Look After Your Energy | Anxiety Specialist | @caroline-cavanagh

24 Oct 2025 · 1 min

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In this segment, the anxiety specialist explains her personal "energy pyramid" as a framework for self‑care and allocating limited emotional and physical energy. She places herself at the top, followed by her two children, then her husband, her disabled brother, and finally her parents (when they were alive). She describes a step‑by‑step check: first ensure she is okay, then her children, then her husband, and only if energy remains does she attend to her brother. If reaching her brother would deplete her resources, she stops to avoid entering an energy deficit that could cause harm. The speaker frames this approach as a healthy form of selfishness, emphasizing the importance of prioritising one's own wellbeing before extending help to others.

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So it's okay to be selfish. Put your pyramid the right way up and then start allocating your energy to the layers below in proportion to what they needed. That's something actually I'll, I'll just quickly touch on that I, I didn't mention earlier. I, in my pyramid, I have a very clear, clear set of criteria. I'm first. My 2 kids come next. My husband is beneath that. He's not very happy about it, but tough. That's where he sits. Then comes my disabled brother. Then came my parents when they were still with us. And that's how I allocated my energy. Once I was okay, were the kids okay? When the kids were okay, is Nick okay? If Nick's okay, can I do something for my brother? And if I got down to my brother and there wasn't any energy left, I didn't expend energy on that because that would've started to put me into deficit, causing me harm.