The Rosie and Roula Show

210: What Scares You? Women’s Safety, Intuition & Trusting Your Gut

• Roula Abou Haidar and Rosie Burrows

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Are you also scared of dark alleys?

In this powerful and deeply honest episode, Rosie & Roula revisit one of their most-loved past discussions — Episode 167: “What Freaks You Out?” — and take it a step further. This time, they explore what truly scares them, from everyday safety concerns to societal shifts, misogyny, public harassment, and why trusting your intuition matters more than ever. 

 

This episode is raw, vulnerable, and important. 

 

You’ll hear: 

• The difference between “what freaks you out” vs “what scares you”   

• Why dark alleys, unlit streets & isolated paths feel unsafe for many women   

• A confronting TikTok story about a female MP experiencing harassment   

• The rise of online hate & why it reflects something deeper in society   

• Roula’s real-life encounter with a group of intimidating men   

• Why women’s fear is often dismissed — and what needs to change   

• The importance of listening without invalidating someone’s experience   

• The role men can play in making women feel safer   

• How trusting your gut can prevent dangerous situations   

• Why being “hyper-aware” is sometimes necessary, not dramatic   

 

This is a conversation about fear, gender, intuition, and humanity.   

It’s heavy, it’s real, and it’s one every listener will walk away thinking about. 


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Rosie (00:00)
Okay. Although I don't know where I'm going. However, listeners, we have been working very hard, going through our analytics, finding our most popular episodes, looking at the survey responses. If you haven't done the survey, go to rosieandroula.com forward slash survey. But one of our most popular, one of our most popular episodes.

I don't remember the exact title, but it was about what freaks you out.

And I don't really know where to take this. I might need you to help me here for a while.

Roula (00:28)
⁓ you're giving me this face. Why?

Rosie (00:30)
Because I'm lost for

words. don't know what to say about this.

I know I just asked you, but I'm gonna talk, because why not? Instead of saying what freaks you out, what about what scares you? Because I feel like there is a nuance there. When someone says what freaks you out compared to what scares you, that's quite different to me. Is it for you?

Roula (00:37)
Please be my guest.

Yeah, I feel I take it more serious. What scares me is more serious. Like I need to protect myself. What freaks me out is more it. I hate it. I can overreact on it, but I'm not in danger.

Rosie (01:16)
Yeah.

Okay.

Okay. Yeah. And what scares you is more of a safety thing. That makes sense. Okay. Would you like to start? I feel like this could get quite serious, but I think it's important to talk about too. Why don't we talk about what scares us rather than keeping it in our heads and just letting it, letting this negative dialogue and doom gloom and worry, worry, worry. Talk about it.

Roula (01:28)
Yes.

Yeah. ⁓

I will try to keep it light because at the moment lot of things are scaring me but I will keep it light, okay? I am scared, I'm still scared and I will be scared for the rest of my life for myself and for my family to walk in a dark alley or cycle in a dark pathway where there are no houses, no streetlights. This will scare me for the rest of my life.

Rosie (01:53)
Okay. Okay, if you want.

Mmm.

Yeah.

Roula (02:18)
And it's a shame that these thoughts of danger, which can protect us, also linger in our heads.

Rosie (02:31)
Yeah, and you know, as you started talking about that, it made me think, and I'm looking at my phone because I watched a video very recently. I can't find it. I don't think I liked the video because it did scare me, but I will try to summarize. So was on TikTok and there was a video, it was from a news channel and it was a short clip of a member of parliament, female member of parliament ⁓ sharing her experience of

being a victim of sexual harassment in parliament from other members of parliament. And I was just, I thought, wow, good on her for speaking up. That's atrocious that this is happening. I went to the comments expecting to see people supporting this woman. my God, Roula the vulgar comments and victim shaming and just downright disgusting comments blew me away.

I couldn't believe it. And the fact that there are people like that in society scares me.

Roula (03:38)
Yes. They're empowered these days. They put out their opinion much more than before because they are empowered. have. We're shifting. We're shifting into something scary. yeah, scary for us women. We were flirting with safety.

Rosie (03:45)
Ooh.

Mmm.

Roula (04:04)
We were flirting. We got so close to feel safe and now we're feeling unsafe again. But all my life I'm scared, for example, from a group of men standing together And why am I scared? If we have male listeners, I want to tell them it's not every male that scares me. And please don't tell me, but it's not me. I'm a male and I don't do this because.

Rosie (04:26)
Mm.

Roula (04:32)
It's not you that I'm scared of. I'm scared of the one that even you as a male sometimes would be scared of. But you think you can fight them because you're a man. It's different. I cannot fight them. So these things scare me. The group of I'm scared of group of teenagers even because they can do weird shit and they're out of control. ⁓

Rosie (04:34)
Right.

Right.

Yeah, that can be really intimidating.

⁓

Yeah.

Roula (05:00)
Maybe

it also has something to do with my sense of safety. What does it take to make me feel safe? That I'm probably more scared than other women who would not be scared of the stuff.

Rosie (05:14)
Hmm. You know what I really value about this conversation is neither of us have tried to talk the other one out of their fear. I didn't say to you, you shouldn't feel unsafe walking down a dark alley. It's not like that anymore. You know, there's people that will protect you. I didn't do that. And when I said I was scared that people in society are like this, you didn't dismiss that. So.

Thank you and to you, our dear listener.

I know because you listen to this podcast, you're that sort of person too. You will listen to someone sharing what they're scared of and you will make them feel heard. We do not need to pretend everything's okay. We don't.

Roula (06:06)
What scares you should not, might not, and could not be the same thing that scares me, but this doesn't mean it's wrong, or you should not be scared.

Rosie (06:14)
Right. Right.

It's your truth. And I think we need to respect that. Definitely. Definitely. Yes.

Roula (06:24)
Something, actually, there is something very scary that happened a few days, in summer. I don't know if I talked about it. I was at the parking lot waiting for school doors to open, but I'm not parked in the school parking lot. I'm parking at the supermarket area. And a lot of cars came, sportive, expensive Mercedes cars arrived.

Rosie (06:35)
Hmm.

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Roula (06:55)
They all, the people, the guys, they were guys getting out of the cars. They looked scary. They had, they were smoking joints while they're driving. This is first sign for me, this danger. ⁓ Second, they had the look of the stereotypes of the ones who have no respect for women and would fight any man who would protect a woman. And this, I'm saying stereotype to respect other.

Rosie (07:07)
Mm.

Roula (07:23)
people opinion, but honestly, they look dangerous. They looked very dangerous and they were exchanging, taking off their shirts and putting on colorful football shirts. So I went Googling and these are like Hooligan football shirts and we are red Hooligans. Yeah. And I felt they are not from this area. Someone from them, maybe they know about this parking lot

Rosie (07:28)
Mmm.

Yeah.

What, football shirts? Who look, who look, okay.

Roula (07:53)
And the way they park the cars, they blocked us. So if I have my son with me and we want to drive away, I can't because they're blocking us. So I felt really scared ⁓ saying something to them to move away so I can go. They were they were with 15 or 20 of them. So what I did, I took pictures of the of their license plates. And I wrote details about them because I felt that if something wrong can go.

Rosie (07:59)
You can't, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Wow

Fuck yeah.

Roula (08:23)
I want to be aware what's going on around me and I want to be able to give it to the police if they ask for witnesses. And this is something I'm doing more and more. I'm very attentive to see what's going on around me, sense danger and believe in myself if I feel it's a danger. ⁓ Because I want to be able as much as possible, because I can't do this maybe in panic or fear I will freeze, run away, to be able to say,

Rosie (08:27)
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, trust yourself.

Mm.

Roula (08:52)
Yes, I've seen that person. can describe that person. This is the license plate. I want to catch more criminals by being vigilant on the street.

Rosie (09:02)
I love that.

Yeah. You're going to be a vigilante. I'm being playful, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Roula (09:07)
I know, I know, it's true. And this because

our politics, the polarization, everything is shifting into a place that I'm scared of.

Rosie (09:19)
Yeah. And I think it's, it's difficult to not end up in a place where we're led by fear because it's, that would have been really frightening listening to you describing that. sort of parked in by this group of 15, 20 men who, you know, have that stereotypical look of, of people. I'm imagining like a bikey type image. don't know if you call them that over there, but like motorcycle gang. No.

Roula (09:42)
No, no, they're more, more of... Yeah,

more like like a drug...

Rosie (09:49)
⁓ like drug lords. Yeah, it would have been so intimidating.

Roula (09:51)
drug dealers, hooligans, I don't know.

Yeah, they were acting intimidating. They were intimidating the people around by blocking us, by being outside of the car, smoking weed, having music loud, aggressive music, which is not rock. It was a different kind of aggressive music. So, yeah, these things scare me. People scare me. And I'm not saying women don't scare me. A group of women also scare me because they can jump on you and attack you so aggressively.

Rosie (10:04)
Yeah, wonder why they did that. Yeah.

Mmm.

Roula (10:29)
the bottom line, I'm scared from people's behaviors and I'm trying to be very attentive.

Rosie (10:30)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yes. And I like what you said is you want to believe what you're thinking, your gut feeling. I think that's important for us. Trust yourself. If you feel like something is off, don't dismiss that. That's how we could end up in compromising situations. You know, it's not that we are responsible if someone does the wrong thing, but sometimes

There are things within our control perhaps to keep ourselves safer.

so can remove yourself from a situation.

Roula (11:07)
Yeah.

Yes. And I want men listening to understand something. Women don't get raped by women.

Rosie (11:13)
Mm.

Roula (11:20)
Sorry, this episode is going a little bit dark, but I'm feeling dark now. So when we say we're scared of men, when we don't want to get into the elevator because there's a man in it and we don't feel comfortable, of course, not every man feel like danger, but sometimes we just have to follow our gut. And this doesn't mean that all men are dangerous and all men are rapists. The reality is men rape women.

Rosie (11:43)
No.

Roula (11:51)
So there is a valid reason why I am scared of certain kind of situation where men are involved. This doesn't mean all men are like this. So my message here for men is that if you believe that there are men rapists, you will not dis-validate or contradict, dismiss my fear because you think you're a good man.

Rosie (12:11)
Yeah, like dismiss. Mmm.

Right. So when a man, when you're explaining something to a man and it might be your fear for certain men and they could say to you, well, I'm not like that. There's plenty of good men. They have good intent when they say that, but it actually feels very dismissive, doesn't it?

Roula (12:33)
Yes, because what

I would like to hear from men saying, if I can get my hands on this man, I will beat the shit out of him instead of telling me, but I'm not that man. This is we're not talking about you. We're not. We're talking about how can you join us in feeling safe by having our back when we are scared of these kind of men.

Rosie (12:45)
Right. We're not talking about you. Yeah.

Hmm.

Hmm. It's a difficult topic.

Roula (13:00)
I mean,

it's yeah, it's a difficult topic and it only will start changing when men also speak up, but men don't because they are not they're not the rapist. Why do they have to speak up? But they don't know that sometimes speaking up shows support and may give fear to the other man because they realize, ⁓ shit. Not yeah, yeah.

Rosie (13:26)
Holds other men to account perhaps?

I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. It's hard and there's a lot of heated ⁓ opinions around it. ⁓ It's lot. But surely if we work together, we have each other's backs, we keep talking about men, men, men, men, but just people in general as well. If we have each other's backs, if we listen, we're compassionate, we support one another, surely.

that will help make the world a place.

Roula (13:57)
Yeah, we haven't started talking about women who are dangerous, but I can take on a woman. I don't think I can take on a man.

Rosie (14:01)
Yeah, there's plenty of those.

I can't take on women. I've been attacked at school before by a bunch of girls. I did not do very well. I froze, but that's a whole other topic. Yeah. my goodness.

Roula (14:11)
yeah, no, you can never win when it's a group against one. Yeah, that's why I

have my deodorant in my purse. Because we're not allowed to have pepper spray on their faces. ⁓

Rosie (14:19)
you're spray deodorant. Yeah, my gosh.

Yeah, I'd never really thought of that. Yeah. Wow, that's clever.

Roula (14:29)
hairspray, deodorant, you know, women are creative. We're like the James Bond of creativity in gadgets.

Rosie (14:37)
I love it. ⁓

All right, everybody. Yeah. Well, I don't know what I was going to say. I had a very...

Roula (14:49)
I'm almost forgetting

to ask everyone to go to rosieandroula.com forward slash coffee and buy us a cup of coffees.

Rosie (14:55)
So we can have a coffee together. Yes, we

can have a coffee together with you as you listen to the podcast. It would be fabulous. So go check it out. You get to choose how much it is and it would mean the world to us. It'll help us cover expenses and just make us feel really bloody special, which is selfish, but I don't care. Thank you and goodbye.

Roula (15:03)
Yeah. Yes.

Yeah, she's rambling. Bye!