EPISODE DESCRIPTION

In this heartfelt and deeply insightful episode of The Hayley Osborne Show, I sit down with my private client and inspiring psychotherapist, Anne Sureyya, for a powerful conversation about what it truly means to unbecome the roles we’ve played just to survive, and instead, belong fully to ourselves.

Anne shares her personal and professional journey as a therapist, mum, and thought leader, peeling back the layers of performance and perfection to reveal how our early attachments shape not just our relationships, but how we show up in business too.

We explore:

✔️ How self-worth wounds impact our personal and professional lives
✔️ The emotional triggers business owners face daily (and how to move through them)
✔️ Why so many of us struggle with visibility and authenticity in our marketing
✔️ Anne’s transition from “nothing” to thriving digital presence, with clarity and confidence
✔️ Her free guide 5 Steps to Stop Abandoning Yourself in Love (and why it’s a must-read)

This episode also marks a new chapter in my business as I now work exclusively with health brands, and Anne’s work perfectly embodies the depth, truth, and transformation that aligned marketing should support. I’ve worked with Anne for a long time and I am so excited to have her join me on the podcast.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re not “good enough” to show up online or unsure how to market your unique voice, this one’s for you.

🎧 Press play and get ready to feel seen.

SUMMARY

0:00:01 – Podcast Introduction by Hayley Osborne

0:03:50 – Anne Sureyya’s Introduction

0:05:48 – Early Attachment History Discussion

0:11:29 – Marketing Challenges

0:15:40 – Lead Magnet Discussion

0:18:55 – Relationship Dynamics

0:22:32 – Marketing Breakthrough

0:24:15 – Advice for Health Brand Business Owners

0:26:37 – Closing Remarks

Hayley Osborne 

Welcome back to another episode of The Hayley Osborne show. This is a very special episode, because today I have a guest expert with me, and her name is Anne Sureyya, and she is the first guest expert I’ve actually had in a while. So I’m really, really excited to get back into interviewing amazing people and sharing them with you.

So today’s episode is a very special one, and it marks a beautiful turning point in my business journey, as now I officially step into working exclusively for health brands. So if you missed last week’s podcast episode, I suggest you just go back and have a little listen to that one first, where I give you the 101, on what is happening with my business and my brand now, and it felt only right to begin this new tap chapter with someone whose work sits right at the heart of what I believe marketing should support, which is, you know, depth, truth, connection, healing, wellness and everything in between.

And Anne Sureyya, who is my guest today, is not just a therapist. She’s a guide, really, for women who are ready to peel back the layers of performance and perfection and return to who they truly are underneath it all. And is also a private client of mine, and working with her has been one of the most rewarding experiences. Her presence, her story and her commitment to doing the inner work are so powerful, and her brand is a reflection of that same depth and integrity.

This episode really is about the journey of unbecoming the roles we’ve played to survive, and what it looks like to belong to yourself before belonging anywhere else or to anyone else. And really shares generously from her personal story, and you know her professional insights, and I know that her words are going to land with the exact people who really need to hear them. So you know, Anne is a psychotherapist, she is a counselor, and she is a relationship expert, and she’s so awesome.

So without further ado, let’s get into today’s podcast episode. And hi, welcome to my podcast, the Hayley Osborne show. Thanks for having me. No, I am excited for this conversation. I love our conversations offline. This is online for everyone to hear, and I’m so happy that you said yes to come on the podcast. So I have introduced you, but I would like you in your own words to tell the audience who you are and what you do. Yeah,

Anne Sureyya 
Absolutely. So I’m a psychotherapist. I have a private practice in the eastern suburbs of Adelaide, and I work with individuals and couples, and I focus a lot on relationships, the relationship with ourselves and the relationship that we have with others out in the world. And I do that by combining social sciences and psychology and attachment theory and many other theories as well. And I’m also a relationship expert for an American AI couples therapy company. I

Hayley Osborne  

I think it’s amazing. So you do a lot I do, and you’re a mum, and you do all the things, and you just wear all the hats with such grace and style that I am in awe. Now, something my Okay, right? We’re back. My screen just cut out for some reason, but it is still recording cool. Okay, so first little hiccup, but we are good, so I want to circle back. How does early attachment history shape who were?

Attached to or stay with Now this I feel like has a huge crossover into business and who we are as business owners and like, sometimes I like, have a quiver when I talk to you, because I’m just like, you just you go deeper and you can see through a lot of, like, barricades and people, and you like to break things down, and you’ve kind of, we went through that when I was pregnant, when we were trying to come up with things to add into your business. And you kind of then asked me a question. So Anne is a private coaching client of mine. And, yeah, it’s been so interesting. So can you talk a little bit about that?

Anne Sureyya   

Yeah, sure. Sorry. So, yeah. So yeah, because I’m, I’m mapping what you’re saying, and that’s what I do with clients as well, is you’ll, you’ll come in for a session, and you’ll start to explain your experience and what you’re going through at the moment, whether that’s a breakup or you’re making a decision, a life choice, decision to have a family or work, decision, whatever the decision is. I’m mapping that experience, and what I’ll do as well is I will go back into your past.

And I know a lot of people are like, I don’t want anyone to go back into my past, but the fact is that a lot to do with where you are now in your life has a lot to do with what happened in your past. And as we grow up, you know, we have a primary caregivers, which is our attachment system, which is mum and dad or whoever that was for you, and in that just inevitably, they weren’t able to attend to all of our needs and wants.

And in that wounding for us, there’s a self, wealth, worth wound that happens in us, and that those attachment breaks continue five years old, 12 years old, there might be a school attachment, break the teacher and shaming. There’s many sorts of things that happen that you may feel like. My childhood was fine, but for some it wasn’t. And when we grow up, we detach from our parents, not wholly. What we do is we end up meeting someone in our world outside, and that wound initially feels like it’s been covered or healed by this person that we meet in the glue of the meeting. And then those chemicals start to wear off, as we all know, and we don’t know why.

Scientists don’t know why those chemicals wear off, but they do, and it’s around about that 12 month period, and then those wounds start to come up in us, and we start to sort of project and reflect on our partners, as if they were our primary caregivers. And it could be really painful. So there’s that, and that can happen in the workplace as well. So you, you have a, I have clients in here, and they’ll be explaining, you know, their boss that they hate, or their business partner and the frustration that they feel, and I will astoundingly be able to map that back to similar characteristics of their mother or father.

Hayley Osborne  

That’s so interesting, and I find it a little bit creepy, because it is like unpacking and everything. And I feel like, you know, that needs to happen when you’re in business too, because of the constant peaks and troughs that you experience emotionally when you’re running a business. Because in the morning you can have a huge win, and then in the afternoon, something could happen and you have a huge low, and it’s like, it’s no it’s up to you.

You’re the only one that can handle how you respond to that and how you move through it, or how you stay in it and let it affect the rest of your week. So I think what you do and the science behind that, and you know, how we are as humans and how our brain works is incredible. So what patterns do you see most commonly coming to your desk? Well, in

Anne Sureyya 

In relation to what you’re talking about, we can simplify and call it a trigger. So we’ve been triggered. We’ve been triggered in the workplace or at home by a partner, even our children can trigger us or mother in law, anyone. We’re relational beings, and we will get triggered relationally, and it’s just up to us to take responsibility for that trigger, move into that emotion, and go, Oh, wow. Okay, that hurt. And why did that hurt? Why did I feel that shame or embarrassment? Why do I suddenly feel a little bit tighter or smaller?

And some people will react in different ways, and there’s three ways that the humans will react, and they may either move towards, away or against. So you hear a lot of that concept these days about the people pleaser. So that’s a moving towards, so Oh goodness. I feel like I’ve just lost a connection with this person. So now I need to placate. I need to Fauci. It’s almost like a nervous system or automatic nervous system response.

So there’s the forward motion and pleasing, or some people will move against when that’s not working, and suddenly, well, I hate this person, and you know that that really hurt, and now I’m angry, and they’ll want to sort of take revenge. And of course, this, a lot of this is unconscious, and then those two things don’t work, and then we want to move away

Hayley Osborne  

and hide. I find it, yeah, it’s so interesting. And in terms of, like, the anxiety, what kind of role does that play in all of these relationships, like with yourself, with your partner, with your business,

Anne Sureyya 

yeah, so anxiety is attributed to the parts that exist within our system. And I’m talking in parts, because I don’t look at the mind as a mono mind. I look at the mind as a multiplicity. There’s different parts of us. There’s parts of us that Sure, they will feel anxious because they’re trying to achieve something in business, or they’ve got a goal, or they feel like, you know, if we start to peel back the layers underneath the layers, it’s because we feel that we might fail.

You know, particularly for, you know, men and women in business, you know, there’s a lot on the line. There’s a lot of responsibility. We put a lot of pressure on ourselves, and the capabilities, you know, that we need to uphold to and this does also stem from, believe it or not, childhood as well, the capable one, the responsible one, the parentified one. Yeah,

Hayley Osborne  

Let’s talk about your marketing. So before we started working together, what were you doing with your marketing?

Nothing.

I just want that giggle to kind of last a little bit longer, and then why not? What were your biggest fears around marketing?

Anne Sureyya 

I don’t know. I just thought I’ll just do a logo and put it under the door, and I’m just someone who will find me.

Hayley Osborne  

I don’t want to laugh, but yes, so Anne has a physical presence in Adelaide. She has a consulting office, and she also has an online presence as well, which she consults with anyone in and around Australia and also in the US, which I’m so proud of you for, that that’s just so awesome and Okay, so biggest fears around just the sign on the door, nothing else,

Anne Sureyya 

my fears, my about marketing,

Hayley Osborne  

yeah. Um,

Anne Sureyya 

I think what I learnt from you is, yeah, I think it was more social media. So I was looking at everyone else’s content, and it looks so fancy and edited and cropped and amazing audio. And I just found it really overwhelming, like I wasn’t really great digitally. And your advice was, just don’t think about it. So that really worked for me, because

Hayley Osborne  

I’m giving a psychotherapist this advice that says, Just, don’t just do it. Don’t think about it. Done is better than perfect, but with a strategy, obviously, on how you’re going to show up, but done is perfect, and I think like so we did a social media strategy together. Then I worked with you one on one, and I’m working with you one on one again, and I, I am in awe of how you are showing up, how you like, not that you don’t care, but you’ve just become a machine, like of of just goodness, and it radiates. So can you just tell everyone what your website is and your Instagram if they’re thinking I need to stalk her?

Anne Sureyya  

Sure. So it’s Anne Sureyya.

Hayley Osborne  

I’ll put this in the show notes as well. But if you’re listening and you have a habit, stacking, walking, driving, doing all the things don’t, don’t look while you’re driving, but when you stop, yeah, and Soraya, so have a stroke of her and see how amazing she is. So, yeah, what? What made you go? So you’re looking at everyone’s content, what made you go, Yes, I need to do this.

Anne Sureyya  

Yeah, good question. It was just, I guess the amount of people that were coming in the door, no one really understood what I was doing. And yeah, I guess having the business coaching with you, I did need a plan, and I was more just going with the flow, and so depending on referrals, and that was only working to an extent.

And then I sort of just opened my mind a bit and went, Okay, well, this, you know, there’s 8 billion people on the planet, so what can I do in the digital world to, you know, capture a percentage of that, even if it’s a small percentage. I’m sure, yeah, we can continue to strive to, you know, make that income bigger than, you know what it is now, which is my one on one capacity, because I’m only one person, so I need to leverage for my internship property,

Hayley Osborne  

And that’s what we’re doing now. So, yeah, everyone’s listening, and you think, oh, what? What can I get my hands on that Anne has, that she can give me? And you have created a really awesome lead magnet. Well, it’s a lead magnet. Irresistible offer, free download. Freebie, a bonus of four people to get inside your head a little bit and see what that looks like. Do

Anne Sureyya 

you want to tell Yeah, so it’s, it’s five steps to stop abandoning yourself. So stop abandoning yourself in love. So, you know, it’s such a common thing, I get men and women in here, and you know, they just so want to be connected to their person, their situationship, their long term lover, whoever that person is. And we will do things to abandon ourselves, to keep the connection.

And so these are the steps to break that down, to recognize when maybe the abandonment is toxic or it’s too far and it’s really hurting yourself. So it sort of starts to lead into that big question that we can ask ourselves, you know, nearing the end of a relationship, or should I stay? Or should I go? So that’s the guide. It’ll take you through the steps. It’s five pages that’ll take you through how to move through some of those questions for you, Am I pleasing? Am I abandoning myself? Should I stay with this person when you’re just a bit confused? Just to give you some clarity, that’s what the guide does.

Hayley Osborne  

I found that really interesting to read and like how you go about doing things. Because, I mean, had I had found you post meeting my husband, I would have really needed this guide. But you know, I think when you’re in toxic relationships or ones that don’t work for you, it’s hard to see the forest through the trees like it’s hard to see that you’re in it. It’s hard to unpack yourself and realize that, hang on a minute, I’m abandoning the one person that matters the most, which is me and you it’s, it’s hard to move away like and so I feel like people need to hear more of what you have to say, because you make it sound like the unpacking. It’s after that. I don’t think it’s so scary.

Anne Sureyya   

Mm, that’s right. A lot of it’s to do with the acknowledgement, and this guide helps you map your experience as well. And once you just simply put it on paper, paper to pen, and then you can see it from a bird’s eye view, you’re not so emotionally swirling in the pain and suffering of it,

Hayley Osborne  

yeah, kind of like, sorry, yeah. It will help. It will help. And I feel like there’s a really nice parallel with relationships and business as well. And you know, you can get that far, maybe in a direction that you realize you don’t want to go in business, and then you think, Oh no, it’s too hard to get out of that. It’s the same as relationships. When, really, I guess, when you open up to someone, or you say it out loud and you start talking about it, it doesn’t seem so scary, and it’s not so hard to change pivot, to move away, to move forward to something else that serves you better in your heart, and it’s really hard to acknowledge those things.

Anne Sureyya   

Yeah, I agree, yeah. All of this comes down to trust.

Hayley Osborne 
So another question I have is, why do so many of us chase the feeling of being chosen, even when the relationship isn’t healthy?

Anne Sureyya  

Yeah? Well, there’s a few reasons, and it sort of depends on the individual, but I guess primarily for us as beings. Yeah, we want to be chosen. We want to feel like we belong. You know, we’re relational beings, and a lot of us can get just hooked on a feeling. We can get really overwhelmed by that initial being seen by someone or being made to feel special. You know, we sort of got these modern day terms like love bombing, and that doesn’t even have to happen, like, sometimes we’ll meet someone and what’s the love bomb? Um, love bombing when someone continually sends text messages about how amazing you are, or great you are, or or uses all this verbal language and then sort of cuts you off, sort of disappears

Hayley Osborne 

Interesting, yeah, I just cut you off. Then from what you were saying, Yeah, that’s okay, in and around. What were we talking about? Let me just the feeling of being chosen, chosen, even when the relationship wasn’t healthy,

Anne Sureyya 
Yeah. So there’s often a dynamic that happens between. People, and that’s moving towards, away and against again. And you know, when this person will come towards you that can make you feel really special, you know that it can in whatever way, and that creates a feeling, and then we can get attached to that feeling. It’s maybe a feeling we’ve been longing for that we haven’t felt or needed for a long time again for my primary caregivers, and then we want to chase that feeling. So there’s that, there’s the feeling, and then there’s also the dream.

So a lot of us like to get hooked into the dream as well, which is a part of our psyche that will look out and imagine what life will be once we have all these things, and society really layers that as well. So we’ve got a house, imagine we’ve got children running around, and we’ve got that husband or that wife. You know, men do this too, and we’ve got a nice car in the driveway, and imagine all the holidays and all the family memories. And we really do get hooked into again, this experience that we might be having, that we might actually have with this person we want to grow. And that is, it can be toxic hope, because sometimes women in the relationship are not actually giving us care and connection, but we’re still hanging onto the hope of this dream can be, yeah, can be upsetting and painful, running in that cycle. Does that make sense? Yeah,

Hayley Osborne 
It does. And it’s really interesting, I think. Okay, so let me ask you another question about marketing. What’s been your biggest realization when you’ve started to because you’re definitely a thought leader in this space, and when you’ve started to lean in and show up in your marketing, and you are showing up like so, so much easier if you go back to day one and now I can’t eat. I just can’t. I’m laughing because I agree you are so like, you are so confident, and you are so you. You’re very smart and very good at what you do. And then, and I’m sure a lot of people listening are like, that’s me too, but I just can’t show up in my marketing. I can’t show up online. And my socials are like, you are flying like an eagle.

Anne Sureyya 
Yeah, I guess there was a barrier. There was a self belief barrier. I just, I looked at everyone else again, online, website, social media, and I just couldn’t see myself. I couldn’t see how to be able to cut through the clutter and differentiate myself. And I think once I got over that, and I do like how you did say, just don’t think about it. It does work, because psychologically it’s your prefrontal cortex that will talk you out of things. So I just just get over it, you know, or just do it like Nike.

It’s a good saying. So once I got over it and just did it and got clear on my message and who I am in business, as a therapist, therapist hat, and then just didn’t think about it, and just put the message out there, and sort of shut my eyes. Then I started getting traction. I just had to get over that hurdle. Yeah, now you’ll get the feedback, and the more feedback you get in being authentic, the more it allows you to be authentic in business.

Hayley Osborne  

Yeah, and I love that for you, because more people need you in their life that are going through these things, because I think you’re a genius. Thank you. Okay, so what advice would you give business owners, especially, let’s say business owners in the health brand space, on their marketing, like, in and around their marketing, if you look back or like, at any stage, actually, what advice would you give?

Anne Sureyya   

I’ve got lots of advice, yeah, being authentic to their own message. And then using Hayley Osborne, I just felt that you helped me organize myself. That’s all because you had so many cool templates. And I’m, I’m, I love systems, you know, I’m a systems thinker, but you’re a systems thinker as well, but in a marketing sense. So yeah,

Hayley Osborne  

yeah. And have that combined with like your personality, like anyone’s personality, and zone of genius, obviously very different. Showing up becomes easy because you are confident in yourself, and you back yourself 100% which makes you show up in a Done is better than perfect. Just do it. Don’t think. About it. So it’s easy to say that, and then doing it with a strategy becomes easier.

Anne Sureyya   

Yeah, yeah. And again, it’s the business relationship too. So you know, you and I, we didn’t know each other at all, and it is difficult to put trust in someone else. You’re handing over money you’re handing over like, is this going to work? Is this not going to work? And, you know, it’s a risk. So, yeah, I can certainly say that I felt comfortable in working with you, and you’re very positive and encouraging and sort of pull me through, like

Hayley Osborne  

you’re very good at instructions, good at following instructions, and me cracking the whip.

Anne Sureyya   

Yes, yeah, that’s right. And you’re and you don’t sort of hold back so, and neither do I. So it’s, I think it worked well somehow, yeah, it’s

Hayley Osborne  

Definitely a two way street too. Like you coming into my world, and me obviously thinking, one, can I help you? Two, we’re obviously going to be working closely together. Do we get along? Are we on the same page? And you know, it’s been like, lovely to get to know you in this world of like that you work in is just phenomenal. And I’m just, I’m so grateful to be experiencing that through you. So thank you. Um, now I know we talked about it, but where can the listeners find you? Connect with you, and, you know, reach out to you if they need you in their life.

To find and follow Anne visit her:

Website: www.annesureyya.com.au
Instagram: @annesureyya
Facebook: Anne-Sureyya-Psychotherapist-Counsellor
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anne-sureyya-238b13270/
Email: [email protected]