How Japanese Spirituality Can Help Us Feel Less Lost

The park was the same one Hiroko Yoda had walked through countless times before. Same paths. Same trees. Same shrine tucked quietly amongst the landscape. But after her mother died, she could barely see any of it. She describes walking with her head down, shuffling through the park and back home again, where she would cry. Then repeat it the next day. And the next. Until one day she looked up.

She noticed the birds first. Then the maple trees. The shifting light through the leaves. A shrine she must have passed hundreds of times before. And in that moment, something changed. Not because her grief disappeared or because she suddenly understood everything about life or death or spirituality, but because she no longer felt entirely alone inside the world.

I haven’t stopped thinking about that since we recorded our conversation for A Thought I Kept.

Partly because I think many of us know what it is to move through life with our heads down. To become so overwhelmed by grief, anxiety, burnout, uncertainty or simply the sheer weight of being human that the world narrows around us. Our lives become logistical. Functional. We focus on getting through the day, answering messages, making dinner, remembering appointments. We stop noticing what is around us because we are working so hard to hold ourselves together within it.

And yet so much of what Hiroko shared in our conversation was about exactly that: noticing.

Noticing what remains. Noticing what connects us. Noticing the things that quietly hold us when we feel lost.

Her book, Eight Million Ways to Happiness, explores Japanese spirituality not as a rigid belief system but as something lived alongside everyday life. Something woven into nature, rituals, food, language, grief, playfulness and community. In Japanese spirituality, kami — spiritual presences — exist not just in shrines or sacred spaces, but in trees, rivers, mountains, words, objects and everyday acts of care.

I think what struck me most was how different this felt from the way spirituality is often discussed in wellbeing spaces. So much modern wellbeing culture seems obsessed with certainty. Morning routines that promise transformation. Manifesting practices that suggest we can think ourselves into a better life. The pressure to optimise, improve, transcend.

But Hiroko kept returning to something much softer and more spacious than that.

The Japanese idea of hanshin hangi — half belief, half doubt. The permission to remain somewhere in the grey zone. To not fully know. To allow uncertainty to exist without rushing to resolve it.

Honestly, it felt like a relief.

Because I suspect many of us already live there, whether we admit it or not.

We carry objects that mean more to us than they logically should. We talk to people we’ve lost. We feel calmer by the sea. We light candles. We keep rituals we cannot entirely explain. We sense that some places hold energy. We wonder whether there might be more to life than what we can immediately see or prove.

And then, often, we dismiss ourselves. We tell ourselves we’re being silly. Irrational. Dramatic.

What I loved about Hiroko’s perspective was that it made space for both curiosity and scepticism. Both wonder and uncertainty. Both grief and joy.

At one point in the conversation she talks about eating a banana at breakfast and saying itadakimasu beforehand — “I humbly receive.” And suddenly the banana stops being just a banana. It becomes the people who grew it, transported it, stocked it, bought it. It becomes weather and soil and labour and unseen connection.

That stayed with me because I think many of us are searching for meaning whilst overlooking the small moments where meaning already exists.

Noticing can become a kind of spiritual practice.

Making coffee in the morning. Opening the curtains. Walking the dog. Watering plants. Speaking kindly. Taking the long route home. Sitting quietly before the rest of the house wakes up.

Not because these things solve our lives, but because they return us to relationship with them.

And perhaps that matters especially when we feel lost.

Often when we feel uncertain, we assume we need dramatic change. A new version of ourselves. A breakthrough. A complete reinvention. But sometimes what we actually need is a gentler way of relating to where we already are.

Hiroko spoke beautifully about how Japanese spirituality allows opposites to coexist. Joy and sadness. Gratitude and anger. Light and darkness. She talked about how grief changed shape over time, how writing about her mother softened certain memories and complicated others, how healing was not neat or linear but layered.

I think there’s comfort in that too.

Because many people arrive at wellbeing feeling as though they are failing at it. Failing at being positive enough, resilient enough, healed enough, grateful enough. But perhaps wellbeing is not about eliminating darkness or uncertainty. Perhaps it is about learning how to stay connected to ourselves and the world around us whilst those things exist.

To look up occasionally, even when life feels heavy.

To notice the shrine amongst the trees.

To let a cup of coffee become a moment of connection rather than simply fuel.

To allow for half belief and half doubt.

If this resonates with you, you might enjoy my conversation with Hiroko Yoda on A Thought I Kept. We talk about grief, spirituality, uncertainty, belonging, rituals and the unseen threads that connect us to each other and the world around us.

And if you’re navigating your own season of uncertainty or emotional overwhelm, you can also explore coaching and support through If Lost Start Here. Not to fix yourself or become someone new, but simply to have somewhere to think things through more honestly and openly.

Connecting While Human

You’re halfway through a conversation and realise you’re not really in it. You’re nodding, saying the right things, keeping the tone light enough, agreeable enough. You hear yourself laugh at something that isn’t quite funny. You offer an explanation you’ve offered before, one that lands just well enough to move things on. And at the same time, there’s something else happening underneath — a more insistent feeling that says: this isn’t quite it.

You might notice it later, when you’re walking home or making dinner, replaying the conversation in your head. The bit you didn’t say. The way you softened something. The way you tried, once again, to explain yourself into being understood. And then, almost reluctantly, the thought arrives: I don’t think this is about explaining anymore.

It’s a subtle shift, but once it’s there, it tends to stay.

This is the place Jacky Power and I found ourselves in during our conversation — not just the moment of clarity that so many wellbeing conversations promise, but in what comes just after it. The part where you realise something about yourself or your relationships, and then very messily try to do something about it.

Jacky described believing, for a long time, that if she could just say things the right way, people would meet her there. That the gap between her and others was something she could bridge with better words, more careful explanations, a little more effort. It’s such a human instinct — to assume that understanding is something we can earn if we try hard enough.

And sometimes that’s true. But not always.

Sometimes what we’re up against isn’t a lack of clarity, but a difference in direction. A difference in how we see things, what we value, what we’re willing to hold or not hold anymore. And that’s much harder to resolve, because it doesn’t bend as easily.

What follows that realisation isn’t a clean decision. It’s more like learning to walk again on uneven ground.

You say something you’ve been meaning to say, and it comes out slightly wrong. Or it lands in a way you didn’t expect. You question yourself almost immediately. Was that too much? Too blunt? Not quite right? You tell yourself you’ll try again next time, maybe in a softer way, a clearer way. You adjust, you retreat, you step forward again.

Jacky described it as “stumble, trip, stumble, trip.” And it’s exactly that. Not a confident stride into a new way of being, but a series of attempts, some of which don’t go to plan.

There’s a kind of vulnerability in this stage that doesn’t get talked about much. Because from the outside, it might look like growth — becoming more self-aware, more aligned, more boundaried. But from the inside, it can feel uncertain and exposing. You’re no longer fully comfortable in the old way of relating, but you’re not yet steady in the new one either.

And that can feel lonely.

Not necessarily in the obvious sense of being alone, but in the quieter sense of not quite being met. Of noticing that the ways you’re beginning to show up don’t always fit neatly into the relationships you’ve had before. Of realising that not everyone will come with you, or understand you in the way you hoped.

Jacky spoke about this without dressing it up. That there can be grief in it. That choosing your own direction — even gently, even kindly — can create a kind of separation. Not because you want it to, but because something has shifted, and you can’t quite go back to not knowing that.

And still, there was something else in what she said that felt just as important.

That the alternative — ignoring what you’ve noticed, continuing to override yourself for the sake of keeping things smooth — comes at a cost too. A quieter one, perhaps, but one that builds over time. A sense of being slightly out of step with yourself. Of saying yes when you mean maybe, or maybe when you mean no. Of slowly losing touch with what feels true.

This is where connection becomes more complicated than we often allow it to be.

Because it isn’t just about being close to other people. It’s also about how close you are to yourself within those relationships. Whether there is space, even in small ways, to be honest about what you feel, what you need, what you see differently now.

And that honesty doesn’t have to arrive all at once.

One of the things I took from this conversation is that connection doesn’t depend on getting it perfectly right. It might be something much smaller than that. A moment where you say a little more than you usually would. A conversation where you don’t immediately tidy up your feelings. A pause where you notice the urge to explain, and choose, just for a second, not to.

It might be noticing where you feel able to do that, and where you don’t.

Because not every space will hold it. And that, too, is information.

Jacky talks about “human tricky things” — the parts of being alive that don’t resolve easily. The feelings we don’t always have words for. The experiences that sit somewhere between connection and disconnection, between being seen and staying hidden. And what struck me is that learning to connect while human isn’t about smoothing those things out. It’s about finding ways to stay with them.

To stay with yourself when you’re unsure. To stay in relationship where you can, without forcing it where you can’t. To allow for the possibility that connection might look different now — less about being perfectly understood, and more about being real in the places that can hold it.

If you’re in that space at the moment — noticing something has shifted, but not yet sure how to live it — it might help to know that this part doesn’t need to be rushed.

You’re not behind. You’re not getting it wrong. You’re in the middle of learning something about yourself that takes time to settle.

And there is a kind of steadiness that can grow here, even if it doesn’t feel like it yet. Not from having all the answers, but from beginning to trust what you notice. From allowing that to matter, even when it complicates things.

If you’d like to hear more of this conversation, you can listen to my episode with Jacky Power on A Thought I Kept, where we explore emotions, loneliness, and what it means to stay connected — to ourselves and to each other.

And if you’re looking for somewhere to think about your own relationships or feelings a little more gently, explore our coaching and resources here If Lost Start Here.

If Lost, Start Here: Our Book Is Here

Ten years ago, we were sitting on a living room floor. Two friends, babies crawling around us, talking about all the ways we felt a bit… lost. Untethered. Overwhelmed.

And more than anything, we were talking about how hard it was to know where to start to just feel better. Not because there weren’t options. Because there were too many.

Everything we turned to—books, advice, tools—often left us feeling worse than we anticipated. Like we were somehow getting it wrong before we’d even begun. And there was a version of life we were meant to be living, and we were slightly off-track from it.

So we started asking different questions.

What do people actually need when they feel like this?
What helps when you’re tired, or overwhelmed, or uncertain?
What still counts when life doesn’t look like the version wellbeing advice assumes?

That was the beginning of If Lost, Start Here. And now, our book.

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What This Book Is (And Isn’t)

This isn’t a book that asks you to overhaul your life. It’s not built on the idea that there’s a better version of you waiting on the other side of a perfect routine.

It’s more a guide for when you don’t know where to begin. A place to come back to when things feel off, or unclear, or just a bit flat.

It’s grounded in research, but it doesn’t feel like work. It’s designed to be easy to pick up, easy to move through, and importantly easy to make yours.

There’s no point in this book where you should feel like you’re failing at it. Instead, it’s about exploring.

Exploring yourself, yes, but also exploring your life. The world around you. The things that bring you back into it.

Because one of the things we kept coming back to was this: So much of wellbeing focuses on going inward.
But what about everything that happens when we go outward too?

A Guide to You And the World Around You

This book moves through ten different wellbeing pathways. Some will feel familiar like connection, creativity and nature. Others might feel like something you’ve lost touch with, or haven’t quite found your way into yet.

And that’s kind of the point.

We hear this a lot from people: “I’ve never really thought about my life this way before.”

About play, for example. Or awe. Or having a creative practice as an adult that isn’t tied to being “good” at something.

Each pathway is there as a way in. Not something to master. But something to try. Something to notice. And something to come back to when you need it.

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You Don’t Have to Do It All (Or Do It Properly)

One of our favourite things about this book is that it doesn’t need you to use it in a particular way.

You can dip in and out. You can follow it month by month. You can skip around entirely and follow whatever catches your attention.

If you’re someone who likes to think things through, you might spend longer with the essays and reflections. If you’re more of a doer, you might go straight to the activities and try things out in your day-to-day life. If you’ve got very little energy, you might just read a page and leave it there.

All of it counts. It’s much more of a “choose your own way through” than a step-by-step plan.

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Built for Real Life (Not Ideal Life)

A lot of this started with a very practical question:

What does wellbeing look like when you’re too exhausted, too uncertain and too overwhelmed to do alll the things.

We started looking at each area of wellbeing not as something you either do or don’t do but as something that exists on a spectrum.

So instead of:

“Go for a walk in nature.”

It might be:

“Can you look out of the window?”

Instead of:

“Build a strong social life.”

It might be:

“Who feels like an easier person to text today?”

We found research that backed up the fact that even very small moments still matter. That they still count. That they can still shift how we feel in meaningful ways.

And more than anything, we wanted to build something that worked with people’s lives as they actually are. Not as they think they should be.

A Different Way to Think About Wellbeing

There’s a lot of pressure in this space now. To get it right. To do more. To optimise. And it can quietly turn wellbeing into another thing on the list.

We wanted this book to sit slightly outside of that. To say: there isn’t one right way to well.

For some people, it might be running, wild swimming, green juices. For others, it might be going to a museum, painting at the kitchen table, watching live music, or finding small ways to be part of the world again.

This is about finding your way. Not following someone else’s.

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Something You Can Come Back To

Over the years, this became something we used ourselves.

When things felt off, we’d come back to it. Run through the pathways. Notice what had slipped. What we needed more of. Not in a critical way—more like a check-in.

“Oh, I haven’t so much as touched my toes this year. Maybe mind-body could use a bit of attention.”

It’s that kind of relationship we hope this book becomes. Something you return to. Something that helps you find your footing again.

If You’re Not Sure Where to Start

That’s okay. That’s exactly where this begins.

Also available on Not on the High Street and Amazon.

How to Trust That Things Will Be OK (Even When You Feel Lost)

You arrive a little more tired than you expected, the kind of tired that isn’t just about the journey but about everything you’ve been carrying before you even set off.

The train was delayed, the coffee wasn’t great, and there’s already a message waiting for you from home asking something that requires more of you than you feel you have to give. You hold your bag a little tighter as you step off, aware of that familiar hum underneath it all — the one that says you’re doing your best, and still wondering if it’s enough.

And then, slowly, something begins to shift.

You’re welcomed in, properly welcomed in, with a warmth that doesn’t ask anything of you in return. There’s a cup of tea placed into your hands, a chair that feels like it was waiting for you, and a sense — rare, and difficult to create on demand — that you don’t have to perform or explain or improve anything about yourself in this moment.

You have arrived.

This is the kind of space described in my recent conversation with Tanya Lynch on A Thought I Kept, but more than that, it’s the kind of space many of us are quietly searching for in our everyday lives, especially when we find ourselves feeling lost without quite knowing how we got there. Because feeling lost doesn’t often look dramatic. It tends to look like carrying on, showing up, doing what needs to be done while holding a question in the background about whether this is how things are meant to feel.

When Life Doesn’t Look Like You Thought It Would

Tanya’s work, through journaling, retreats, and bibliotherapy, is rooted in something both simple and surprisingly hard to practice, which is the idea that everything is welcome.

Not just the parts of life that feel resolved or hopeful or easy to share, but also the uncertainty, the heartbreak, the restlessness, and the moments where you don’t know what comes next or how you’re meant to move through them. These are the parts we’re often encouraged to fix or move past, and yet they are also the parts that tend to shape us most.

There is a phrase she returns to, one that you may have heard so many times it risks losing its meaning:

Every cloud has a silver lining.

It can feel too neat for the complexity of real life, too polished for the moments when things are genuinely hard, but the origins of the phrase tell a different story. It dates back to the 17th century, from a line by John Milton in Comus, where he describes a dark cloud revealing a silver edge when caught by light.

It wasn’t written as advice or reassurance, but as an observation, a moment of noticing that even within something heavy, there might be something else present at the same time. And perhaps that is where this idea becomes more useful to us, not as a way of reframing everything into something positive, but as an invitation to look a little more closely at what is already there.

Learning to Stay With the Hard Parts

One of the things that stayed with me most from this conversation is the way Tanya speaks about challenge, not as something to avoid or move quickly beyond, but as something that is woven into the shape of a life. There isn’t a single moment where everything resolves or becomes easier, and there isn’t a version of life that is made up only of blue skies and straightforward narratives. Instead, there are multiple moments, some expansive, some difficult, some that ask more of us than we feel ready to give, and all of them becoming part of the story we are living.

Over time, something begins to build alongside that, and it is not certainty or control but a quieter kind of trust. Not the kind that insists everything will work out exactly as we hope, but the kind that recognises we have moved through difficult things before and found our way, even when it didn’t feel possible at the time.

What It Means to Feel Held

So much of what Tanya creates through her retreats is about this idea of being held, and it’s something that feels increasingly important in a world that often asks us to keep going without pausing to notice how we actually are. Being held doesn’t mean being fixed or guided towards a better version of yourself, and it doesn’t come with a list of things to do or ways to improve. It is something quieter than that, an experience of being seen without needing to justify yourself, of being able to arrive as you are without editing or softening the edges of what you’re feeling.

It’s the difference between being asked what you need to do next and being given the space to sit with where you already are. And while retreats can offer a more intentional version of that experience, the question it opens up feels relevant far beyond those spaces.

Where in your life do you feel held, and where might you need a little more of that than you currently have?

A Way to Begin Again, Gently

If you are in a moment that feels uncertain right now, this isn’t about finding a solution or creating a plan, and it doesn’t ask you to turn everything around or see things differently straight away.

It might begin somewhere much smaller.

The next time you find yourself caught in the noise of everything you’re holding, the questions, the pressure to figure things out, the sense that you should know what comes next, you might step outside if you can and allow yourself a moment to look up rather than down. Not in a symbolic or forced way, but simply to notice what is there.

Clouds moving, light catching edges, space opening up in ways you hadn’t registered before.

This is not about convincing yourself that things are better than they are, but about allowing for the possibility that more than one thing can be true at the same time, that alongside what feels difficult, there may also be something else present that you hadn’t yet seen.

A Thought to Keep

Every cloud has a silver lining may not be something you believe all of the time, and it may not be something you want to hold onto in every moment, but it can sit gently in the background as a question rather than a conclusion.

What else might be here that I haven’t noticed yet?

If you’d like to spend more time with this idea, you can listen to the full episode of A Thought I Kept with Tanya Lynch, where we explore what it means to trust that things will be OK without needing to force that belief.

And if you are finding that you need more support in understanding what you’re feeling or where you are, you can explore our private coaching at If Lost Start Here, where we make space for all of it, not just the parts that are easy to explain.

Sometimes, finding your way doesn’t begin with knowing what to do next, but with allowing yourself to arrive exactly where you are.

“I’m Fine” in Midlife

You wake before the alarm, not because you’re rested but because your mind has already started. There’s a list forming before your eyes are fully open — things to organise, respond to, remember, hold together. The day begins before you’ve even stepped into it.

By mid-morning you’ve answered messages, kept something running that might otherwise have stalled, smoothed over a moment that could have turned into conflict, and made sure everyone else is more or less where they need to be. When someone asks how you are — and they do, in passing, in between everything else — you say, “I’m fine,” and keep moving.

And in many ways, you are. You’re functioning. You’re managing. You’re doing what needs to be done. But somewhere underneath that, something feels different to how it once did.

The pace is the same, or even faster, but your capacity to keep absorbing it without cost has shifted. Sleep doesn’t restore you in quite the same way. Small things feel harder. Your body speaks more loudly, even if you’re not always sure how to listen. Emotions can feel closer to the surface — or, at times, more difficult to access altogether. And yet, the expectation — internal as much as external — is often that you should still be able to carry it all.

This is where “I’m fine” in midlife can take on a particular weight. It becomes the thing that holds together a life that has grown fuller and more complex over time — work, relationships, children, parents, friendships, the quiet accumulation of responsibility, the invisible labour that sits beneath it all.

It can also hold together an identity that has been built over years. If you’ve been the capable one, the one who gets things done, the one who can be relied on, then not being fine can feel like more than just a feeling — it can feel like a fracture in who you are. So “fine” keeps you inside something familiar, even if it’s starting to feel tight.

At the same time, midlife brings its own particular pressures.

Changes in the body — hormonal shifts, disrupted sleep, anxiety that arrives without clear reason, irritability that feels out of proportion.
Changes in relationships — renegotiations, distance, new dynamics that require different conversations.
Changes in perspective — a growing awareness of time, of what has been, of what might still be possible.

And alongside all of that, a question that can be hard to ignore:

Is this still working for me?

“Fine” often steps in right at that point.

Not because nothing is there, but because what’s there feels too big, too layered, or too disruptive to fully open. It protects you from the immensity of it — grief for versions of life that didn’t happen, anger at loads that feel uneven, fear of what change might bring, longing for something more spacious or more aligned. It also protects your nervous system when things have been too much for too long.

So instead of anxiety, you might feel a kind of flatness. A functional steadiness that keeps everything moving, but leaves little room for rest, pleasure, or connection.

You can cope, but you can’t receive.
You’re productive, but not nourished.
You’re calm on the outside, but internally braced.

And over time, that can begin to feel like the place you live.

But midlife also has a way of gently interrupting that pattern. Not necessarily with a dramatic breaking point, but with a steady accumulation of moments where “fine” no longer quite fits.

Where your body asks for something different.
Where your capacity reaches a limit.
Where your desires, long held at the edges, become harder to ignore.

And this is where something else becomes possible. Not a complete reinvention, and not a rejection of everything that has brought you here, but a gradual renegotiation.

Of what you carry.
Of what you expect of yourself.
Of what you allow yourself to need.

Questions begin to surface that cut through the automatic nature of “fine”:

• What am I responsible for that I shouldn’t be?

• What expectations am I meeting that no one has actually asked of me?

• Where have I become the only one holding something together?

• What would change if I believed my needs were legitimate?

These aren’t questions to answer all at once. They’re invitations. Because “fine” in this season of life isn’t something to get rid of. It’s something to listen to. A signal that something is asking for attention, for care, for adjustment. And alongside it, there can be another version of fine — one that feels different in the body. A steadier kind of okay.

Where your mood is mostly stable, even if life is full.
Where problems feel solvable, and support feels possible.
Where you have access, even in small ways, to rest, to pleasure, to connection.
Where your yes and your no feel real.

Midlife doesn’t remove the need for “fine.” But it does offer the chance to reshape it. To let it become less about holding everything together, and more about being in relationship with yourself as you actually are — changing, adjusting, becoming.

And from there, something opens. Not all at once. But enough to feel the difference between coping… and being here, in your life, with a little more space to breathe.

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Identify the hidden emotion under “fine”

Common ones in midlife:

• Grief (for time, body, dreams, parents, versions of self)

• Anger (from unfair load, invisibility, broken agreements)

• Fear (change, aging, being alone, being trapped)

• Longing (for rest, intimacy, freedom, meaning)

• Shame (for needing, for not coping “better”)

Prompt:

• If ‘fine’ had a feeling, it would be?.

• If ‘fine’ had a message, it would be?

Find the right kind of support

• If it’s hormonal/body-based: track symptoms, consider talking to a clinician, consider sleep support and nutrition.

• If it’s relational: practice direct asks, therapy/couples work, boundary setting.

• If it’s nervous-system burnout: prioritize downshifting (rest, somatic work, less stimulation).

• If it’s meaning/identity: coaching/therapy/journaling around values and your “next chapter.”

How to talk to people when you’re FINE

Scripts to try out:

• “I’m a bit depleted. I don’t need fixing, just you to listen.”

• “I’m not ready to talk details, but I’m not okay.”

• “Can we do a low-energy hang? I need company.”

• “I’m overwhelmed. Can you take one thing off my plate this week?”

• “I’m not fine, but I’m ok.”

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If “fine” has become the place you’re living from more often than you’d like, this might be a moment to have a different kind of conversation.

In coaching, we explore what’s shifting in this season of life — your needs, your energy, your direction — so you can move forward in a way that feels more sustainable and more yours.

Book a free discovery call and begin to find your way from here.

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Moving Gently Beyond “Fine”

You’re replying to a message. “How are you?” they’ve asked, and your thumbs hover for a moment before typing, “I’m fine, how are you?” It’s already sent before you’ve really checked in. You notice it though, that slight pause afterwards, that sense that something more could have been said, but didn’t quite make it into words.

This is often how “fine” works. Not as a deliberate decision, but as a well-practised reflex. And once you start noticing it, it can be hard to unsee. Not because it’s wrong, but because you can feel both sides of it — what it’s doing for you, and what it might be costing you.

So the work isn’t to stop saying “fine.” It’s to start relating to it differently. Instead of treating it as something to correct, you can begin by treating it as information. A question, asked internally: what is “fine” doing for me right now?

Sometimes it’s protecting you from a conversation you don’t have the energy for. Sometimes it’s holding together a version of yourself that still feels important. Sometimes it’s simply buying you time — a way of saying, not now. And alongside that, another question can sit gently beside it:

What would become more complicated if I wasn’t fine?

Because that’s often where the truth lives — in the complication. The conversation you might have to have. The need you might have to express. The change you might have to consider.

You don’t have to go there all at once. Often, the smallest shift is enough. Instead of replacing “fine” entirely, you can add a little more specificity, a little more truth, while keeping the safety that “fine” was giving you.

It might sound like:

“I’m okay, but I’m carrying quite a lot.”
“I’m functioning, but I feel a bit tender.”
“I’m not in crisis, but I’m not feeling great.”
“I’m managing, but I could use some support.”

Or even more simply, noticing where “fine” is and isn’t true:

Fine at work, not fine at home.
Fine in the morning, not fine at night.
Fine physically, not fine emotionally.

These are small translations, but they begin to reconnect you with what’s actually there. And often, the quickest way into that isn’t through language, but through the body. A moment of pausing. A hand resting somewhere steady — your chest, your stomach. A question that doesn’t require explanation:

What’s here?

Tight. Heavy. Buzzing. Numb.

And alongside it, perhaps, a need:

Rest. Space. Reassurance. Warmth.

Even this — just naming a sensation and a need — can begin to shift “fine” into something more alive.

Because underneath “fine” there’s often a mix of feelings that don’t always separate themselves neatly. Grief that hasn’t had time. Anger that hasn’t had space. Fear about what might change. Longing for something more spacious, more connected, more yours.

You don’t have to untangle all of it. You can start with the smallest true thing.

And alongside that, you can begin to make small repairs — not dramatic changes, but deliberate acts that meet you where you are.

A short walk outside.
Water and something nourishing before the next coffee.
A message to someone safe saying I’m not great today.
A boundary you’ve been circling but haven’t yet set.

Because often “FINE” — the version that feels tight and effortful — comes from cumulative depletion.

You can cope, but you can’t receive.
You’re productive, but not nourished.
You’re calm on the outside, but internally braced.

A helpful shorthand can be:

Healthy fine = I’m okay, and I’m connected.
FINE = I’m okay, and I’m disconnected.

And the movement between those two states isn’t dramatic. It’s made up of small moments of noticing, naming, and meeting yourself a little more honestly. Not all at once. Just enough to feel the difference.

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Healthy “fine” (when you’re genuinely okay)

• Stable mood most days.

• Problems feel solvable; you can ask for help.

• You have access to pleasure, rest, and connection.

• Your “yes” and “no” feel real.

• You feel present in your life (even if tired).

Unhealthy “FINE” (a kind of functional numbness)

• You can cope, but you can’t receive.

• You’re productive, but not nourished.

• You’re calm on the outside, but internally braced.

• You’re “fine” because you’ve stopped expecting support.

• Your life is organized around avoiding collapse.

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If you’re ready to move beyond “fine,” even just a little, having someone alongside you can make that feel safer and more possible.

Coaching offers a space to find the words, reconnect with what’s going on beneath the surface, and take small, steady steps towards something that feels more like you.

You can start with a free call and see if it feels like the right kind of support.

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What “I’m Fine” Really Means

You’re standing in the kitchen, phone wedged between your shoulder and ear, stirring something that doesn’t need stirring quite so vigorously. Someone asks how you are — a colleague or a friend, or maybe it’s your partner calling from another room — and you answer without thinking, “I’m fine.” The words arrive quickly, almost before the question has fully landed. You keep moving. There’s dinner to finish, emails to send, a message you haven’t replied to yet. Nothing stops.

That “fine” didn’t come from checking in. It came from knowing what’s easiest. What keeps things smooth. What doesn’t require you to explain why you’ve been waking at 3am, or why that small comment earlier stayed with you longer than it should, or why you feel both exhausted and strangely wired at the same time.

“I’m fine” is often less a feeling and more a kind of agreement. A socially acceptable, low-friction answer that says: please don’t ask more right now.

And in that sense, it works beautifully. It protects relationships, keeps conversations moving, and allows you to stay in the role you know how to play — the capable one, the calm one, the one who can handle things. But when you stay with it a little longer, “fine” starts to reveal itself as something more layered.

It can be a survival strategy — a way of minimising your needs, your visibility, your inconvenience to others. A way of keeping everything steady, even if it means gradually stepping away from yourself.

It can be a kind of freeze state — not falling apart, but not fully alive either. You’re functioning, showing up, doing what needs to be done, but there’s a slight distance from what you feel. A flattening. A sense that you’re operating without full access to yourself.

And often, it’s a negotiation. Between what you can handle, what you are handling, and what you’re not quite letting yourself admit you’re handling.

Because there’s usually something underneath it.

“Fine” can sit over disconnection — from your body, your emotions, your desires, your fatigue, your anger, your grief. It can sit over roles you’ve come to inhabit so fully they feel indistinguishable from who you are: the caretaker, the peacekeeper, the high performer, the low-maintenance one, the strong friend.

If you wanted a shorthand for it, you could think of “FINE” as an internal status message:

System running on emergency power.

You’re neither broken nor in crisis. But you’re also not resourced enough to feel, to pause, to shift.

Fine shows up for good reasons. It protects your place in relationships, where being “too much” might feel risky. It protects identity, especially if you’ve been the one who copes, the one who gets things done. It protects you from truths that feel too big to open all at once — grief, loneliness, resentment, the ever louder question of whether something needs to change. It even protects your nervous system, when things have been too much for too long, and numbness feels safer than overwhelm.

So “fine” isn’t something to dismantle or push past. It’s something to understand. Because from the outside, it can look like everything is working — calm, organised, capable. But inside, it can feel like holding everything in place at once, a subtle bracing that never quite releases.

And that’s where a different kind of question becomes useful.

Not: Is this true? But: What is this doing for me?

Because when you start to see “fine” as information rather than a fixed state, it opens up something else.

A little more awareness. A little more choice. A little more room to move.

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How to recognize FINE

The emotional / mental kind

• You say “fine” quickly and automatically.

• You minimize: “It’s not a big deal,” “Other people have it worse.”

• You feel flat, bored, cynical, or strangely blank.

• You feel easily irritated—like the smallest thing is too much.

• You can’t access desire (“I don’t know what I want”).

The physical kind

• Tension in jaw/neck/shoulders, shallow breath, clenched belly.

• Exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix.

• “Wired but tired,” or heavy/foggy.

• Frequent headaches, gut issues, inflammation flare-ups.

The behavioral kind

• Over-functioning: fixing, managing, planning, caretaking.

• Under-functioning in private: scrolling, zoning out, procrastination.

• Increased people-pleasing or emotional withdrawal.

• You stop initiating joy: hobbies, intimacy, creativity, movement.

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If reading this has made you pause and wonder what might sit underneath your own “I’m fine,” you don’t have to figure that out alone.

In emotions coaching, we create space to gently explore what’s there — at your pace, in your own words — so you can begin to understand what you’re feeling and what you might need.

Start with a free discovery call and see what support could look like for you.

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Creativity as a Mental Health Tool: How Art Can Support Wellbeing and Self-Trust

Often when we think about wellbeing, our minds go to the things we’ve been taught to reach for. Yoga classes and early morning runs. Cold water swims, breathwork, journaling practices carefully folded into the edges of the day. There is a familiar shape to it now, a sense of what counts as looking after ourselves and what does not.

And yet, there are other ways of feeling better that sit just outside of that frame. Quieter, less prescribed, often overlooked. Creativity is one of them.

Not because it is unavailable, but because many of us stopped recognising it as something we were allowed to have. Somewhere along the way, it became something reserved for other people. The creative ones. The artistic ones. The ones who knew what they were doing.

So when we find ourselves searching for support, for something that might help us feel a little steadier or more like ourselves again, creativity rarely makes the list. It feels optional, or indulgent, or something to come back to when everything else is in place.

But what if it is not an extra at all. What if it is one of the most overlooked ways we have of supporting our mental health and wellbeing.

This is something that came into sharper focus for me in a recent conversation with Imogen Partridge, a watercolour illustrator and workshop host whose work sits at the intersection of creativity and everyday life. Not in a way that asks us to become more creative, but in a way that reminds us we already are.

What she speaks about is not creativity as output or identity, but as a practice. Something we can return to in the middle of ordinary days. Something that can sit quietly alongside everything else we are holding, offering a different way of being with ourselves when things feel uncertain or overwhelming.

At the heart of her own experience is a thought she has kept for years. A reminder that appears on her phone at the end of the day, asking her to give herself more credit for how hard she is trying .

It is a simple idea, but one that shifts something fundamental. Because so often, even when we are looking after ourselves, we are still measuring. Noticing what we have not done, where we have fallen short, how far we feel from where we thought we might be. And so even our wellbeing practices can quietly become another place where we are trying to get it right.

What happens if we begin somewhere else.

If instead of asking whether something is working, we notice that we are trying. If instead of evaluating the outcome, we stay with the experience of being in it.

This is where creativity begins to feel different.

In Imogen’s workshops, people often arrive with a certainty that they are not creative. It is not something they have questioned for a long time. It sits quietly in the background, shaping what they reach for and what they avoid. And so there is hesitation at first. A sense of being outside of something. Of not quite belonging in the space.

But when they begin, something shifts. Not because what they create is suddenly good or finished or worthy of being shown, but because they are in it. They are making marks, however tentative. They are noticing what it feels like to try without knowing exactly where it will lead.

There is a vulnerability in that. In being seen trying, even by yourself. In allowing something to exist that is unfinished, uncertain, not quite right.

And there is also something quietly steadying about it.

Because when the focus moves away from outcome, there is space for something else to emerge. A different kind of attention. A moment of calm. A feeling of being absorbed in what is in front of you, rather than pulled in multiple directions at once.

This is where creativity begins to show up as a mental health tool, not in the way we might expect, but in the way it meets us where we are.

It does not ask us to be consistent or disciplined or to improve. It does not require us to share or perform or turn it into something more. It simply offers a place to land. A way of settling into the present moment, even briefly, when everything else feels like too much.

And over time, those moments can begin to matter.

Not because they change everything, but because they offer something different. A pause in the noise. A way of coming back into your body. A reminder that you can be with yourself without needing to fix or move beyond what you are feeling.

I have seen this in small, everyday ways. Children drawing without hesitation, moving from one idea to the next without questioning whether it is good. Adults returning to creative practices after years away, unsure at first, then gradually finding a rhythm that feels their own. A partner coming home from a long day and picking up a paintbrush, not to create something finished, but to let the day settle.

There is something important in these moments. Not just the act itself, but what it represents.

That creativity is not something we have to earn.
That it does not need to be productive to be valuable.
That it can sit alongside the rest of our lives, quietly supporting us in ways we might not have considered.

In a world where so much of wellbeing is shaped by structure and expectation, creativity offers something softer. A way of being rather than doing. A practice that can exist in small pockets of time, without needing to be perfect or complete.

It is not the only way of supporting your mental health, and it does not replace anything else that works for you. But it is one of the tools that often goes unnoticed, even though it has been there all along.

And perhaps that is where this thought continues to land.

Not as something to achieve, but as something to recognise.

That trying counts.
That effort, even when it is unseen, has value.
That you do not need to feel ready or confident to begin.

If you find yourself searching for ways to feel better, it might be worth looking not just at what you can add, but at what you might return to. Something simple. Something small. Something that allows you to be in the moment without needing to change it.

You can listen to the full conversation with Imogen Partridge on A Thought I Kept, where we explore creativity, mental health, motherhood and the quiet power of trying in more depth.

And if you are curious about how creativity might support your own wellbeing, you can explore our wellbeing prescriptions at If Lost Start Here, where we share gentle ways to bring more creativity into your everyday life in ways that feel possible and personal to you

Why Nothing Changes Even When You Try Everything: The Missing Role of Connection

Do you ever feel so frustratingly stuck? And it’s not because you haven’t tried things. If anything, you’ve tried a lot. You’ve read the books, listened to the podcasts, saved the quotes, maybe even written things down in a notebook with the hope that this time something might land. And for a moment, it does. Something resonates. Something makes sense. And then, somehow, nothing really changes.

You’re still in the same patterns. Still circling the same questions. Still feeling that low-level sense that something isn’t quite shifting in the way you hoped it might.

It can be easy, in those moments, to assume the problem is you. That you haven’t understood it properly. That you haven’t applied it well enough. That you need to try harder, or find the right framework, or finally come across the one idea that will make everything click into place.

But what if that’s not what’s missing?

In a recent episode of A Thought I Kept, I found myself returning to a simpler idea. That sometimes it isn’t another piece of insight we need. It’s other people.

Not in a dramatic or overwhelming way. Not in the sense of needing a whole new community or a complete change of life. But in the small, often overlooked ways that we are with each other. The conversations that go a little deeper than expected. The moments where someone really listens. The feeling of being alongside someone rather than trying to work it all out alone.

Because so much of what we are trying to understand about ourselves doesn’t fully emerge in isolation.

We can think about something for weeks, months even, and still feel unsure. And then, in the space of a single conversation, something becomes clearer. Not because the other person has the answer, but because they’ve asked a question we hadn’t considered. Or reflected something back to us that we couldn’t quite see on our own.

There’s something about being witnessed that changes the shape of things.

In my conversation with Laurence McCahill, we talked about the role he plays in bringing people together. A friend once told him that he was the glue in a group, the person who connected people who might not otherwise have found each other. It wasn’t something he had consciously set out to be. It was something he recognised in hindsight, something that had always been there.

And I think there’s something important in that too.

That the things that help us feel more connected, more ourselves, are often not the things we need to learn from scratch. They are the things that already exist in us, but only really come into focus in relationship with other people.

Listening. Noticing. Making space. Asking a question at the right moment. Sitting with someone without needing to fix what they’re going through.

These are not grand gestures. They are small, human ones. But they create the conditions for something else to happen. They create the conditions for change.

It also made me think about how much of modern life encourages us to do things on our own. To self-reflect alone. To improve alone. To figure things out internally before we share them with anyone else. Even our versions of connection can become structured or transactional. Networking rather than relating. Updating rather than opening up. And in all of that, we can lose something essential.

The in-between spaces where things unfold more naturally. The conversations that aren’t heading anywhere in particular. The moments where we’re not trying to get something out of the interaction, but simply being in it. Those are often the places where something shifts. Not because we’ve found a better answer, but because we’re no longer holding everything on our own.

If you’ve been feeling stuck, or like you’re circling the same thoughts without anything really changing, it might be worth gently asking a different question.

Not “what haven’t I figured out yet?” But “who might I need to be in conversation with?”

That might look like reaching out to someone you trust. Sitting with a friend a little longer than usual. Joining something where the intention is simply to be with other people, rather than to achieve or fix anything.

It might even be noticing where, in your own life, you are already the one who brings people together. The one who listens. The one who creates space for others. And considering what it would mean to allow that to be something you receive as well as give.

There isn’t a neat formula for this. And it won’t always feel comfortable, especially if you’re used to holding things on your own. But there is a different kind of steadiness that can come from it.

The kind that doesn’t come from having all the answers, but from not having to find them alone.

If this idea resonates, you might want to listen to the full conversation with Laurence on A Thought I Kept, where we explore connection, community, and what becomes possible when we do life together.

And if you’re looking for somewhere to begin, we’ve created a series of wellbeing prescriptions at If Lost Start Here that gently centre connection in everyday life. Not as another thing to get right, but as a way of finding your footing again, alongside other people.

When Grief Changes You But Doesn’t Define You: Finding Your Way Through Loss

Rachel Hart-Phillips is in the car, driving away from the hospital mortuary. It is one of those days that feels almost impossible to hold — the kind where everything is too much, too raw, too real. She has just seen her husband. The future she thought she had is no longer there. And alongside the shock and the grief, there is another feeling beginning to take shape.

Fear.

Not just of what has happened, but of what it might mean. That this could be the thing that defines her. That from this moment on, she might always be “the person this happened to.” That her life might narrow around this one experience, this one loss, this one story.

She says it out loud to the friend driving her home. And he responds, simply and almost casually, “don’t let it.”

It isn’t a solution. It isn’t even something she can fully take in at the time. How could you, in the middle of something so overwhelming? But she keeps it. She carries it with her, even when it feels impossible to believe. And over time, it becomes something she can return to. Not as an instruction to be okay, but as a way of orienting herself inside something that has changed everything.

There is something in that moment that many of us will recognise, even if our circumstances are different. That quiet, often unspoken fear that the hardest thing we go through might become the thing that defines us. It might not be grief. It might be anxiety, burnout, a loss of confidence, a period of feeling lost or stuck. But the shape of the fear is often the same. That this is who I am now. That this is how it will always be.

And yet, life is rarely that singular. It is not one thing, even when one thing feels overwhelming. What Rachel’s story holds, gently and without forcing it, is the idea that we can be shaped by what happens to us without being entirely defined by it.

This is not about dismissing the impact of what we go through. Loss does change us. Grief changes us. The experiences that stop us in our tracks — the ones that make us question who we are and how we go on — they leave their mark. Rachel speaks about the many emotions that came with her grief: sadness, of course, but also anger, guilt, fear, even moments of something like joy returning in unexpected ways And perhaps one of the hardest parts is that these emotions don’t arrive neatly. They don’t follow a clear path. They can feel contradictory, confusing, and sometimes even shameful.

We are not always given space to experience that fully. There is often a subtle pressure, from the world around us and from within, to be strong, to hold it together, to find a way through as quickly as possible. Rachel described being told she was strong after earlier loss, and how that became something she felt she had to live up to — as if showing her grief might mean she was doing it wrong But over time, she came to understand that strength, in this context, looks very different. It is not about holding everything in. It is about allowing what is there to be there.

This is a different kind of orientation to the one many of us are used to. Rather than asking “how do I fix this?” or “how do I stop feeling like this?”, it becomes something more like “how do I stay with this, without losing myself inside it?” It is slower. Less certain. But also, perhaps, more human.

Rachel spoke about grief as something that lives in the body, not just the mind. Something that needs to be felt and moved through, rather than thought away And that might look like very ordinary things. A walk. A song. A moment of crying that comes out of nowhere. A small flicker of light that catches you by surprise. None of these are solutions. But they are ways of staying connected to yourself, even as everything shifts.

There was something else in our conversation that stayed with me, and it sits alongside that original thought. The idea that when something hard happens, we don’t just struggle with what we’re feeling — we also struggle with how to be around each other. The not knowing what to say. The fear of getting it wrong. The way we can sometimes back away, even when we care deeply.

Rachel has built her work around this space — around helping us find words when words feel impossible. And what she returns to, again and again, is that it doesn’t need to be perfect. Often, it is the simplest expressions that matter most. A message. A card. A “I’m here.” A “love you.” Not to fix anything, but to sit alongside it.

Because when life becomes difficult, what we are often looking for is not a solution, but a sense of not being alone in it.

And maybe this is where that original thought — don’t let it — becomes something softer, something more spacious. Not a demand to overcome or to move on. But a quiet reminder that even when something changes you, it doesn’t have to take everything with it. There can still be other parts of you. Other moments. Other possibilities that sit alongside the hard.

Rachel speaks about the metaphor of a disco ball — something made up of broken pieces that still reflects light. Not in spite of what it’s been through, but because of how those pieces come together. It feels like a more honest image of how we live. Not perfectly put back together. Not untouched by what has happened. But still capable of reflecting something back into the world.

If you are in a moment where things feel uncertain, or heavy, or difficult to name, it might not be about finding a way to change yourself. It might be about staying close to yourself, even here. Allowing what is present to be present. And trusting, even if only a little, that there is more to you than the thing that has happened.

If this feels close to home, you can listen to the full conversation with Rachel on A Thought I Kept.

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And if you’re looking for a steadier way to navigate what you’re feeling, or to find your footing again, you’re always welcome to explore the coaching and resources here at If Lost Start Here.

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For now, perhaps just this thought to carry gently with you:

What is the thing you’re afraid might define you?

And what might it mean, in your own time, not to let it?

Feeling Lost, Disconnected, Overwhelmed, or Lonely? Here’s How to Find Your Way Back to Yourself

Life can feel heavy when you’re navigating overwhelm, loneliness, or a sense of disconnection. Maybe you feel stuck in routines that don’t nourish you, struggling to find clarity, or simply wondering what’s missing. Instead of trying to force yourself into generic self-care routines, what if you could create a wellbeing practice that fits you? That’s where our Wellbeing Prescriptions come in.

Inspired by social prescribing, our approach blends Culture Therapy, carefully chosen places from our Guide to Life, and an understanding of what you actually need. Most importantly, it starts with how you feel right now. This personalised approach helps you feel grounded, connected, and emotionally well on your own terms.

What is Wellbeing?

Wellbeing isn’t just about ticking off a to-do list of meditation, journaling, and yoga. It’s about finding what genuinely supports you—mentally, emotionally, and socially.

At its core, wellbeing is about:

• Emotional health – Learning to navigate your emotions with self-compassion rather than resistance

• Mental balance – Managing stress, uncertainty, and change with more ease

• Connection – Feeling supported by people, places, and experiences that align with who you are

But here’s the key: wellbeing is personal. What works for someone else may not be what you need. That’s why our approach is bespoke.

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How We Create Your Bespoke Wellbeing Prescription

Your wellbeing prescription is built around you, using three core elements:

1. We Start with How You Feel

Before prescribing anything, we begin with your reality today. Are you feeling:

• Lost? Unsure where to go next or what’s missing?

• Disconnected? Feeling detached from yourself or others?

• Overwhelmed? Struggling to manage stress, burnout, or emotions?

• Lonely? Longing for deeper relationships or more meaningful experiences?

These sessions first help you understand what’s happening beneath the surface—so we can tailor your wellbeing prescription to what will truly help.

2. We Look at What You Need

Everyone’s wellbeing needs are different. Some of us need more space, others need more connection. Some need creativity, others need calm.

Through our framework, we uncover what’s missing or what you’re craving right now—whether it’s:

• Rest – Slowing down, prioritising sleep, and reducing stress

• Clarity – Finding direction and making sense of where you are

• Purpose – Reconnecting with what feels meaningful to you

• Play – Bringing more joy, creativity, and fun into your life

• Connection – Strengthening relationships or finding community

3. We Curate a Wellbeing Prescription Just for You

Once we understand how you feel and what you need, we create a bespoke wellbeing prescription that may include:

Culture Therapy – A handpicked selection of books, podcasts, and creative resources designed to support your emotional wellbeing.

Places from our Guide to Life – Beautiful, thoughtfully designed spaces that foster connection, creativity, and mental wellness. Whether it’s an awe-inspiring museum, a community garden, or a cosy bookshop, we recommend places that help you feel at home in the world.

Practical Tools & Practice – Small, actionable steps that fit into your life, including journaling prompts, breathwork exercises, creative rituals, or moments of connection.

One-on-One Support – If needed, we offer coaching sessions to explore emotional resilience, purpose, and how to build a wellbeing practice that feels true to you.

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Why This Works for Anyone Feeling Lost, Lonely, or Overwhelmed

• It’s personalised to you – Instead of generic self-care tips, you get a wellbeing prescription that meets you where you are.

• It helps you navigate uncertainty – Using curiosity and self-acceptance, it guides you toward what feels good for you.

• It’s practical and flexible – No rigid self-care routines—just real-life wellbeing that evolves with you.

• It connects you to the world around you – Through culture, creativity, and inspiring places, you gain experiences that nourish rather than deplete you.

• It transforms your relationship with emotions – Instead of seeing emotions as something to ‘fix,’ you learn how to work with them.

What Is Emotional Fragmentation? How to Spot It and Start Healing

You can talk about your emotions. You might even do it brilliantly. But when someone asks how you feel, there’s a pause. A quick internal scan… then a neat answer. The right words. Not the felt experience.

This is emotional fragmentation.

It’s not about being broken—it’s about being disconnected. From the felt, embodied experience of your own emotions. Noticing this pattern is the first step toward something more integrated, more whole.

When Talking About Emotions Isn’t the Same as Feeling Them

For a long time, I would have described myself as an emotional person. I could talk about feelings with fluency—mine, yours, fictional characters’—with nuance and detail. But somewhere in my 40s, I realised something new. I wasn’t actually feeling those emotions. Not in my body. Not really.

I’d say “I’m feeling anxious” while my body remained in neutral. I’d discuss heartbreak with all the right language but none of the actual ache. I was, it turns out, managing emotions from a safe cognitive distance. Naming them, analysing them, talking about them but not letting them land.

Emotional fragmentation often shows up like this:

• You can describe emotions, but you rarely feel them.

• You feel detached from your own reactions, like you’re watching them through glass.

• You judge yourself (and others) for being "too emotional."

• You feel overwhelmed when multiple emotions appear at once.

It’s a form of self-protection. Often developed early, in environments where feelings weren’t safe, welcomed, or attuned to. Over time, your body learns: Feelings are too much. Think instead. And so you become a master of emotional language, but a stranger to your emotional landscape.

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What Happens When We Don’t Feel What We Know

Why does this matter? Because emotions are not just thoughts. They’re not just moods or concepts. Emotions live in your body. They are sensory, energetic experiences designed to move through you. To guide you, inform you, protect you, and connect you to others.

When emotions are kept at a distance—intellectualised but not embodied—they don’t go away. They get stuck. They pile up. And they often show up later as confusion, overwhelm, low-level anxiety, fatigue, or shutdown.

You can be emotionally articulate and emotionally distanced at the same time.

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How to Gently Reconnect With What You Feel

So how do you begin to shift from fragmentation to connection?

Not with force. Not by “feeling harder.” But by gently rebuilding the bridge between your emotions and your body. Here are a few practices to try:

1. Ask your body, not just your mind

The next time you notice an emotion, pause and ask:

• Where do I feel this in my body?

• What sensation is here—tightness, heat, hollowness?

• Can I stay with it for a few breaths, without needing to fix it?

2. Feelings first, labels later

Instead of rushing to name the feeling, start by noticing it. Is it heavy? Sharp? Expansive? Let the body lead; let the words come later.

3. Try micro-movements

Shake your hands. Stretch. Rock. Sometimes the body knows how to move emotion through, even if you don’t know why you’re feeling it. Movement invites release.

4. Be curious, not correct

You don’t need to get it right. You’re not looking for perfect self-awareness—you’re practicing presence. Emotionally fragmented people often value precision; try valuing curiosity instead.

5. Replace "I am" with "I'm feeling"

Instead of “I am angry,” try “I’m feeling anger right now.” It’s a subtle shift, but one that reminds your nervous system: this is an experience, not an identity.

Does this sound like you? Or someone you love?

You’re not cold. You’re not broken. You’re just used to living with your emotions at arm’s length—and maybe, now, you’re ready to bring them closer.

Stress Isn’t the Problem: When There’s Simply Too Much to Carry

We often think of stress as something that comes from chaos or crisis, but what if it’s also connected to competence.

It can belong to women who are good at things. Women who care. Women who hold the threads of their lives — and often other people’s lives — quietly and reliably. Women who show up, remember birthdays, keep projects moving, make dinners happen, check in on friends, plan ahead, stay present, stay kind, stay capable. Women who are praised for “managing it all,” even as something inside them tightens a little more each day.

If this sounds familiar, you may have wondered — at some point, usually late at night — Why does everything feel so hard when I’m doing everything right?

This is often where stress gets framed as a personal problem. Something to manage better. Something to calm down. Something to fix.

But what if stress isn’t the problem at all?

What if stress is simply the body and mind responding honestly to a life that’s asking too much?

When stress makes sense

Many of the women I work with arrive believing they are stressed because they’re not coping well enough. They talk about poor boundaries, busy minds, anxious tendencies, the feeling that they should be more resilient by now. And yet, when we slow down and gently look at their lives, something else becomes clear.

They are juggling multiple roles that each carry real responsibility. They are doing emotional work that is rarely named or shared. They are living inside systems — workplaces, families, cultures — that still quietly expect women to absorb more, adapt faster, and complain less. They are trying to be present and productive, nurturing and ambitious, grounded and forward-looking, all at once.

Stress, in this context, isn’t a failure of mindset. It’s information. It’s the nervous system saying: this is a lot.

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A quieter kind of burnout

This kind of stress doesn’t always look dramatic. There may be no breakdown, no obvious crisis. Instead, it shows up as a low-level hum: tight shoulders, shallow breaths, a short fuse, constant tiredness, the sense that even rest requires effort.

You might still be functioning — showing up, delivering, caring — but with less joy, less ease, less connection to yourself.

This is why so much stress advice misses the mark. When the message is “slow down” or “do less” or “think differently,” it can feel tone-deaf. As if the reality of your life hasn’t been fully seen.

Because often, there is no simple “less.” There is just what needs doing, and the quiet knowledge that if you don’t do it, it may not get done at all.

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The question we rarely ask

Instead of asking, How do I get rid of stress? A more honest question might be: What is my stress responding to?

When we treat stress as the enemy, we turn against ourselves. We add another layer of pressure — to be calmer, better regulated, more together — on top of an already full life.

When we treat stress as a signal, we begin to listen. And often, what we hear isn’t a demand to change who we are, but an invitation to relate to our lives more honestly.

You don’t need to be less sensitive, less caring, or less capable. You may need more support, more honesty, and more permission to stop carrying everything alone.

This isn’t about lowering standards or giving up on what matters to you. It’s about recognising that sustainability is not the same as endurance.

A life can be meaningful and still be too heavy. You can be strong and still need support. Both can be true.

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Small ways to begin listening to stress

Rather than offering a long list of things to do (because that’s rarely helpful when you’re already overwhelmed), here are a few gentle places to start:

You might try reflecting on one or two of these, slowly, over time:

• Notice where stress shows up first. Is it in your body, your thoughts, your energy? This isn’t about changing it — just noticing earlier.

• Name what feels genuinely full. Not everything. Just one area of life that feels particularly heavy right now.

• Ask yourself what support would actually look like. Not in theory, but in real, practical terms. Less advice. More presence? Fewer expectations? Shared responsibility?

• Pay attention to self-blame. When stress appears, do you turn it into a story about what you should be doing better? What happens if you pause that story, even briefly?

These are not tasks to complete. They are ways of standing beside yourself with more kindness.

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A different way forward

If stress is not the problem, then the work is not about erasing it. The work is about changing your relationship to it — and, often, changing the conditions that keep it alive.

This can include practical changes, yes. But it also includes deeper questions about worth, responsibility, and the quiet agreements many women have made with the world about what they will carry without complaint.

This is not work that needs to be rushed. It’s work that benefits from patience, warmth, and support. And it’s work you don’t have to do alone.

Stress doesn’t have to be something you battle in private. Emotions coaching offers a place to slow down, make sense of what you’re carrying, and explore more sustainable ways of living — without pressure to fix yourself or have it all figured out.

If you’re curious, you can find out more about working together through one-to-one coaching, where we gently untangle stress, responsibility, and support in a way that fits your real life.

How to Have a Better Relationship with Your Emotions (Without Trying to Fix Them)

Ok we need to talk about emotions because there can be so much going on with that aspect of our lives — much of it unseen. Maybe there’s a sense that we should be handling them better. That we should feel calmer, clearer, more in control. That if anxiety shows up, or grief lingers, or something in us feels heavier than it “should,” then something has gone wrong.

So we try to manage what we feel. We minimise it, move past it, explain it away. We tell ourselves we’ll deal with it later, or that it isn’t that big a deal, or that other people have it worse. We learn, often without realising it, to close the door on parts of ourselves that feel inconvenient or uncomfortable.

And yet, for many of us, that doesn’t actually make things easier. It just makes us feel more disconnected. From ourselves, from other people, from what’s really going on.

In a recent conversation on A Thought I Kept, I spoke with Dr MaryCatherine McDonald about this — and in particular, about a simple but quietly radical idea: that our emotions might not be something to fix or control, but something to relate to.

She shared a poem by Rumi that has stayed with her for years, about being human as a kind of guest house, where emotions arrive as visitors. Joy, anxiety, grief, irritation. Some welcome, some less so. All of them coming and going, whether we invite them in or not .

It’s such a different way of seeing things.

Because many of us have been taught to do the opposite. To decide which emotions are acceptable and which need to be shown the door. To believe that if something uncomfortable is present, then something must be wrong — and the goal is to get back to a more “acceptable” state as quickly as possible.

MaryCatherine described living like that for years. Feeling as though she was at war with her emotions, trying to control them, contain them, make them behave. And underneath that, a quieter belief: that if anxiety or grief were there, they would take over. That they might ruin everything.

It’s a feeling I recognise, and one I see often in my work. That fear of what might happen if we really let ourselves feel what’s there.

But what if the work isn’t to get rid of what we feel?

What if it’s to sit down with it?

To offer it a chair, rather than pushing it out of the room. To get curious, even gently, about why it’s here. Not because we want to analyse it or solve it, but because we’re willing to be in relationship with it.

That idea of relationship feels important.

Because emotions don’t arrive neatly, one at a time. They overlap. They contradict each other. We can feel anxious and hopeful, tired and grateful, grieving and still find something to laugh at. And yet, we often try to simplify that complexity into something more manageable. I am anxious. I am fine. I am coping.

But that can leave us feeling stuck. As though we’ve become the emotion, rather than someone experiencing it.

What I found grounding in this conversation was the idea that we don’t have to identify so completely with what we feel. We can be in it, without it being all of us. We can let something move through, rather than holding onto it as a fixed state.

And that matters, particularly when things feel heavy.

MaryCatherine talks about something she calls “rehearsing loss” — the way our nervous system, often shaped by past experiences, tries to protect us by anticipating what might go wrong. Imagining endings before we’ve fully lived the beginnings. Bracing ourselves, just in case.

It makes sense, when you see it like that. It’s not weakness. It’s protection.

But it can also make it harder to access the moments that are here. The small, ordinary experiences that carry something lighter in them. A conversation that lands. A moment of connection. A flicker of joy that doesn’t erase what’s hard, but sits alongside it.

This is something else she reframes beautifully — the idea that joy isn’t something we reach once everything is sorted, but something that appears in the middle of things. Not fluffy or superficial, but steady and tenacious. Something that helps us stay, rather than escape.

And maybe that’s part of what a different relationship with our emotions can offer.

Not a life where we only feel the “right” things. But a life where we feel more of what’s real, without it meaning something has gone wrong.

Where we can notice when we’re trying to push something away, and instead soften, even slightly, towards it.

Where we don’t have to be at war with ourselves.

If you’re someone who has been trying to manage or control what you feel, it might be worth asking a different question.

Not “how do I fix this?”

But “what might it be like to sit with this, just for a moment?”

There’s no perfect way to do that. No right or wrong response. Just a gradual shift, over time, from resisting what’s there to being alongside it.

And if that feels unfamiliar, you’re not alone in that either.

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If you’d like to explore this idea further, you can listen to my full conversation with Dr MaryCatherine McDonald on A Thought I Kept. It’s a thoughtful, honest exploration of emotions, grief, joy, and what it means to be in relationship with what we feel.

And if you’re looking for a little more support in understanding your own emotional world, you can also explore my emotions coaching sessions — a space to gently make sense of what’s going on, at your own pace.

How We Learn to Cope Without Alcohol

Rethinking emotional regulation, drinking, and the stories we inherit about coping

There are moments in life when something quietly stops working.

Not dramatically, not all at once, but gradually, almost imperceptibly. A glass of wine at the end of the day that once felt relaxing begins to feel necessary. A way to soften the edges of stress, to slow a racing mind, to take a brief step away from the feelings that have been gathering in the background.

For many people, alcohol becomes woven into the way we cope with everyday life. It sits comfortably in the rituals of the evening, the social rhythms of weekends, the celebrations and the commiserations. It promises relief, connection, relaxation — and often, at least for a while, it delivers.

But sometimes there comes a moment when the question begins to surface: Is this actually helping?

That question was at the heart of a recent conversation on my podcast A Thought I Kept with sober coach and writer Ellie Nova. Ellie spent more than a decade feeling trapped in a relationship with alcohol that was increasingly tangled up with shame and self-judgement. And the thought that ultimately helped her begin to step away from it was surprisingly simple:

There is nothing wrong with you.

At first glance, that might not sound like a thought powerful enough to change a life. But the more we talked, the clearer it became just how radical it can be.

Because when people begin to question their relationship with alcohol, the story they often tell themselves is one of personal failure. Why can everyone else seem to drink normally? Why does this feel so difficult for me? Why can’t I control myself?

But what if alcohol was never really the problem in the first place?

What if, instead, it had simply become a way of coping with emotions that felt too big to hold?

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The quiet role alcohol plays in emotional regulation

One of the things Ellie and I explored together was the role alcohol can come to play in regulating our emotional lives. Not because we consciously choose it as a coping strategy, but because many of us grow up without ever being taught how to sit with difficult feelings.

Anxiety, loneliness, grief, pressure, shame — these emotions can be uncomfortable and confusing, especially if we’ve learned, consciously or unconsciously, that they are not entirely welcome. Perhaps we were told we were too sensitive, or that we needed to toughen up, or that certain feelings were inappropriate in certain situations.

Over time, many of us become quite skilled at pushing emotions aside. We distract ourselves, we stay busy, we find ways to numb what we’re feeling just enough to keep moving.

In that context, alcohol can begin to make a certain kind of sense. It offers a socially acceptable way to soften emotions that feel sharp, to quiet thoughts that won’t settle, to step briefly outside of the intensity of being human.

And because alcohol is so culturally embedded — in celebrations, socialising, relaxation, and even self-care — it can take a long time before we start to question the role it’s playing.

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When drinking stops feeling like relief

For some people, that questioning begins when alcohol stops delivering the relief it once promised. The drink that once helped take the edge off anxiety begins to bring its own kind of discomfort. The sense of escape becomes tangled up with regret, exhaustion, or a quiet awareness that something isn’t quite right.

At that point, it can be tempting to interpret the problem as one of discipline or willpower. Perhaps I just need to be stronger. Perhaps I need more control.

But Ellie’s experience — and the experiences of many of the women she now supports — suggests something quite different.

If alcohol became a coping strategy, it likely did so because something inside needed support. Something needed soothing, or understanding, or simply space to be felt.

And when we begin to look at our relationship with alcohol through that lens, the conversation shifts.

Instead of asking What’s wrong with me?, we begin asking more curious questions.

What am I actually feeling?
What have I been trying not to feel?
And what might help me cope in a way that truly supports me?

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Learning to cope without numbing

Letting go of alcohol can feel daunting not simply because it is a habit, but because it has often been doing important emotional work behind the scenes.

Without it, many people suddenly find themselves face to face with feelings that have been carefully managed for years — anxiety, grief, loneliness, stress, even the quieter emotions like disappointment or regret that are easy to push aside in a busy life.

Learning to cope without alcohol, then, is rarely just about stopping drinking. More often, it becomes a process of learning a new relationship with our emotional lives.

That might involve recognising emotions earlier, before they gather into overwhelm. It might involve paying attention to the physical sensations that accompany anxiety or stress in the body. It might mean finding other ways to regulate ourselves — movement, conversation, rest, time in nature, creative expression.

But perhaps most importantly, it involves replacing judgement with curiosity.

When we stop seeing emotions as problems to eliminate and begin to understand them as signals, something shifts. The very feelings we once tried to escape can begin to feel more manageable, even informative.

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A different understanding of self-care

In our conversation, Ellie and I also reflected on the way self-care is often presented as a form of escape — a brief pause from the pressures of life, a small indulgence designed to help us get through the week.

But real emotional care often looks quieter and deeper than that. It might mean slowing down long enough to notice what is actually happening inside us. It might mean allowing feelings that are uncomfortable rather than immediately trying to distract ourselves from them.

Sometimes it means asking for support.

For many people, learning to cope without alcohol becomes part of a broader shift toward self-trust — a growing sense that our emotions are not something to suppress or manage away, but something to understand.

And that shift often begins with a simple but powerful idea.

There is nothing wrong with you.

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Listen to the conversation

If this perspective resonates with you, you can listen to the full conversation with Ellie Nova on the podcast A Thought I Kept.

In the episode How We Break Free From Alcohol, Ellie shares her own experience of stepping away from alcohol and the thought that helped her begin to see her emotions, and herself, in a different way.

Looking for support with your emotions?

If you’re navigating emotional overwhelm, anxiety, or simply trying to understand your feelings more clearly, you might also find our emotions coaching sessions helpful.

These sessions offer a calm, thoughtful space to explore what you’re feeling and to develop ways of working with your emotions that feel supportive rather than overwhelming.

You can learn more about emotions coaching with Claire here.

How to Create an Everyday Retreat at Home: Small Ways to Care for Yourself Each Day

Retreats, holidays, or even a quiet weekend away can be wonderful and exactly the reset we need. And for a little while everything softens. We sleep more deeply. We notice things again. We remember what it feels like to move through the day without quite so much pressure.

And then we come home. The inbox fills up again. The washing basket mysteriously multiplies. Work, care, responsibilities and the endless small decisions of modern life return to their usual volume.

That contrast can make wellbeing feel like something that lives somewhere else. Somewhere beautiful, slower, quieter — somewhere we occasionally visit rather than something that belongs inside our real lives. But what if the question isn’t how to recreate retreat conditions perfectly at home? What if it’s simply about making a little more room for ourselves inside the life we already have. Not through grand gestures or perfect routines, but through small moments that gently interrupt the pace of the day.

Sometimes that might look like taking a few breaths before you open your laptop in the morning. Or stepping outside for ten minutes of air and sky between meetings. It might be writing a few lines in a notebook before bed, or sitting in the quiet of the house before everyone else wakes up.

None of these things are dramatic. But they are ways of reminding ourselves that our days can hold small pockets of steadiness, even when life is full. At If Lost Start Here we often think of this as an everyday retreat. Not something that requires travel, time off, or a perfect environment, but something we create in ordinary spaces — kitchens, gardens, desks, walks around the block.

Moments where we pause long enough to reconnect with ourselves. Because wellbeing rarely arrives all at once. More often it grows slowly through the small ways we choose to care for ourselves inside the lives we’re already living.

One way to think about an everyday retreat is simply this: small moments of care woven through an ordinary day. The kind of day where the alarm goes off earlier than you’d like, the kettle needs refilling again, and someone has already asked you a question before you’ve even had your first sip of coffee.

Sometimes the retreat begins there. A few slow breaths before you open your email. A page of journaling while the house is still quiet. Or simply drinking your tea without doing three other things at the same time.

Later in the day it might appear as a small corner of calm. Not a perfectly styled meditation space, just a chair by the window, a step outside the back door, or five minutes sitting on the edge of the bed before the next thing begins.

Technology tends to follow us everywhere now, so another small act of care can be letting parts of the day remain screen-free. Leaving your phone on the kitchen counter while you walk around the block. Eating lunch without scrolling. Letting your mind wander for a few minutes rather than filling every space with information.

And then there are the tiny resets that help us keep going when the day becomes full again. A stretch between meetings. Fresh air after too long indoors. A quick walk where you remember that the world is larger than your to-do list.

By the evening, when the house is quieter again or the day finally loosens its grip, another small moment can appear. Writing a few lines about the day. Noticing something that went well. Letting yourself acknowledge that you carried a lot and made it through.

None of this is dramatic. It’s simply a way of remembering that wellbeing doesn’t have to live somewhere else. It can move with us through the ordinary, messy, human shape of our days.

Over time, these small daily actions will build up to create lasting wellbeing. You’ll feel more grounded, less overwhelmed, and better able to handle life’s challenges. It’s about making wellbeing part of your everyday life.

Want help making these changes stick? Join the Everyday Retreat, where we’ll explore these practices together through daily lessons and community-meet ups.

Understanding Anxiety: 10 Things I’ve Learned About This Emotion

Anxiety is one of the emotions people most often want to get rid of. When it shows up — as racing thoughts, tightness in the chest, restlessness, or a constant hum of worry — the instinct is usually to quiet it as quickly as possible. But over the years, through emotions coaching, my own experience, research, and conversations with thoughtful guests on A Thought I Kept, I’ve come to see anxiety a little differently.

Not as an enemy. Not as a failure to cope. But as information about how our mind, body, and life circumstances are interacting in that moment.

Here are ten things I’ve come to understand about anxiety that may help you see it differently too.

1. Anxiety often appears in people who care deeply

Research on vulnerability and uncertainty — including the work of Brené Brown — suggests anxiety often shows up in people who care deeply and feel responsible for what happens next.

In other words, anxiety is often the emotional cost of trying very hard to do life well. It isn’t necessarily weakness. Sometimes it’s care that has nowhere to rest.

2. Anxiety is closely linked to uncertainty

Many researchers describe anxiety as our difficulty tolerating uncertainty. We don’t always feel anxious because something bad is happening. We feel anxious because we don’t know what will happen, and our mind begins trying to predict and prepare for every possible outcome. That prediction loop can quickly become exhausting.

A helpful question in anxious moments is simply: What uncertainty am I struggling to sit with right now?

Naming uncertainty often softens anxiety’s intensity.

3. Anxiety lives in the body before it reaches the mind

Emotion scientist Lisa Feldman Barrett has shown that emotions begin with bodily sensations.

Before the mind labels something “anxiety,” the body may already be experiencing:

• a racing heart

• tightness in the chest

• restlessness

• fatigue or agitation

Your brain then interprets these sensations and constructs the emotional experience. This is why logic alone rarely calms anxiety in the moment. Your nervous system needs signals of safety first.

4. “Anxiety” is often several emotions combined

In coaching conversations, many people use the word anxiety to describe a wide range of feelings. But when we look more closely, anxiety often includes:

• fear

• pressure

• anticipation

• responsibility

• grief

• uncertainty

Researchers call the ability to name emotions more precisely emotional granularity, and it’s linked to lower anxiety and greater emotional resilience. Because when we’re clear about what we’re feeling we can create better choices about what to do with that.

5. Anxiety is often trying to protect something

One of the most helpful coaching perspectives is to see anxiety as a protective response. It may be trying to prevent:

• mistakes

• rejection

• disappointment

• loss

• uncertainty

Seen this way, anxiety isn’t random or irrational. It’s your system trying to help you navigate something that feels important. The work isn’t eliminating anxiety. It’s learning when protection is helpful and when it can soften.

6. Anxiety grows stronger in silence

Anxiety thrives in isolation. When it stays internal, it easily turns into self-criticism:

Why can’t I handle this?
Why am I like this?

But when anxiety is shared with the right people — trusted friends, supportive communities, or thoughtful conversations — its intensity often shifts. Connection doesn’t remove anxiety. But it changes how alone we feel with it.

7. Anxiety is deeply connected to the nervous system

Many experiences labelled “anxiety” are actually nervous system responses. When the body perceives pressure or threat, it may move into patterns such as:

• fight

• flight

• freeze

• flop or faun

These responses are not character flaws. They are biological (or learned) survival mechanisms. Understanding this can reduce the shame people often feel about anxiety.

8. Anxiety is often linked to responsibility and people-pleasing

Another pattern that shows up frequently is the connection between anxiety and over-responsibility. Many anxious people believe it’s their job to manage:

• other people’s emotions

• other people’s comfort

• other people’s expectations

When you feel responsible for everyone around you, anxiety becomes inevitable. Learning to set boundaries — emotionally and practically — often changes the experience dramatically.

9. Anxiety often appears during life transitions

Periods of change frequently bring anxiety with them.

• Career shifts

• Relationship changes.

• Parenting transitions.

• Midlife questions about identity and purpose.

Anxiety in these moments doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong. It can mean your life is asking new questions of you. Questions that don’t yet have clear answers.

10. Anxiety softens when trust grows

One of the most powerful shifts I see in coaching is this: moving from trying to control the future to trusting your ability to respond to it.

At first, anxiety tells us relief will come when we figure everything out. But life rarely offers that kind of certainty. What helps more is building trust:

• trust in your resilience

• trust in your ability to respond

• trust in your capacity to ask for support

That trust doesn’t eliminate anxiety. But it stops anxiety from running the entire show.

Anxiety isn’t the whole story of you

If anxiety is part of your experience right now, it doesn’t mean something has gone wrong. More often it means something matters. Something feels uncertain. Something may be asking for attention or change.

Understanding anxiety isn’t a quick fix. But it can be the beginning of a steadier, kinder relationship with your emotional life.

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Explore emotions coaching

If anxiety has been feeling overwhelming or confusing, emotions coaching offers a calm space to explore what’s happening underneath it.

Together we can look at how anxiety shows up in your life, what it might be protecting, and how you can move forward with more self-trust and steadiness.

Explore coaching options and book a free discovery call

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This post is part of the If Lost Start Here Emotions Series — an exploration of the emotions that shape our lives and what they might be trying to tell us.

Understanding Anxiety: A Kinder Way to Live With It (Instead of Fighting It)

Anxiety rarely arrives with a clear explanation. It tends to slip in sideways, disguising itself as restlessness, urgency, tightness in the chest, or a low-level sense that something isn’t quite right, even when life looks fine on the surface. You might be getting on with your days — working, caring, showing up — but underneath there’s a constant hum of worry or anticipation that never fully settles. If that feels familiar, it doesn’t mean you’re failing at coping. It often means something in you is paying very close attention.

Many people experience anxiety as though it appeared out of nowhere, an unwelcome guest that needs to be dealt with as quickly as possible. But when we slow down and look more closely, anxiety is rarely sudden. It often builds quietly over time, shaped by responsibility, change, uncertainty, loss, or long periods of holding things together without much space to pause.

Anxiety frequently belongs to people who care deeply, who think ahead, who want to do things well and not let others down. In that sense, it isn’t random or irrational. It’s connected to how you’ve learned to move through the world and what’s been asked of you along the way. The difficulty begins when anxiety becomes something you judge yourself for, rather than something you try to understand. When it shifts from an experience you’re having to an identity you feel stuck with.

One of the biggest myths about anxiety is that it means you’re not coping properly. Another is that if you could just calm down, think more positively, or gain more control over your thoughts, it would disappear. These ideas are everywhere, but they often make anxiety worse by adding pressure and self-criticism to something that already feels heavy.

Anxiety isn’t just about thoughts. It involves your whole system — your body, your nervous system, your past experiences, and your relationship with uncertainty. Often, anxiety is your system trying to prepare you for something it perceives as demanding or risky, even if that threat isn’t clear or immediate.

There’s also a common belief that anxiety is always about fear. Sometimes it is, but just as often it’s about pressure, responsibility, anticipation, or caring deeply about outcomes you can’t fully control. When everything gets bundled into the single label of “anxiety,” it can feel overwhelming and impossible to navigate. But when you start to understand the different layers underneath it, anxiety can feel less frightening and more workable.

Learning how to handle anxiety begins with understanding how it shows up for you, what tends to intensify it, and what helps it soften, even slightly. It also means recognising that anxiety lives in the body as much as the mind, which is why reasoning your way out of it rarely works when your system feels on high alert. Anxiety often grows in isolation and eases when it’s named, shared, and met with curiosity rather than judgement.

Handling anxiety better doesn’t mean getting rid of it altogether or becoming someone who never feels unsettled. It means changing your relationship with it so it no longer runs your life. That might start with noticing the early physical signs of anxiety, rather than only paying attention once it becomes overwhelming. It might involve questioning the stories you’ve absorbed about what anxiety says about you, and replacing them with something more accurate and compassionate.

It can also help to shift the focus away from certainty and towards trust. Anxiety often promises relief if you can just figure everything out in advance, but life rarely offers that kind of clarity. What tends to help more is building trust in your ability to respond, to ask for support, and to take things one step at a time without needing all the answers upfront.

Most importantly, learning to live better with anxiety means letting go of the idea that you have to manage it alone. Support doesn’t make anxiety vanish, but it can help you understand what it’s asking for and find steadier, kinder ways to move forward.

If anxiety has brought you here, it isn’t a sign that you’re lost beyond repair. It’s often a signal that something matters, that something is changing, or that you’ve been carrying more than your share for a while. Understanding anxiety isn’t a quick fix, but it can be the beginning of a more grounded way of living with yourself.

Explore emotions coaching

If you’re struggling with anxiety and want support that helps you understand your emotions rather than push them away, emotions coaching can offer a calm, thoughtful space to explore what’s going on. Together, we can look at how anxiety shows up in your everyday life, what it’s connected to, and how you can build trust in your ability to meet it with more ease and self-compassion.

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Explore coaching options and book a free discovery call
Start better understanding your emotional life today and find a way through anxiety that feels supportive, human, and even realistic.

When Everything Feels Like Too Much: A Different Way to Think About Wellbeing

There are moments when life begins to feel louder than we expected. Not necessarily dramatic or catastrophic moments — although those exist too — but the quieter accumulation of things. Too much information. Too many expectations about what we should be doing with our lives. Too many messages about how we should be improving ourselves.

If you spend any time in the world of wellbeing advice, you’ll know the feeling. The promise is always that if we just find the right system, the right routine, the right mindset, things will click into place. We’ll feel calmer. Clearer. More certain about the path ahead.

But many people arrive here feeling the opposite. They’ve tried the advice. They’ve listened to the podcasts, read the books, followed the practices — and instead of clarity they feel more overwhelmed. As though wellbeing has become another task on the list.

Recently on the podcast A Thought I Kept, I spoke with occupational therapist Josephine Dolan-Dufourd about a line that has stayed with her for many years. It comes from the early twentieth-century designer Elsie de Wolfe:

“I’m going to make everything around me beautiful and that will be my life.”

At first, it can sound almost frivolous. Beauty can feel like a luxury — something decorative, something that sits on the edges of life rather than at its centre. But as Josephine talked about it, the idea began to shift. Because beauty, in the way she understands it, is not about perfection or aesthetics. It’s about attention.

Josephine’s work as an occupational therapist centres around what she calls “meaningful doing” — the everyday activities, rhythms, and choices that help us live with more ease and connection. And what she has seen again and again, working with people navigating illness, burnout, and major life change, is that wellbeing rarely arrives through grand reinventions of ourselves. More often, it begins in the smallest places.

The cup of coffee you drink in the morning, taken slowly rather than hurriedly.

The walk through your neighbourhood where you notice the flowers instead of only the things that frustrate you.

The moment of choosing clothes that make you feel like yourself.

These things are not solutions. They don’t solve life. But they change how we experience it.

One of the examples Josephine shared during our conversation has stayed with me. She once worked with a client who was deeply irritated by something very ordinary: dog mess in the streets of the village where she lived. If you went looking for it, you could see it everywhere. It became the thing that defined every walk. So Josephine began gently redirecting her attention.

Look up, she suggested. Look at the buildings. Look at the flowers. Look at the people passing by. Yes, the dog mess is still there — life will always contain the irritating, messy parts — but it doesn’t have to be the only thing you see.

This might sound like a small shift, but in many ways it’s a radical one. Our brains are naturally wired to notice what is wrong. Psychologists call this the negativity bias — the evolutionary tendency to scan our environment for threats and problems. It kept our ancestors alive.

But in modern life, surrounded by constant news updates, social media feeds, and endless comparison with other people’s lives, that same instinct can make the world feel far heavier than it really is. We begin to believe the story that everything is broken. That we are behind. That everyone else has figured something out that we haven’t.

Josephine’s perspective offers a different orientation.

Life will always contain difficulty. Illness, uncertainty, setbacks, grief — none of us escapes those parts of the story. Josephine herself has lived through many moments that could easily have led her to a much darker outlook.

When she was sixteen, her father experienced a life-changing brain injury in a car accident. It was during that time that she first encountered occupational therapy — and saw how meaningful activities could help people find dignity and purpose even in the most difficult circumstances.

Beauty, in this sense, is not the absence of hardship. It is something we learn to notice alongside it.

Later in her career, after seventeen years working in forensic psychiatric settings, Josephine reached a point of deep burnout. She realised she had lost her sense of zest for life. What helped her recover was not another professional breakthrough or productivity system, but something much simpler: a change of environment, a slower rhythm of living, and a renewed attention to what actually mattered in her day-to-day life.

That idea — that our lives are shaped by what we notice — feels particularly important right now. We live in a culture that constantly asks us to optimise ourselves. To become more productive, more disciplined, more impressive.

But perhaps another question is worth asking.

What if the work is not to become someone new?

What if the work is to notice more carefully the life you already have?

Josephine described beauty as something that can be created almost anywhere — in the way you arrange a room, the way you prepare a meal, the way you spend time with the people around you. It’s not about escaping the realities of life, but about refusing to let them define the whole picture.

And when you begin to approach life this way, something subtle shifts. You stop waiting for the future version of your life to begin. Instead, you start to realise that your life is already happening — in these ordinary moments that will one day feel strangely precious when you look back on them.

None of this removes uncertainty. You might still feel unsure about your direction. You might still be navigating change, loss, or the quiet sense that something in your life needs to move or evolve. But you may discover that steadiness doesn’t come from fixing yourself. Sometimes it comes from learning how to look. From noticing what is already here. And from asking, quietly and without pressure:

What might it mean, in my own way, to make the world around me a little more beautiful?

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If this idea resonates with you, you can listen to the full conversation with Josephine on the podcast A Thought I Kept.

And if you’re looking for more support finding your footing — emotionally, practically, or simply as a human being navigating life — you can explore our coaching sessions and resources here.

The Day You Realise You’ve Been Living With Your Eyes Closed

We tend to think confidence arrives fully formed. A clear decision. A bold move. A moment where everything clicks into place. But often it begins with something far less impressive.

It begins with discomfort that doesn’t quite have a name. A low hum of restlessness that follows you through meetings, through conversations, through evenings on the sofa. You might not be able to point to anything that’s broken. You might even feel slightly ungrateful for questioning it. And yet the question lingers.

Am I actually choosing this?

That was the pivot in my conversation with Erica Moore, founder of speciality tea brand eteaket on the podcast this week. Not a dramatic exit. Not a grand reinvention. Just a quiet noticing that she had been progressing through a life she hadn’t consciously shaped. She had been capable, competent, successful but not fully awake.

There’s something unsettling about realising you’ve been living slightly on autopilot. It can feel like you’ve missed something. Like you should have known sooner. But I don’t think that’s what’s happening.

I think sometimes we simply reach a point where the life that once fitted us begins to feel tight around the edges. We outgrow ways of coping. We outgrow expectations we once accepted without question. And because the outside world still sees us as “fine,” it can be hard to admit the internal shift.

This is often where people arrive here. Not because they want to become someone new. But because they want to feel more like themselves. And that’s a different thing entirely.

In the episode of the podcast, we talked about tea as a container — a small moment in the day where you can pause without having to justify it. I’ve been thinking about that a lot. How rare it is to have moments that aren’t productive, reactive, or outward-facing. How easy it is to move from task to task without ever checking whether the direction still feels right.

When you’re feeling lost, the instinct can be to find a bigger answer. A plan. A strategy. A reinvention.

But sometimes what’s needed is smaller. A little more space. A little more honesty. A little more willingness to sit with what’s true before deciding what to do about it.

Uncertainty doesn’t always mean something is wrong. It can mean something inside you is ready to be heard.

And the steadiness I come back to — in my own life and in coaching conversations — is this: you do not need to dismantle who you are in order to move forward. You do not need to be more disciplined, more confident, more impressive. You need to feel safe enough to notice.

When you allow yourself to notice what feels heavy, what feels enlivening, what feels misaligned, you begin to orient yourself again. Not through force. Through awareness. The work is not becoming someone else. It’s coming back to yourself, gently and repeatedly, until your choices begin to reflect who you actually are.

That’s not dramatic. It won’t make a good headline. But it does create a steadier life. And if you’re in that space right now — questioning quietly, searching for clarity, wanting change but not chaos — you are not behind. You are not broken. You may simply be opening your eyes.

You can listen to the full conversation with Erica on A Thought I Kept wherever you get your podcasts, and sit with the idea a little longer.

If you’re in a season of questioning or change and would value support as you find your way forward, our coaching sessions offer space for clarity, self-trust, and meaningful direction — at your pace.