Hello and welcome back to Dial Emma! This week, I want to talk about something I suspect many of us experience but aren’t especially proud of: finding other people really, really annoying.

I don’t mean the obviously rude or provocative ones. I mean the perfectly pleasant friend who sends a seven-minute voice note when you asked a yes-or-no question, the colleague who begins with “can I just ask you a really quick question?” that you know will be anything but 'quick', or the person who tells you a story you’ve heard several times, and you still have to laugh in the right places.

I do like people. I’ve spent my working life listening to them. But I can still find them annoying, and admit that it feels oddly mean, especially when it’s someone we love. Irritation isn’t very precise. It tells us something is bothering us, but not always what. So in this episode, I want to get curious about what it’s pointing to.

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

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This episode has been on my mind for a while, so I want to talk about something I think about a lot: concern. Specifically, the kind of concern that gives us a sense of permission to involve ourselves in somebody else's life. Being attentive to the people around us is a good thing. But I've been thinking about what happens when concern starts to carry an expectation - when the person expressing it begins to feel entitled to an explanation, a response, or a change in somebody else's behaviour, and the person receiving it experiences it not as kindness but as intrusion.

There isn't a single listener dilemma at the centre of this one. Instead I want to pull apart a psychological distinction I think we confuse constantly: the difference between caring about somebody and feeling entitled to influence them.

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

Today's question is one I hear all the time, from clients and in ordinary conversation. Why am I so tired all the time?

I don't mean the tired where you went to bed at 1am and the alarm went off at 6. I mean the tired where you wake up already calculating how long until you can get back into bed - where the weekend arrives and somehow doesn't restore you, and by Sunday evening you realise you're starting another week without ever really feeling the last one ended.

A quick note before you listen to this episode: persistent or unexplained tiredness can have physical causes. If this is new, severe, or getting worse for you, please speak to your GP. What I'm interested in today is the tiredness that comes from how we're living psychologically, because we tend to count the visible workload (work, exercise, the school run, the shopping) and rarely count the work of simply being ourselves.

Today's dilemma comes from a listener I'm calling Claire. She's 42 and a mum to two children, works four days a week and sleeps reasonably well. But by the end of every day, she's drained. She doesn't want to see anyone, doesn't want another question, and even deciding what's for dinner can feel like too much. She looks at people who seem to do twice as much as her and wonders: what's wrong with me?

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