Emotional Guidance
Feeling anxious?
Anxiety can make your world feel smaller. Your thoughts might race ahead to everything that could go wrong. You might replay conversations, second-guess decisions, struggle with uncertainty or find yourself trying to predict and control what happens next.
Sometimes anxiety is loud and unmistakable. Sometimes it's simply there in the background: a tightness in your chest, a knot in your stomach, a feeling that something isn't quite right even when you can't explain why.
And sometimes you might find yourself becoming anxious about feeling anxious. Not so fun, right?
At If Lost Start Here, we don't think the answer is always to make anxiety disappear even though that’s what we desperately want. Instead we start by understanding what is happening around you, what your anxiety might be trying to protect you from and what you might need right now.
Why Do I Feel So Anxious?
Anxiety is our response to a sense of threat, but that threat doesn't always have to be happening right now. Our minds are remarkably good at travelling into the future, imagining what might happen and trying to prepare us for it. We can acknowledge that anxiety is present while still questioning whether the threat we're responding to is actually real.
That's why anxiety can become confusing. The feeling itself is real, even when the thing we're afraid of hasn't happened. And when we become frightened of anxiety itself — the racing heart, the panic, the loss of control — we can end up organising more and more of our lives around trying not to feel it. We can become anxious about having anxiety and wondering whether we’re able to cope with the sensations if they came.
What Can Help When You’re Feeling Anxious?
Understanding anxiety doesn't mean dismissing it or telling yourself there's nothing to worry about. It means getting curious about what is happening, what your anxiety might be responding to and what you need next.
When anxiety feels uncomfortable, it's completely understandable to want it gone. But there can be a useful distinction between wanting relief from anxiety and learning how to live differently alongside it.
Somewhere To Start
If anxiety is taking up a lot of space right now, you don't have to solve it straight away. Start with one of these questions…
Certified Coach · Emotions Coaching Practitioner
Hi, anxiety
Our one-to-one emotions coaching sessions offer you somewhere to explore what's underneath your anxiety: the fears, needs, uncertainty, expectations, relationships or circumstances that might be contributing to it.
We don't begin with the assumption that anxiety is a problem in you that needs fixing. We begin with what's happening.
We might explore what your anxiety is responding to, the patterns that keep pulling you back into it, what you're trying to protect or control, what you need more or less of, and how you could respond differently when anxiety arrives. We can also explore the other emotions that might be sitting alongside or underneath it: fear, grief, anger, disappointment, overwhelm, loneliness or uncertainty.
The aim isn't a life in which you never feel anxious again. It's to understand yourself better, have more choices available to you and feel less governed by anxiety when it does appear.
Explore This In Your Own Time
There isn't one wellbeing practice that works for every anxious person in every anxious moment.
When you're anxious, Mind–Body might help you notice what's happening beneath all the thinking and reconnect with your physical needs. Nature might give your attention somewhere to go beyond the loop happening inside your head. Connection might remind you that you don't have to privately contain everything you're feeling.
Explore different strategies for navigating your anxious days in our book If Lost, Start Here: Wellbeing for the anxious, disconnected or uncertain.
Listen When You Feel Anxious
On A Thought I Kept, Claire talks to writers, psychologists, entrepreneurs, creatives and other inspiring people about the ideas that have stayed with them and helped them navigate life. Across these conversations, we’ve explored anxiety from many different angles: what happens when we become anxious about anxiety itself, why trying to control uncertainty can make things harder, how our bodies respond to perceived threat, and what can change when we stop fighting how we feel and begin listening instead.
If you’re feeling anxious right now, these conversations might offer a different perspective, a little reassurance or simply a thought worth keeping.
Or Perhaps You Want To Explore Something Else
When you're feeling anxious, you don't always need to keep thinking about what’s making you anxious. Sometimes it can help to turn your attention towards something you'd like a little more of in your life. That might be more connection, more time outside, a greater sense of purpose, or more space to play, create, wonder or simply switch off for a while. The following wellbeing pathways aren't a prescription for getting rid of anxiety or a list to work through. Start with whatever interests you, feels possible, or makes you a little curious about what might help you feel better.
