally balance what you're experiencing. And then I guess it would be having boundaries, being able to set healthy boundaries, being able to articulate, know, I get particularly stressed if I don't hear from you or...

I get particularly uncomfortable and need to be reassured and I'm working on this, but please understand this is what my boundaries are. And it's okay to set boundaries without the fear that you're gonna be rejected. So yeah, so those are the three things that I kind of would focus on first of all, so that's creating space, setting healthy boundaries and stopping the mind reading.

Travis White (20:32)
I love it. It's all good stuff. What are some behaviors from relationship anxiety that people may do without even realizing it? That they may be kind of stuck in?

Tzara (20:45)
Yeah, so it'd be like, yeah, the mind reading, it's just that looping, it's that idea. Let's say we have a thought and the thought might be something simple like, can't cope, whatever the thing is, I just can't cope with this, right? And if we buy into that thinking, we're gonna create this kind of fear, right? It's an emotional reaction to that, it's a type of fear. And then,

Travis White (21:09)
Thank

Tzara (21:13)
That fear is gonna trigger a kind of physical response. So that might be a dryness in the throat or knots in the stomach or a tensing of the chest. That's gonna create this physical response, right? When you get that physical response, it's a natural reaction to kind of go, I've got to get away from this feeling. I don't like this feeling, avoid it. Let's just like get away from it. And when that starts to happen, when you have this behavioral response,

Travis White (21:33)
Mm.

Tzara (21:43)
it's going to reinforce the original idea that I can't cope. So that creates this looping, right? And people can get stuck in this, this just in this simple kind of framing, I can't cope. And that creates the anxiety. So yeah, does that make sense?

Travis White (22:01)
Yeah, yeah. a lot of

totally makes sense. I suffered from bad anxiety myself. And I can say like, he is pretty normal to get stuck in that loop. And for a long time, I didn't realize that I was stuck in the loop. It was just happening.

Tzara (22:18)
Yes,

because it becomes normal, right? Because when you're living with that kind of level of anxiety or those kind of thinking processes for so long, you don't stop to question it. I use this metaphor, you know, I call them lifts, but I guess you guys call them elevators, right? If you imagine you in an elevator, a tiny, tiny room, right? And right next to you is a massive bully.

Travis White (22:21)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Tzara (22:47)
really, really tall kind of gigantic bully. It's only you and the bully in the lift, in the elevator. And the bully's constantly telling you, you're not good enough. What are you talking to her for? She thinks you're stupid. What are you trying to do this for? You'll never gain anything. And this narration of, yeah, berating you for everything you do. If you stay in that lift long enough, you're going to believe what the bully's telling you, right?

And what we forget is that we can open the door and walk away. We don't have to listen to that voice. And that's often what's happened for the anxiously attached. They've been living with that voice for so long. They're not sure about what other voice they can listen to or what, you know, or that there is a possibility they can just stop listening to this voice that's not helping them. And so it's just to bring awareness to those kind of things. Yeah.

Travis White (23:43)
And somebody who kind of has that voice stuck in their head, stuck on repeat or on repeat or that loop, like what do you say to that person to kind of get them out of that mindset?

Tzara (23:54)
Yes, so yeah, good question, which is what I was talking to in the beginning, which is what am I telling myself that's not true? Right. And I know that, you know, sometimes people say to me, but you know, I have a little bit of judgment because it's a motivation strategy. It helps me become a better person. If I keep on regulating and keep on kind of questioning, is that the best that I can possibly be? It's a motivation strategy, which has merit.

Travis White (24:02)
Mm-hmm.

Tzara (24:24)
but when it's overly used, if you think of it in terms of like a muscle that we're going to the gym and we're super exercising this muscle of judgment, if you like, and that compassionate side, that compassionate voice, that one that is supporting of you, starts to atrophy. It's not going to be flexed. It's not gonna go to the gym. It starts to die off. And so it's about having a natural balance, being able to see.

yeah, okay, I'm judging myself again. That's all right, I don't need you today. You can just park yourself over there. I'll come back to you when I need you and start giving yourself a bit more compassion, a bit more, you know, of a cheerleader supporting you in your corner because you don't have to berate yourself the whole time and it's not always your fault. When we're in relationship with another person, there's two people, right? Two people have their versions of events and...

there is a partial truth. I have a half truth, my truth, and Travis, you might have your half truth, all right? And that makes the whole. And it's about accepting the other person's perspective as valid for them. Yeah. And so it's just the same way when we're having that conversation in our head that, okay, what am I taking that's going to help me and support me in this situation? And if...

you know, if I've got to go and speak at a public event and I'm listening to the bully telling me, no one's going to like you, you know, when no one's going to be interested in what you're saying, how resourceful is that going to be for me in that moment? So I just kind of go, park it. Thank you. I hear you, but it's not resourceful right now. I'm going to listen to the other one that's saying, it's not making it about you. It's you have a message that people want to hear and go and share that message with them.

because that's going to be far more resourceful for me in the moment.

Travis White (26:19)
Yeah, I have an interesting thing that my therapist has brought up once or twice. You're referring to like the bully. There's he's speaking to you. One thing that I do is he said, imagine that there's like a river or stream like in front of you. And all this water, you know, is floating by. And when you have that thought is on repeat, get that thought out of your head and just throw it in the stream and watch it float by.

Tzara (26:26)
Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, nice. Yeah, nice. That's a great one. That's a really good one. kind of I get, especially with I'm dealing with clients that are, you know, getting out of difficult relationships, if they're having that kind of negative conversation in their head, to write it down on a toilet paper, you know, the toilet paper, if you get a pen and write on it, and literally take the toilet paper and flush it down the toilet afterwards, like, yeah.

Travis White (27:07)
That's awesome. That's awesome. Yeah.

I love stuff like that. There's so many different things that people do to just get those thoughts out.

Tzara (27:13)
Yeah.

You know, it's about future pacing as well. have like, if we're, you know, and this isn't to negate anybody's trauma or anyone's past experience, but if like me, you experience that betrayal, you know, I'm not the first to go through that and I won't be the last. But holding on to that pain and hurt is...

Travis White (27:21)
Mm-hmm.

Tzara (27:40)
You know, it has a certain duration in the healing process, but if I continue to hold onto it, it's part of that unresourceful state. It's not actually doing me any favors. I'm actually building a wall around my heart, which is going to stop me from engaging in any other beautiful experiences in life, just because of something that happened 10 years ago, right? And so I, you know, I talk to people and say, what, you know, what's the best version of you? How do you want to show up?

And people that are struggling with, you know, I just want to be a nice person, but they're not really sure how to kind of step into that. I'm inviting you, and maybe we can do this now, invite you to think about all the people that you really care about. All the people, Travis, that you admire in your life, like family and friends, everybody that, you know, you really kind of, you're inspired by, that make your heart so full of joy that

You know, you can see all of these people around you right now in your mind's eye. Just imagine that they're all standing there in front of you. And I want you to imagine that they're giving you a standing ovation. They're all clapping. Yay, Trevice, look what you've done. You've just done this incredible thing and they're all giving you this standing ovation. And to step into what do I have to be? Who do I have to be? How do I have to conduct myself in order to get that standing ovation?

And it's a really, really motivating state to be in, know, when you can think, everyone's giving me a high five and wooing and...

Travis White (29:14)
Yeah, that is cool.

Tzara (29:16)
Ha ha.

Travis White (29:19)
I want to shift over to building self-love. I think that having relationship anxiety, you struggle with being insecure a little bit. How do you start building self-love when you're in that place?

Tzara (29:28)
Yep.

sure.

Yeah, and it really takes, you know, I would strongly recommend for someone to get a coach to really help them because you only know what you know, you can only see what you know and that's part of the ruminating that occurs. If you're only stuck with what you know, how are you going to break free or try on a different way of being if you can't even see that way of being, right? And I say to people,

who, you know, this, like I said before, there's a healing that really needs to take place. I know for myself, I probably wasn't ready for coaching, you know, straight after my betrayal, I needed to go through a healing process. And so if someone's coming to me as a coach, and let's say I'm, I'm teaching you how to play tennis, right, I'm a tennis coach, say I'm not, just saying.

And you come to me and you're going, want to play tennis. I want to take my game to the next level, but I've got a broken shoulder. I can't actually lift the racket. My shoulder's broken. I'm going to tell you to go and get some healing first. Go and get that shoulder fixed. Go to a therapist, a doctor. You know, if we're using this metaphor, go and get a counselor. Go and see somebody who's going to help you just heal that. And then when it's healed, come back and I will take your game to the next level.

You're going to have such a transformational conversation with me that, you know, in an hour, you're to be able to shift some mindsets that have been holding you back in a way that you can't imagine right now because the pain of this shoulder is so great that you can't see beyond that. So there is some healing and there's modalities and people out there to be able to help with that. And, know, and they're all valid and they're all needed and required and

But taking a coaching pathway and being able to evaluate for yourself with somebody who's designing and tailoring the pathway for you is like going on the steroids of personal development. It's just next level.

Travis White (32:02)
Yeah, and know for me, I wouldn't have been able to get as far as I did without somebody to guide me. Like, I want to say I didn't do the coaching side of things. I'm just talking about therapy in general. it's, I needed to do one thing first, and that was admit that I have a problem. And then I like kind of set myself free.

Tzara (32:12)
What?

Yes, it sounds so simple, but it's really not. It's really not. Because it depends on the kind of mindset. If you're looking through rose-coloured glasses, everything looks like roses, right? So if that's mindset that I'm confused why this stuff keeps happening to me, but you can't take responsibility for anything, then you're going to keep on looking at the world through those kind of lenses. Yeah.

Travis White (32:26)
Mm-hmm.

this is.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Tzara (32:52)
So yeah, it's a really interesting, it's an interesting pathway because I help people, men and women, find secure relationships, right? That's, starting with themselves first, be more secure enough themselves. Because what I found in the dating pool, and I don't know, you have a partner, don't you, Trav? Yeah, but if you're in the dating pool, if there's any single people listening,

Travis White (33:16)
Yeah, yeah.

Tzara (33:21)
you might find that you seem to only be attracting avoidant people or you know what they call emotionally unavailable or anxiously attached where they're clingy and needy and just wanting something all the time and if you're in the dating pool it can seem like the secure person who's like the golden goose of the dating world they just don't exist they just where are they you know all the all the good secure people are taken and yet statistically and this is

a gross generalisation, 50 % of the population, general population are securely attached, 50%. So that leaves 25 % anxious, 25 % avoidant, right? And they tend to stay in the dating pool because the securely attached people are secure, they can self-regulate, they're great at managing conflict and setting healthy boundaries.

And so they tend to stay in the relationships for the long term. So part of what I'm doing is in order to make you more secure, to help you find that more secure pathway is so that we can shift that balance so that you actually become a secure person in the dating world that's gonna benefit everybody else as well. And so to that end, I have created a kind of a book.

A beautiful, I've called it 52 dates, 52 creative dates. That's one for every week of the year that you can go on if you're in a relationship. So you can, you know, spice things up so you're not just sitting in front of the TV having dinner each night. This is a way of being able to mix things up and go on some incredibly interesting dates. And I've also got one called how to meet someone in real life.

So if you're sick and tired of the dating apps, which I know a lot of people are, this is about meeting someone in real life, 52 different ways of being able to meet someone in real life. And so I've designed these books myself, I've written all the content and all the photographs that are in these books, I took on a solo trip that I took around Australia.

If anybody's interested in getting some imagery of Australia and some funny, funny little anecdotes that happened to me while I was traveling around, I'll share these links with your listeners and in the comments if you want to share that with them, that would be awesome.

Travis White (35:55)
I'd love to share them. I think it was great. It's funny that you mentioned that you wrote a book with 52 date ideas because my wife and I like, we just need some new ideas to like, we seem to do the same date like every, every time we go out on a date. It's like, we need something.

Tzara (36:05)
Yeah, there you go. Same thing.

I used to have this thing with my ex partner, which was one of the beautiful parts about our relationship where we would book a time, like we'd set a date, I'd say, right? It's April coming up on, April, whatever the date is, at six o'clock, it's my turn to take you out on a date. And they would only, we would only be able to tell each other the date and they would be locked out. You couldn't book anything else. was like, that was the time and date that had been locked in.

and you wouldn't know what was happening. The only thing you could ask is what I needed to wear. So maybe it would be a formal thing or maybe it would be, you know, put your tracky-dacks on or something. And so we had the most incredible things because it became a little bit competitive. Who could outdo the last date that we had on? And we went on hot air balloon riding, go-kart riding, horse riding on the beach. It was just the most amazing kind of things that we did. And just, was a way of,

locking out the kids, like we get someone to look after them if that was the case, and we would just commit to this one date. And we try and do it at least once a month as a little thing.

Travis White (37:22)
That's really cool. I like that.

Tzara (37:24)
Yeah, this is

52 ones for each week of the year, so you've got no excuse. You might not like all of them, but there'll be something in there that'll tick you to fancy.

Travis White (37:34)
Awesome. I have one more question about self-love here. Self-care. What are some practical self-care habits that can help someone feel more secure in themselves?

Tzara (37:52)
be kind to yourself, like really comes back to what are you telling yourself to be really kind. There's a great little hack that I've shared with you about, you know, the standing ovation to give yourself a little bit of a pickup. There's also, if you're feeling like you don't have a voice, that you're not being heard, that there's a feeling like you're lowering self-confidence and your self-doubt is really taking a

plummet, just try and imagine yourself stretching that you're getting taller and taller and taller and you're breaking through the house. So you're breaking up and up into the clouds and your head is up in the clouds. And when you can get that visual that you're high, high above everybody else, look down at the ground and see all the people running around like they're the size of ants and to kind of start walking amongst things that you're this tall that

It doesn't matter what people are saying to you or what they're doing, they're just insignificant little ants this size of this to help you just get back some of your confidence. That's a little ninja trick that we try. The standing ovation is another one. And if you're ruminating, if you're going over and over and over in your head about an argument that you've just had and you just can't break it, you you're trying to stop and you'll go off and try and go for a walk or try and do something different.

I always recommend just start talking out loud anything that you can see around you. So for now I can see glass, so I'll say glass, keyboard, computer, just complete, just give the mind something to focus on and give it a narration, story. So just run on repeat. Obviously if you can't say it out loud, then say it in your mind, but if you can say it out loud all the better. it would be chair, table, books, glass, and just keep on doing that.

and eventually the mind will stop ruminating.

Travis White (39:53)
I do something similar to that. before bedtime with my kids, I have to do quite a bit because it gets very frustrating when you have three young kids. I remember one time, like I, when I first started doing it, it was very obvious that I would like pause and like, you know, look around the room and look at the different stuff. So I just remember my wife like giving me this like weird look like, what are you doing?

Tzara (40:05)
Hmm

You're right.

Travis White (40:22)
Because

something I learned, like, just let me do it for a minute. Let me cool my mind down. It is. It's great.

Tzara (40:27)
Yeah, great, great. It's a grounding exercise.

It's a really grounding, so it brings the mind back into the present moment. So what's happening when you're ruminating on the argument or whatever it is, you're not being present, you're not being here now. And so you might be in the past or the future, but you're definitely not in the present. So this is a really good grounding exercise. Wiggling the toes, you know, focusing on the heartbeats to the breath.

just talking out loud, the things that are around you. It's a great little ninja hack.

Travis White (40:58)
Yeah, awesome. Well, I don't have any more questions that I wanted to ask. Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you'd like to bring up?

Tzara (41:09)
No, I think I mentioned my quiz. If anyone doesn't know what their attachment style is, I'll definitely send you the link so that you can share that with your audience. It's just a great little fun. takes about three minutes to find out what your potential attachment style is. And obviously I'll share with your readers just for being on the podcast and listening to this today, my two eBooks for you to spice up.

either meeting someone new or if you're in a relationship to just spice it up a little bit.

Travis White (41:42)
And then one last question I tried to ask every person I have on the podcast. For people out there that are struggling with mental health, whether it be anxiety, depression or whatever, what advice would you give them?

Tzara (41:58)
Well, if we're talking about mental anxiety rather than an attack style, I always ask people, and I'm going to ask you this, if you were to tell me, describe what anxiety is, what would you say? Describe it.

Travis White (42:04)
Mm-hmm.

Okay.

For me,

it's not knowing the future, kind of getting stuck in a loop. I think for me, those are the biggest things. It's like not knowing the future, getting stuck in the loop, kind of, what's the word I'm looking for? Kind of being alone in a big crowd is a huge one for me.

Tzara (42:43)
Right.

Travis White (42:46)
And does it does it? Yeah. Yeah. Yep.

Tzara (42:46)
feeling like you're the only one that's experiencing it, right? Yeah, that's

beautiful sharing. I love that, Travis. That's really hit the nail on the head. So it's a simple kind of definition of anxiety and, you know, it is very generalized, I guess. It's a...

Travis White (43:05)
Mm-hmm.

Tzara (43:07)
What we're doing is we're thinking about a future event, which is what you said, thinking about the future event, and we're making that future event the worst case scenario, worst case possible, and we're bringing that worst case scenario and letting it affect the moment right now. Okay, so I'm thinking about something in the future, I'm making it the worst, like.

I'm going to start getting anxious that an elephant is going to come through this room and I start panicking about the elephant potentially coming into the room and I'm making that my anxiety now. So the thing that to bring awareness to is that it's a thinking process. All right. People don't have anxiety. It's a doing. It's something that you are doing to yourself, right, through thinking. And that's not to say that it's going to be easy to stop.

Travis White (43:56)
Mm-hmm.

Tzara (44:00)
But when you can bring awareness to the fact that this is a thinking process that I'm doing, no one's holding a gun to my head telling me to think these thoughts. I can have a choice about what I'm thinking. If you can bring awareness to that, you can stop the anxiety. Because it's a thinking, it's not a having, it's like, you know, I have colorblind, right? If I'm colorblind.

not but if I had colourblind I have colourblind I don't have anxiety. Anxiety is a doing, anxiety is something that I do so if there was anything to help your listeners to empower them it would be to bring awareness to that.

Travis White (44:40)
Awesome. Good stuff. I love everything like this. I just eat it all up.

Tzara (44:46)
I'm just awesome.

Travis White (44:48)
And where can our listeners find you?

Tzara (44:52)
Yeah, great question. So I'm My Confidence Coach. So that's the name of my website. So www.myconfidencecoach.com.au, because I'm coming to you from sunny Australia. Not that it's very sunny here at the moment. We've just had a cyclone. So we've had a cyclone come through. But yeah, so it's www.myconfidencecoach.com.au. You can find me there. But also if you want to grab a copy of the

e-books that I've got, then you can find my details in there as well.

Travis White (45:26)
And I will have all these links in the show notes. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Zara, for being on and being willing to talk and open up.

Tzara (45:36)
It's awesome. And

like I said at the beginning, it's been an absolute pleasure to share heartbeats with you. So thank you for joining and thank you for listening.

Travis White (45:45)
Thanks to all of the listeners today and you can find us on at Overcome Pod on Instagram and YouTube and the best thing you can do for us right now is follow us, share our content, like everything that you can. Still trying to get our name out there and I'd love all the help that we can get and we'd love all the help that we can get and thanks again for listening. Until next time.