How to Approach Grief (When Life Doesn’t Stop for It)

Grief has a way of arriving while everything else keeps going.

There are lunches to make, emails to answer, people who still need you. Bills still come. The world doesn’t pause, even when something inside you has fractured.

For many people—especially if this is your first experience of loss—grief can feel not only overwhelming, but disorienting. You might wonder: Am I doing this right? Why don’t I feel how I thought I would? How do I keep living a normal life while carrying this?

This is not a guide to “getting over” grief. It’s an invitation to approach it differently—with more space, less judgement, and a little more support for the reality of living a full life alongside loss.

Start by noticing what you believe about grief

If you’re able to, one gentle place to begin is here:

What do you believe about grief?

Do you see it as:

• a natural process?

• something dangerous or overwhelming?

• a sign of weakness?

• a way of honouring the person you’ve lost?

Most of us carry beliefs about grief long before we ever experience it ourselves. These beliefs shape how we meet our emotions. If grief feels frightening or “too much,” it’s often because we’ve been taught that it should overwhelm us—or that we should hurry it along.

There’s no right belief to hold. Simply noticing what you already think about grief can soften your relationship with it.

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Make space for how you actually feel (not how you think you should)

Grief often comes with a quiet internal conflict.

There can be a gap between:

• how you think you should feel

and

• how you do feel

Cultural narratives, other people’s opinions, and unspoken expectations all seep in. You might feel pressure to be strong, to “cope well,” or to move forward. Or you might feel guilty if your grief doesn’t look dramatic enough.

Simply becoming aware of this disconnect can be relieving. You don’t need to correct your emotions. Letting them exist as they are—without comparison—creates more room to breathe.

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Different people grieve in different directions

One idea that can ease a lot of judgement (both towards ourselves and others) is this:

Some people are past-focused in grief.

They need to remember, revisit, and keep a strong connection with the person who has died.

Others are future-focused.

Loss reminds them of life’s fragility, and they feel pulled to engage more fully with what’s ahead.

Neither response is better or more “correct.” This understanding can help loosen harsh labels we sometimes place on grief—wallowing, cold, insensitive, stuck. Often, we’re simply grieving in different directions.

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Grief is solitary—and deeply relational

Grief can feel intensely lonely. And yet, it is strangely relational.

We carry expectations about how we want to be supported. Others carry assumptions about what “appropriate” grief looks like, or how long it should last. Sometimes people retreat because they don’t know what to say. Sometimes the person grieving pulls away because explaining feels exhausting.

And yet, the moments that often help most are small and connective:

• someone saying, “Tell me about her.”

• flowers arriving without explanation

• a genuine “How are you?” that makes space for the real answer

Grief doesn’t disappear in company but it can feel lighter when it’s shared.

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Seeing grief as a form of honouring

Over time, I came to see my own grief as a way of honouring the people I’d lost.

It kept me connected. It felt like I was still holding space for them in my life. That shift mattered. Instead of seeing grief as something to push away, I began to welcome it as a sign of love still present.

This reframing doesn’t remove pain but it can change how hostile grief feels.

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You are not your grief

One of the hardest moments for me was realising how easily grief can become an identity.

“I am grief.”

“I am sadness.”

“I am regret.”

One of the core principles of emotions coaching helped here:

We are not our emotions.

“I am feeling sad”

“I am experiencing grief”

Those phrases create just enough distance to remember that grief is something you are in, not something you are. That space matters. It allows the emotion to move, rather than define you.

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Joy and loss can exist together

Grief does not cancel joy.

After my mum died, there were moments when my family laughed together through tears. I’ve crumpled on the kitchen floor one moment, then found myself laughing at a story my daughter told me the next.

These moments are not a betrayal. Feeling love, gratitude, or even joy alongside grief doesn’t diminish loss—it reflects the complexity of being alive.

Two things can be true at once.

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Practical ways to live alongside grief

Keep the connection in your own way

We all honour loss differently. My mum and I were readers. After she died, the most precious thing I received wasn’t jewellery—it was two bags of her books. Seeing where she’d folded down pages, the note she’d written inside the cover, felt like continuing a conversation.

Are there places, habits, words, or rituals you could revisit—or even begin—that keep a sense of connection alive?

Capture stories (if you can)

When someone dies, we often lose not only them, but their stories—and the stories of those who came before them. There’s a growing movement around recording life stories, wisdom, or memories in anticipation of loss. It can be comforting to have that continuity across generations.

Move your body

Walking became essential for me. Grief lives in the body, and movement helped me feel like I was doing something with the emotion. Walking side by side also made conversations easier—less intense than sitting face-to-face, more spacious.

Let awe support you

When my mum died, the emotion that steadied me most was awe.

Inspired by Dacher Keltner’s writing on awe and loss, I intentionally sought experiences that connected me to something larger than myself. For me, that meant museums—spaces that offered wonder, perspective, and a sense of being part of a much bigger story.

Awe can come from nature, big ideas, the night sky, acts of moral courage, or creativity. It doesn’t erase grief, but it can help meaning return, gently.

Find the people who understand

Grief doesn’t end when the funeral does.

If you can, find people who understand that. Check whether you have the support you need—and allow yourself to ask for help. We’re often taught to handle grief alone, but shared grief is lighter to carry.

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How emotions coaching can help

Emotions coaching doesn’t try to fix grief or rush it away. Instead, it offers a space to:

• explore what you’re feeling without judgement

• understand your emotional patterns

• create distance between you and the emotion

• learn how to live a full life alongside loss

If you’re navigating grief for the first time—or finding that it’s touching every part of your life—coaching can help you feel less alone and more supported as you move through it.

If you’d like to explore this together, emotions coaching is here to support you.

You don’t need to have the right words. You just need a place where what you’re feeling makes sense.

When Overwhelm Turns Into Procrastination (And What Your Mind Is Really Trying to Tell You)

There’s a feeling that many of us might know too well right now.

You sit down with every intention of making a start — on the email, the project, the idea that’s been nudging you for weeks. The kettle’s just boiled, your notebook is open, and you’ve even set the nice pen aside, the one that’s supposed to make you feel organised and capable.

And then… nothing.

Your mind fogs, your chest tightens, and suddenly the task you could do becomes the task you can’t. So you get up. Put a wash on. Scroll for a bit. Reorganise a drawer you didn’t care about an hour ago. And all the while, the quiet fear begins to creep in:

Why can’t I just get on with things?

What’s happened to my energy/mind/motivation?

What’s wrong with me?

If this feels familiar, you’re not alone — and you’re not failing.

You’re overwhelmed. And your procrastination is not the enemy.

It’s a message.

What Overwhelm Really Is (And Why It Feels So Big)

We tend to think overwhelm is about having too much to do. But the science tells a slightly different story: overwhelm is what happens when the demands on your mind and body exceed the resources you currently have.

It’s not a character flaw. It’s a capacity mismatch.

When your nervous system feels under-supported — too many tabs open in your brain, too many emotional pulls, too little rest — your body responds as if something unsafe is happening. Clarity disappears. The thinking brain goes a little offline. Everything feels urgent or impossible.

And procrastination?

That’s simply your mind stepping in to protect you.

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Why Overwhelm Turns Into Procrastination

Procrastination is often painted as laziness or lack of willpower. But psychologically, it’s something much more useful: a coping mechanism.

When a task feels too big, too unclear, too emotionally charged, or simply beyond your current energy levels, your brain moves you toward something that feels safer.

It’s a self-protective pause.

And the moment you understand procrastination this way, something can begin to shift. You realise you’ve been blaming yourself for a very human biological response.

This reframing alone can bring enormous relief.

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How to Support Yourself When You’re Overwhelmed and Procrastinating

Below are some gentle, practical steps that can help you understand what’s happening and begin to find a calmer, more sustainable rhythm.

1. Name what you’re feeling

Before you do anything else, take a moment to acknowledge your emotional state.

Try asking yourself:

• “What’s the emotion underneath my procrastination?”

• “Where do I feel this in my body?”

Giving your feelings a name — overwhelm, worry, fear of getting it wrong — helps calm the nervous system. Research shows that naming emotions reduces the intensity of what you feel.

Start there.

2. Reduce the load your mind is carrying

When everything is swirling in your head, even the smallest task feels enormous. Try externalising your thoughts:

• Make a list of the things weighing on you

• Circle the ones that genuinely matter this week

• Cross out the ones that belong to someone else’s expectations

Sometimes clarity isn’t about doing more. It’s about seeing clearly.

3. Shrink the task until it feels human-sized

Most of us don’t procrastinate because we don’t care. We procrastinate because the task feels too big.

Ask yourself:

• “If this were 10 times smaller, what would the first step be?”

• “Could I spend 2 minutes beginning?”

Two minutes is all you need to break the freeze.

4. Match the task to your energy

Not all tasks are for all moments. If you’re exhausted, scattered or emotionally stretched, your brain simply isn’t ready for high-focus work.

Try asking:

• “What kind of energy do I have right now?”

• “What task fits this energy? What would be a compassionate win?”

We make better progress when we stop fighting our natural rhythms.

5. Ask: What is this procrastination protecting me from?

Sometimes procrastination hides a deeper fear:

• What if I fail?

• What if I succeed?

• What if it’s not perfect?

• What if I disappoint someone?

There is almost always something else going on beneath the delay. Try to see what would happen if you listen to what’s behind it.

6. Create a sense of safety before you begin

If overwhelm is a nervous system state, your first job isn’t action — it’s support.

Try one of these:

• A slow exhale (longer out-breaths calm the body)

• A walk around the block

• A glass of water and a stretch

• Asking someone to co-work with you for 10 minutes

• Putting on music that makes your shoulders drop

When your body feels safer, your mind follows.

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You Are Not Behind. You Are Overwhelmed.

We often blame themselves long before we recognise that we are depleted.

But procrastination isn’t a moral failure — it’s a sign your system needs support, tenderness, and time.

Burnout doesn’t happen because you’re weak.

It happens when you’ve been strong for too long without enough nourishment.

But your system can recover. You can feel steady again.

If you’ve recognised yourself anywhere in this, coaching can give you space to breathe, think clearly, and rebuild confidence in a way that feels gentle and grounded.

In our emotions-focused coaching sessions, we help you:

• understand your overwhelm with compassion

• work with your emotions rather than against them

• soften procrastination so you can move forward with ease

• prevent burnout before it begins

• create a wellbeing plan that actually supports your real life

If you’re ready to feel more resourced and less alone, you can book a free discovery call or explore coaching options here:

Start your journey toward emotional steadiness today.

Feeling Stuck Until You’re “More Confident”? Curiosity Might Be a Better Place to Start

“I’ll do this when I feel more confident.”

We tell ourselves we’ll speak up, make the change, apply for the role, take ourselves seriously, or move forward once confidence arrives. Once we feel braver, clearer, more certain about who we are and what we want.

But confidence has a habit of staying just out of reach.

Not because there’s something wrong with us, but because confidence is rarely the starting point we imagine it to be. For most people, confidence grows through experience, not before it. The problem is that waiting to feel confident can keep us stuck, circling the same questions, postponing decisions, and quietly reinforcing the idea that we need to become someone else before we’re allowed to act.

This is where curiosity offers a different way in.

Curiosity doesn’t ask you to believe in yourself. It doesn’t require certainty or bravery. It simply invites you to explore. What would happen if you tried this? What might you notice if you took one small step, not to prove anything, but to learn?

When you approach change with curiosity, the stakes are lower. You’re not asking yourself to succeed; you’re allowing yourself to gather information. A conversation becomes an experiment rather than a test. A new direction becomes something you’re exploring rather than committing to forever.

This shift matters because it changes how we relate to ourselves. Instead of measuring every move against an imagined ideal, curiosity keeps us in contact with our actual experience. Each step, however small, offers insight rather than judgement. Over time, that insight builds self-trust — and confidence follows.

Many people who want to feel more confident are really looking for something deeper: a sense that they can trust themselves, that they’re allowed to make choices without constant second-guessing, that they don’t need to have it all worked out in advance. Curiosity supports that kind of confidence because it stays close to what’s real. It helps you learn what fits, what doesn’t, and what feels meaningful in your own life.

If you’re feeling stuck, unsure, or waiting for confidence before you move forward, curiosity can be a more accessible starting point. It allows movement without demanding certainty. It gives you permission to begin where you are, rather than where you think you should be.

If confidence, decision-making, or feeling stuck are recurring patterns for you, coaching can be a supportive space to explore them more deeply. Coaching isn’t about fixing you or telling you what to do; it’s about understanding what’s going on beneath the surface and finding ways to move forward that feel steady, realistic, and impactful.

You don’t need to wait until you feel confident. You can start by getting curious.

How to Handle Your Emotions When You’re Feeling Lost or Overwhelmed

There’s a moment many of us might recognise.

You’re trying to make a decision, move something forward, or simply get through the day — and your emotions feel louder than you’d like them to be. Anxiety edges in. Frustration bubbles up. Self-doubt has an opinion. And suddenly it feels harder to think clearly, trust yourself, or know what the next step might be.

When that happens, it’s easy to conclude that the problem is your emotions. That you’re feeling too much, or handling things badly. That if you could just calm down, be more confident, or stop overthinking, everything would be easier.

But what if the issue isn’t having emotions — it’s that most of us were never taught how to handle them well?

This question sat at the heart of a recent conversation on our podcast A Thought I Kept, with Isabelle Fielding. Isabelle works with individuals and organisations navigating change and uncertainty, and her work is grounded in a simple but often overlooked idea: emotions are part of being human, and learning how to relate to them is a skill — not a personality trait.

One of the key ideas Isabelle shared was this: Where there’s pain, there’s purpose. Not pain as something to glorify or push through, but pain as a signal. An indication that something matters, that a value is being touched, that attention is needed.

For many people who arrive here feeling lost, this is already a reframe. Because when emotions feel uncomfortable, our instinct is often to control them, deny them, or move away from them as quickly as possible. We tell ourselves we shouldn’t feel this way. We judge the feeling. We add a second layer — frustration, shame, self-criticism — on top of the original emotion.

Very quickly, things escalate.

Isabelle spoke about how emotions often stack like this. You feel anger, then feel ashamed of feeling angry. You feel anxious, then criticise yourself for being anxious again. Before long, it’s hard to know what you’re actually feeling — just that it’s too much.

Handling emotions better doesn’t mean stopping that first feeling from arising. It means learning how not to pile everything else on top.

In the conversation, Isabelle used an image that makes this easier to picture. Imagine being in the sea, trying to hold a beach ball underwater. It takes constant effort. Your arms ache. And eventually, no matter how determined you are, the ball bursts back to the surface — often catching you off guard. That’s what it can be like when we try to suppress or ignore our emotions. They don’t disappear; they resurface later, often louder and harder to manage.

A more sustainable approach is to let the ball float.

To allow emotions to be present without pushing them away — but also without letting them take over. Isabelle described this as learning to carry emotions lightly, rather than holding them right in front of your face. They’re there, but they don’t get to drive every decision.

This is where handling emotions becomes less about control and more about relationship.

Instead of asking, How do I get rid of this feeling? we might ask, Can I notice this without being overwhelmed by it?

Instead of assuming emotions make us unreliable, we can start to see them as information — not instructions.

Anxiety might be signalling uncertainty that needs time. Frustration might be pointing to a boundary or a mismatch. Self-doubt often appears where we care deeply about doing something well. None of these emotions tell us exactly what to do next but they can help us understand what’s going on inside us.

For people feeling lost, this can be grounding. Because it means you don’t have to wait until you feel calm, confident, or certain before you’re allowed to move forward. You don’t need to change who you are to begin handling things better.

Another important distinction Isabelle made was between experiencing an emotion and becoming it. Feeling anxious is not the same as being an anxious person. Feeling unsure doesn’t mean you can’t be trusted. Emotions are states — they come and go — even when they feel sticky or familiar.

Learning to handle emotions better often starts with noticing this difference.

It might mean pausing long enough to name what you’re feeling, without immediately reacting or analysing it. It might mean recognising when a second emotion — shame, irritation, self-judgment — has joined the first. It might mean allowing yourself to feel something without demanding that it resolve straight away.

This isn’t about emotional mastery. It’s about emotional steadiness.

At If Lost Start Here, we often talk about finding your footing rather than finding answers. About orientation rather than certainty. Learning to handle your emotions is part of how to navigate life. Not because emotions give you a perfect map, but because they help you stay connected to yourself as you move through change.

You may still feel unsure. You may still feel conflicted or overwhelmed at times. But handling emotions better doesn’t mean eliminating those experiences — it means being less knocked off course by them.

And that can make a real difference when you’re trying to move forward gently, in your own way.

If you’d like to explore this further, the full conversation with Isabelle Fielding is now available on our podcast A Thought I Kept.

And if you’re feeling lost or unsure and want support in understanding and handling your emotions, explore our coaching sessions.

If You’re Not Ready for New Year’s Resolutions, Try This Instead

January has a way of making people feel behind before the year has properly begun. Even if you resist it, there’s a low hum of expectation in the background — conversations about goals, questions about what you’re changing this year, lists forming almost by default. The start of a new year is meant to feel like the thrill of new beginnings, but for many people it lands more like a dulling pressure.

A lot of people arrive here in January wondering whether New Year’s resolutions ever really worked for them. Whether it’s worth writing them down again. Whether this is the year they finally follow through — or whether they’re already tired of trying to become a better version of themselves before the year has even settled.

If that sounds familiar, it’s worth saying this clearly: not feeling ready doesn’t mean you’re unmotivated. It often means you’re paying attention to where you really are right now.

Resolutions are built on an idea of certainty that most of us don’t actually have at the start of a year. They assume we know what needs changing, that we’re ready to commit to it, and that progress happens best when we draw a sharp line between who we were and who we’re supposed to become. But life doesn’t tend to work in clean breaks. We carry the previous year with us — its questions, its fatigue, its unfinished business — and January doesn’t erase any of that.

That’s one reason resolutions can feel fragile. They ask us to decide too much, too soon, at a moment when many of us are still finding our footing, and in the middle of the grey days of winter too.

There’s another way to begin, one that doesn’t require reinvention or resolve. Curiosity.

Curiosity doesn’t ask you to map the year ahead. It doesn’t demand a plan or a promise. It invites you to notice what’s already happening and stay in relationship with it. Instead of asking what you should change this year, curiosity asks what’s worth paying attention to right now. Instead of pushing for answers, it allows you to explore.

This matters because curiosity works with real life, not an idealised version of it. You can be curious about when you feel most yourself and when you feel depleted. You can notice patterns in how you spend your time, what you avoid, what you keep returning to. You can start to understand what supports you and what quietly drains you, without turning those observations into a verdict on who you are.

For many people, the desire behind a resolution is something simple and human: to feel more confident, to enjoy life more, to feel steadier or more successful in a way that actually fits. Curiosity doesn’t get in the way of those hopes. It gives them room to grow.

One of the most freeing things about curiosity is that it removes the pressure to be ready. You don’t need a word for the year. You don’t need a perfect starting point. You don’t need to know where you’ll end up. You can begin with interest instead of intention, learning as you go rather than judging yourself for not having it all figured out.

That’s often where meaningful change starts — not from fixing yourself, but from understanding yourself better. From noticing what matters, what’s shifting, and what might need a little more care.

If you’re questioning whether New Year’s resolutions work, or whether there’s a gentler way to start the year, this week’s episode of A Thought I Kept explores curiosity as a way of approaching life without pressure. In this conversation with Rebecca Frank, wellbeing editor of The Simple Things, we talk about navigating January without having to change everything about yourself — and how curiosity might offer a different, and steadier, place to begin.

The Thoughts That Stayed When the Year Felt Hard

Some years are easy to summarise.

They arrive with neat headlines: “the year everything changed”, “the year it all came together”, “the year of big decisions".

And then there are the other years. The ones that feel harder to pin down.

This has been one of those years for many of us.

A year where you might not have clear answers. Where you feel more tired than triumphant. Where you’re still carrying questions about work, identity, relationships, or simply how to feel okay in the everyday.

When we started the podcast A Thought I Kept, we weren’t looking for big breakthroughs or polished wisdom. We asked a much simpler question:

What’s the thought that stayed with you — when everything else fell away?

As the year draws to a close, those are the thoughts we keep returning to. Not because they fixed everything, but because they helped us navigate life just that little bit better.

Here are some of the ideas that stayed — especially when the year felt heavy, overwhelming, or uncertain.

When Thinking Harder Wasn’t the Answer

One of the strongest threads running through this year’s conversations was the idea that clarity doesn’t always come from effort.

In our conversation with Katie Driver, we talked about how thinking clearly often begins with paying attention, not pushing for solutions. That sometimes the most helpful question isn’t “What should I do next?” but “What am I noticing right now?”

For anyone ending the year feeling mentally overloaded, this idea might help you create space for, rather than force, clarity.

That might look like fewer inputs. Quieter mornings. Walking without headphones. Letting your thoughts arrive without interrogating them.

When life feels hard, this kind of attention can be grounding — a way to feel less lost without needing a map.

Listen to the episode with Katie Driver on A Thought I Kept.

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Learning to Trust Yourself Again (Slowly)

Another thought that stayed came up in conversations about self-trust.

Not the confident, decisive version of self-trust we often imagine — but a quieter kind. The kind that grows when you stop overriding yourself.

Several guests spoke about moments where they realised they had been ignoring their own signals for years: exhaustion, resentment, numbness, restlessness. And how wellbeing didn’t begin with adding more practices, but with listening.

If this year left you feeling unsure of yourself, this matters.

Self-trust isn’t rebuilt by grand declarations. It’s rebuilt in small acts:

• pausing before saying yes

• noticing what drains you

• letting your feelings be information, not obstacles

That idea alone — my feelings are trying to tell me something — was one many of us kept.

Explore episodes on emotions, attention and self-trust wherever you listen to A Thought I Kept.

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Overwhelm Isn’t a Personal Failure

Overwhelm came up again and again this year. Not as something to eliminate, but as something to understand.

In conversations about work, creativity and leadership, guests reflected on how overwhelm is often a signal that our systems — not our selves — need adjusting.

If you’re ending the year feeling overwhelmed, anxious or behind, this thought matters:

Overwhelm isn’t proof you’re failing. It’s information that’s pointing to too much noise, too many expectations, too little rest, or too little support. And noticing that is already a form of progress.

This is especially important at the end of the year, when reflection can quietly turn into self-criticism. These conversations reminded us that kindness — toward ourselves — is not a soft option. It’s a stabilising one.

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You Don’t Need to Fix the Year to Learn From It

One of the most reassuring ideas to come out of the podcast this year was this:

You don’t need to tidy the year up to take something meaningful forward.

You can let it be unfinished.

Many guests spoke about learning through living, not through tidy conclusions. About carrying insights forward even when situations hadn’t resolved.

For anyone feeling lost or disconnected right now, that’s an invitation to stop forcing meaning — and trust that some understanding unfolds later.

Sometimes the thought you keep doesn’t explain everything.

It simply keeps you company.

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Keeping these Thoughts Close

As we reached the end of the year, we realised something else: these ideas are easy to forget when life gets loud again.

That’s why we gathered the thoughts that stayed into a printable poster designed by Amanda — a way to live with them, not just read them once. Something to glance at on a difficult day. Something to remind you that you’re not alone in these questions.

You can shop the printable poster here — a collection of thoughts kept from the first year of A Thought I Kept.

And if any of these reflections resonated, we’d love for you to explore more.

Listen to A Thought I Kept — conversations about wellbeing, emotions, work, identity and self-trust, because when the year feels hard, sometimes the most helpful thing isn’t a plan — it’s a thought worth keeping.

Feeling Held in a World That Keeps Asking for More

There’s a particular kind of overwhelm that doesn’t come from doing too much — but from holding too much.

Holding work.

Holding family life.

Holding emotions, expectations, plans, worries.

Holding it all together, often quietly.

It’s something that came up again and again in my recent conversation with Lauren Barber on the podcast A Thought I Kept. We didn’t set out to talk about overwhelm directly, but as we spoke, it became clear that this sense of being unheld — of carrying more than feels sustainable — sits beneath so many of the feelings people describe as stress, burnout, anxiety, or simply feeling lost.

What does it mean to feel held?

When we talk about being held, we often imagine something external: support from others, community, care, someone stepping in. And that matters — deeply. But Lauren spoke beautifully about another layer of holding too: the ways we hold ourselves when life keeps asking for more than we feel we have to give.

In the episode, she shared how anxiety has been a long-term companion for her — not always loud or dramatic, but often living quietly in the body. In the gut. In the mornings. In the constant background hum of hypervigilance. That feeling of being alert even when things are technically “fine”.

What struck me was how she described mistrusting good feelings. How, when you’ve spent a long time braced for difficulty, calm can feel unfamiliar — even unsafe. Ease doesn’t always land as relief; sometimes it lands as something to be suspicious of.

Many of us recognise this, especially when we’re overwhelmed. We might know what would help — rest, space, gentleness, support — and still struggle to let ourselves receive it.

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Overwhelm isn’t always about doing too much

One of the ideas that stayed with me from this conversation is that overwhelm isn’t always about volume. Sometimes it’s about imbalance.

We’re holding a lot — but not being held in return.

Lauren talked about motherhood as a clear example of this. There are things in life that drain us simply because they have to be done. Meals, logistics, care, responsibility. We don’t always have the option to step away from them. And in those moments, the question isn’t “how do I escape this?” but “how do I support myself within it?”

Lauren spoke about counterbalancing — about finding small, everyday ways to bring nourishment back in. Not as a fix to the problem we can’t yet get to, but as a quiet form of care.

Putting music on while making breakfast.

Going for a walk, even when it’s inconvenient.

Wearing a favourite pair of earrings on an ordinary day.

These aren’t grand gestures. But they matter. Because they help the body feel a little safer. A little less alone. A little more held.

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The quiet cost of never being held

So many people we speak to at If Lost Start Here tell us they feel disconnected — from themselves, from their energy, from what they want. Often, that disconnection isn’t because they don’t care, or don’t know. It’s because they’ve been holding so much, for so long, without anywhere to rest.

When you’re constantly in that state, your nervous system doesn’t get the message that it’s okay to soften. Even moments of rest can feel uncomfortable. Even joy can feel fragile.

Lauren shared how somatic practices — working with the body, not just the mind — have helped her rebuild a sense of safety from the inside out. Not by forcing calm, but by meeting what’s there with compassion. By learning, slowly, that feelings move. That sensations pass. That being held can be something you practise, not something you wait for.

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Feeling held as a practice, not a destination

One of the most grounding ideas from this episode is that feeling held isn’t a one-time experience. It’s not something you achieve and then move on from. It’s a rhythm. A return.

It shows up in how you treat yourself when you’re tired.

In how you respond to anxiety rather than fighting it.

In whether you allow yourself small moments of care without earning them first.

This feels especially important at times of year when everything speeds up — when expectations multiply and space shrinks. When we’re told to reflect, plan, connect, celebrate, and keep going, all at once.

In those moments, being held might look less like changing everything and more like asking a quieter question: “What would help me feel supported right now?”

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Work, energy, and being held

At the heart of Lauren’s story is a thought she’s carried since her early twenties: “Life is too short to do work that you do not enjoy.”

Lauren spoke about learning to notice when her work drains her energy — when she feels flat, depleted, disconnected. And how those sensations have become signals rather than something to push through.

For many people, changing work isn’t immediately possible. But even then, the episode offers a gentler invitation: to notice where energy is leaking, and where it might be replenished. To bring more of what you need into your days, even when the structure stays the same.

Feeling held, in this sense, is about staying connected to yourself — even in imperfect conditions.

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A gentle invitation

If you’re feeling overwhelmed, unheld, or quietly disconnected right now, you’re not failing. You’re responding to a world that often asks for more than it gives back.

My hope is that this conversation with Lauren offers a pause. A moment of recognition. Perhaps even a small sense of being held — enough to help you take the next gentle step.

Listen to the full episode of A Thought I Kept: How We Learn to Feel Held with Lauren Barber — available on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

And if you’d like more thoughtful reflections, tools, and ideas for everyday life, especially for those moments when you feel lost or overwhelmed, join our mailing list. You don’t have to hold everything alone.

The Thought That Changed How I End the Year

Every year around this time, I feel a quiet tension building.

It’s not just the pressure to finish things, though that’s part of it — the projects left undone, the goals half-met. It’s something deeper. A low-grade noise, humming underneath the productivity tools and Pinterest-perfect vision boards.

That voice that says:

“You should be reflecting.”

“You should be setting goals.”

“You should be figuring out how to make next year better.”

And often, if I’m honest, I try to oblige. I sit down with the journal. I make the lists. I try to “get clear.”

But I don’t always feel clear. I just feel… tired.

So this year, I’m trying something different. Something softer.

And it started with one sentence from a conversation I had with coach and facilitator Katie Driver:

“The mind works best in the presence of a question.”

It landed so gently, I almost missed it. But the more I sat with it, the more it felt like a key — not just to better thinking, but to a better ending.

What if clarity doesn’t come from pushing — but from asking?

Katie’s work centers around helping people think for themselves — particularly those who feel like their minds are “buffering” or stuck in mental noise loops. In our episode of A Thought I Kept, she talks about the value of attention, the importance of quiet, and what can shift when we stop trying to force insight, and start trusting the questions.

As someone who has historically tried to think my way to control — to logic, list-make, or out-journal the overwhelm — this idea felt like an exhale. What if I didn’t need the answer yet? What if I didn’t need a 12-step plan? What if I just needed the right question?

So I tried one.

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The question that helped me end the year differently

On a particularly messy-feeling day, I sat down with this:

What would make this a good ending — for me?

Not a successful one. Not a productive one. Not an impressive one.

A good one. For the person I actually am.

And quietly, without fanfare, an answer rose:

Letting go of something I never really wanted.

Finishing one small thing I care about.

Taking a walk in silence, no headphones.

Choosing presence over performance.

Not exactly a 10-point strategic vision. But honest.

True. Grounded. And — perhaps most importantly — doable.

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Another question I’ve come to love:

“What do I need right now?”

It’s one Katie shared in the episode, and I’ve returned to it often.

When the list is long. When my brain feels foggy. When I’m tempted to sink into distraction instead of meeting myself gently.

Sometimes the answer is small — a cup of tea, a stretch, a text to someone I love. Sometimes it’s “nothing right now.” But just asking reminds me I have needs, and they’re worth listening to.

In a season that often prioritizes output — what did you accomplish, what are you planning next — this simple question helps me reorient inward. To listen. To care. To remember that ending well isn’t always about tying everything up. Sometimes it’s about releasing what no longer fits.

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A better ending is possible. But it starts with presence, not pressure.

So if you’re feeling behind or burnt out or like your brain is caught in a loop —

If you’re wondering how to reset without overhauling everything —

Here’s what I learned:

You don’t need to fix it all.

You don’t need to reinvent yourself.

You don’t even need to reflect perfectly.

You just need one honest, open question.

And a little space to answer it.

Listen to the episode: What to Do When You Can’t Think Straight with Katie Driver

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And if you need the space to think then explore our online and in-person coaching sessions. You can still book for the end of this year, or get a session in your calender for the start of 2026.

How to Navigate Family Dynamics Over the Holidays

There’s a certain story we can tell ourselves about the holidays. This year will be the one. We’ll have the perfect meal. Everyone will get along. No one will bring up that thing. We’ll laugh like they do in Christmas films, and finally feel close again.

But often, the holidays — for all their warmth and magic — come tangled in old patterns, invisible pressures, and quiet expectations.

You might find yourself trying to manage everyone’s emotions while keeping the potatoes hot. Or quietly hoping that a long-held tension will resolve itself over the turkey. You might feel yourself reverting into an old role: the peacemaker, the quiet one, the organiser, the emotional sponge.

If you’ve ever left a family gathering emotionally wrung out — you’re not the only one.

What If We Let Go of “Getting It Right”?

So much of holiday stress comes from trying to get it right — the food, the gifts, the mood, the timing, the conversations.

But here’s a gentle invitation: What if the goal this year wasn’t to get it right — but to stay connected?
Not just with others. But with yourself too.

Letting go of perfection doesn’t mean giving up. It means tuning in. Noticing where the pressure comes from. Asking yourself which expectations you're carrying that no one else even knows about.

Sometimes, the smallest shift — from performance to presence — can change everything.

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Moments of Connection Can Be Tiny

Connection doesn’t need to look like a profound heart-to-heart over pudding (though if it does, enjoy it). It can look like:

• Sharing a joke over a ridiculous board game

• Helping someone peel carrots in silence

• Noticing someone’s effort, and quietly appreciating it

• Letting yourself enjoy the moment before everyone wakes up

The memories that stay aren’t always the ones we try to orchestrate. They’re often the ones that slip in sideways, like my own memory of preparing a turkey with my mum in our dressing gowns at 6am, before the rest of the house woke up. It was messy. It was quiet. It was ours.

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From Reacting to Responding

Tricky moments happen. Comments that sting. Conversations that tip into familiar territory. We don’t suddenly become different people in December — we just add tinsel.

But when a family dynamic triggers something in you, here’s a gentle way to pause:

Ask: What’s really going on here?
What might this person be feeling or needing?
What’s the value behind their words — and the need behind mine?

Sometimes, even a second of curiosity can interrupt a pattern. You don’t need to fix it. But you can give yourself the gift of not spiralling. You can respond instead of react.

And remember: kindness doesn’t mean tolerating poor behaviour. It means creating enough space to see what’s really happening — and choosing how you show up in it.

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Shared Care, Not Just Self-Care

We hear so much about self-care at Christmas. And while that's important, what if this season was also about collective care?

If you tend to carry the emotional weight of gatherings, ask yourself:

Who else could help hold this?

Could someone else bring dessert?
Could you share a game or ritual with a younger family member?
Could you start a new tradition where everyone brings a “Christmas surprise”?

One year, hot sauces at Christmas dinner created a hilarious (and bonding) moment I never saw coming. It wasn’t the tradition I’d planned. But it became a moment of unexpected joy.

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Breaking Old Roles

The holidays have a way of putting us back into the roles we grew up with.
The fixer.
The entertainer.
The one who holds it all together.

What if you tried something different this year?

• Saying no with kindness

• Asking for what you need

• Letting go of the need to smooth over every bump

Sometimes just naming the pattern out loud to yourself is enough to start loosening its grip.

What’s one old role or habit you could leave behind this year?

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Noticing Joy (Without Forcing It)

Joy doesn’t always announce itself. It doesn’t always look like a glossy advert. It sneaks in — in the shared glance across the table. In the song that makes you tear up. In the silly game you weren’t going to play, but did.

If this year feels like a lot, give yourself permission to notice joy, not create it.

Before the gathering, ask:

• What’s one moment I might enjoy?

• What do I want to remember from this season?

• Where might connection surprise me?

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You Don’t Have to Fix Everything

You don’t have to be the glue. You don’t have to keep every plate spinning.

If this is a hard year for you, emotionally or practically — know that’s okay too. The holidays bring up everything. The love and the loss. The joy and the weight.

And maybe this year, all you need to do is soften your grip.
To let things be a little less curated.
To let someone else stir the gravy.
To step outside for a breath before stepping back in.

Whoever you’re with this season — chosen family, biological family, or a patchwork of both — remember this:

You are allowed to be human.

You are allowed to set boundaries, to feel wobbly, to find joy in small places, to not have it all figured out.

And you are allowed to be loved and supported without having to hold it all alone.

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Need a Little Extra Support?

If family dynamics are feeling overwhelming this season — or if you’re longing for more groundedness and calm — coaching could be a supportive space to explore it all.

Together, we can:

• Make sense of your emotional patterns

• Create gentler boundaries that don’t feel harsh

• Reclaim what the holidays actually mean to you

Click here to learn more about coaching or book a free clarity call

How to Winter Well (Even If It’s Not Your Season)

I have never been a winter person.

I long for open skies, sunshine, warmth. Winter often feels like a long stretch of darkness and something to survive. Something to wait out until spring finally arrives and everything starts to bloom again.

But lately, I’ve been asking myself a different question:
What if winter isn’t something to get through?
What if it’s something to be in?
And even — if we’re open to it — something to learn from?

Winter as a Season of Pause

We live in a world that rarely pauses. Even in the darkest days of the year, we’re expected to produce, perform, plan, and push through. But what if winter is offering us something else entirely?

What if it’s asking us to slow down not because we’re “weak” but because we really need to.

For me, learning to winter well has meant stepping away from the pressure to “keep going” at all costs, and learning instead how to listen. To rest. To accept that being in a quieter season of life doesn’t make me less.

It just makes me human.

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The Messy Middle (And Why You Don’t Need a Perfect Ending)

For a long time, I treated winter as the end of the year. A time to wrap things up, tie a bow on my life, and get ready for a clean start in January.

But what I’ve come to realise is that winter isn’t the end.

It’s the in-between.

It’s the space between what was and what’s coming. The quiet middle of the story. The time where not much appears to be happening and yet everything is quietly changing.

And there’s something liberating in that. Because it means we don’t need to have everything figured out. We don’t need to finish the year “strong.” We just need to keep going in our own way and at our own pace.

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The Wisdom of Wintering

Katherine May, in her beautiful book Wintering, describes this season not just as a temperature change but as a way of being.

She invites us to see winter as a necessary season in all of our lives. Not just one marked by frost, but one defined by slowness, solitude, and surrender. A space where we allow things to fall away. Where we let our inner worlds recalibrate. Where we allow ourselves to stop striving.

This is an idea that I keep returning to:
Everything in nature knows how to winter.
Why shouldn’t we?

Trees drop their leaves and conserve energy.
Soil rests.
Animals hibernate.
The world turns inward — and trusts spring will come again.

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Rest Is Not Laziness. It’s Wisdom.

Like many people, I find rest difficult.

I like doing. I like moving. I’ve spent most of my life thinking that energy and productivity were signs that I was doing life right.

But then came a health challenge that knocked me flat and I had to learn that energy is a resource. That rest is not just indulgence, but survival.

And winter, for me, has become a mirror of that lesson. It asks us to stop fighting our need for pause. To stop seeing stillness as failure. To stop expecting ourselves to be blooming all year round.

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Making Peace with Quiet

Here’s something I’ve noticed about winter: it asks us to sit in the quiet. And that’s not always comfortable.

But the quiet isn’t empty. It’s full of possibility.

Therapist Julia Samuel talks about the fertile void — a period where things look empty on the surface, but underneath, growth is happening. That’s winter. A time where what’s growing is invisible, but no less real.

If you’re in that space right now — the uncertain middle, the undefined stretch know that you’re not lost. You’re just wintering.

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Connection Still Matters (Especially Now)

Winter can feel isolating. We stay in. We cancel plans. We disappear behind closed doors.

But those small moments of connection — they still matter.

Sometimes they’re the thing that get us through.

A friend who sends a voice note.
A neighbour who pops by with cookies.
A candlelit dinner where no one wears sequins and everyone brings a story.

Wintering well doesn’t have to mean withdrawing completely. It can mean choosing gentle connection over performance. Intimacy over expectation.

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Your Wintering Toolkit (Small Things That Matter)

Here are some of the things that are helping me stay grounded this season:

• The Daily 3-2-1: Three things I’m grateful for. Two things I’m curious about. One way I can make today easier.

• A candle in the kitchen while I cook.

• Woollen socks and a hot water bottle at my desk.

• A therapy lamp by the window.

• A stack of books that feel like comfort.

• The sound of nothing. (Or of my family laughing.)

These aren’t revolutionary. But they’re enough to anchor me. And that’s what wintering well is about — enough.

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A Different Kind of Self-Care

This time of year, we’re flooded with messages about self-care. But often, it ends up sounding like a shopping list of scented candles and self-help guides.

What if self-care in winter meant not doing more, but doing differently?

What if it meant:

• Choosing quiet over hustle

• Letting go of one tradition that drains you

• Making space for rest, without apology

• Listening to what your body (and your soul) actually needs

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A Gentle Prompt for You

Here’s what I’m asking myself this winter:

What does it look like to winter well, just for me?

What if that doesn’t mean fixing anything, achieving anything, or even feeling festive?

What if it simply means honouring this season for what it is — and who you are in it?

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If You’re Looking for Support This Winter…

Wintering doesn’t mean you have to go it alone.

If this season is bringing up emotional burnout, loneliness, fatigue or a longing to rest but not knowing how — this might be a beautiful time to explore support through coaching.

Together, we can:

• Create space for your real needs

• Gently navigate grief, fatigue, or burnout

• Make winter more livable — maybe even quietly beautiful

Click here to explore coaching. Or book a free 20-minute consult to find out what you’re looking for.

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You Don’t Have to Love Winter

You don’t have to fall in love with snow, or embrace darkness like it’s a friend.

But you can learn to live well inside the season you’re in.

And that, in its own way, is enough.

So here’s to this winter.
To quieter mornings.
To softer evenings.
To connection and coziness and not having to bloom right now.

Here’s to wintering well — in whatever way that looks like for you.

How to Navigate Emotional Burnout and Overwhelm This Festive Season

(…Without Numbing, Pretending, or Putting on the Paper Hat if You Don’t Want To)

The holidays are meant to be magical, right? Twinkling lights. Glorious food. Time with the people you love. Except… that’s only part of the story.

For many of us, this season also brings up a messier mix of emotions: Burnout. Resentment. Grief. Overwhelm. Emotional exhaustion that feels like it should be packed away until January, but only grows louder under all the glitter.

You may be doing everything you’re “supposed to,” and still feel off. Many of us can feel like we’re just hanging on through the Holiday Season even though we’re trying to reach for all the magic it might also bring.

The 12 Emotions of Christmas (And Then Some)

The Holiday Season can bring with it so many different feelings. There’s joy, of course. Gratitude? Hopefully. But also: guilt, loneliness, hope, anxiety, peace, nostalgia, resentment… and grief. Especially grief. And often we might be feeling more than one thing at once.

• You can be excited and exhausted.

• Grateful and slightly ragey at your partner for leaving all the wrapping until Christmas Eve.

• Full of love and lonely at the same time.

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Emotions Don’t Need Fixing. But They Might Want Witnessing

Here’s what we’ve learned (and what the science backs too): Trying to force yourself to feel festive—or calm, or joyful—only adds to the emotional load.

What helps more? Small, doable practices that honour your reality and softens the pressure.

We’re not aiming for unloading everything all at once. Rather we’re trying to bring in some more relief and permission, creating an emotional anchoring when things feel all over the place.

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Gentle Practices to be Kinder to What You’re Really Feeling

These are things that hopefully you can return to when you need a moment of clarity, calm or care.

1. Name What You’re Actually Feeling

Instead of shoving it down, try this:

“Right now, I feel overwhelmed because I’ve said yes to too many things.”
Naming emotions helps regulate them. It brings clarity when everything feels a bit loud.

2. Validate What’s True for You

You don’t need to justify your emotions. They're not wrong or bad.
They're simply information.
Loneliness? Telling you that connection matters.
Guilt? A sign you care deeply.
Resentment? A flashing light that a boundary might need adjusting.

3. Reframe, Gently

Not toxic positivity. Just a reframe when you’re ready.
Instead of “I’m failing at Christmas,” try “I’m doing my best with what I have this year.”
Instead of “Why can’t I just enjoy it like everyone else?” try “Joy looks different for everyone. I’ll find mine.”

4. Create Tiny Moments of Joy on Purpose

Not performative, curated joy. But real, quiet joy.
A trashy Christmas movie you secretly love.
A warm drink savoured in silence.
Singing badly with someone you love.
We’ve found that joy is an active practice, rather than a finely crafted outcome.

5. Let Overwhelm Be Your Messenger

Instead of pushing through, ask:

• What’s one thing I can take off my plate today?

• What’s one thing I could hand to someone else (even if it’s not “perfect”)?

• How can I pause, even for a minute?

6. Talk About Grief, Don’t Tiptoe Around It

Grief doesn’t go quiet at Christmas—it often shouts.
Whether it’s someone you’ve lost, or the version of life that isn’t yours anymore, it matters.
Light a candle. Say their name. Let others know it’s okay to mention them too.
This keeps their love in the room, not hidden away.

7. Let Peace Be a Practice, Not a Destination

Peace isn’t always a big revelation.
Sometimes, it’s three minutes of stillness while your tea brews.
It’s stepping outside and noticing the cold but not in the way that makes you want to cry.
It’s a single quiet carol, in a room filled with noise.
Look for peace in micro-moments. That might be enough.

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What’s One Emotion You’re Carrying This Season?

What’s showing up for you—joy, grief, gratitude, anxiety, excitement, resentment, or something else entirely?

Because once you name it, you can work with it. And if you’d like support doing that…

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Ready to Feel Better This Season? We Can Help.

Our 1:1 emotions coaching sessions are gentle, grounded, and always tailored to you. This isn’t about fixing everything. It’s about finding what might help you feel even just a little bit better, right now.

• Whether you’re navigating grief, burnout, or just can’t hear yourself think

• Whether you want support this season or to start the new year with a steadier emotional toolkit

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Let’s start there.
Book a free 15-minute clarity call or explore our coaching options here.

This season, you don’t need to perfect it. You don’t need to perform it. You just need to be in it—honestly, gently, fully.

Make space for all the feelings. And give yourself the gift of not having to carry them alone.

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Navigating Grief When It Doesn’t Look How You Thought It Would

What does grief look like?

If we’re honest, many of us have a picture in our minds. Tears. Silence. Perhaps someone wearing black, speaking softly, saying “I’m fine” when they’re clearly not. Or maybe someone who’s angry, messy, falling apart. We expect grief to look dramatic — or dignified — but either way, we expect to recognise it when it arrives.

So what happens when it doesn’t look the way we thought it would?

What happens when we’re grieving and we’re… still functioning? Still laughing? Still showing up for the school run? Or what if we can’t cry but know we’re holding something enormous inside?

And what if someone else is grieving and we misjudge them, because we think they should be more upset, or more together, or more like us?

That’s the quiet heartbreak of grief: not only the loss itself, but the confusion about how it’s “meant” to be.

In a recent episode of A Thought I Kept, I spoke to Georgina Jones, founder of The Grief Disco — a woman whose work lives at the intersection of grief, music, dance, and joy.

Her story challenged so much of what we think we know about grief. Georgina lost her son in 2023, and has experienced what many would describe as profound, unimaginable loss. And yet, she dances. She laughs. She connects. She creates spaces where people can cry and dance at the same time.

It’s not about ignoring grief or sugar-coating it. It’s about making space for the full spectrum of it — especially when it doesn’t come wrapped in the behaviours we’ve been taught to expect.

Georgina spoke about how grief lives in the body. That there are things music can unlock that words can’t reach. That sometimes we can be sobbing and laughing in the same breath. And that joy isn’t something that betrays grief — it’s something that supports it.

What struck me most was this: grief doesn’t always look the way we think. And that misunderstanding can create more pain, not just for the person grieving — but for those around them, too.

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We’ve inherited a lot of strange stories about how we’re supposed to grieve.

We think:

• Grief has “stages” (it doesn’t — it has cycles, spirals, waves).

• It’s meant to be quiet and tearful — or explosive and visible.

• There’s a right way to do it.

• It’s only valid if someone has died.

• It ends.

But grief is far more expansive than that. It can be:

• The silent, confusing ache after a miscarriage no one knew about.

• The slow unraveling of identity in a job or relationship loss.

• The anticipatory grief of watching someone change before they’re gone.

• The quiet guilt of feeling relief — and wondering what that says about you.

And crucially: grief doesn’t always look “sad”.

You might feel numb. Or angry. Or completely disconnected. Or wildly creative. You might crack jokes at a funeral, or scream into your pillow a year later when you least expect it. That’s grief too.

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So how do we navigate grief — especially when it surprises us?

Here’s what I’m learning, from Georgina and others, and through the work I do in emotions coaching:

1. Let go of the script

There is no one way grief should look. There is only the way it shows up in you. That’s enough. And it’s valid — even if it makes no sense.

2. Name what’s true

Maybe you’re grieving someone still alive. Maybe you’re mourning a version of yourself. Maybe you feel like your grief isn’t “big enough” to count. It does count. Language helps. Start with small truths. “This is hard.” “I feel strange.” “I miss something I never really had.”

3. Move it through the body

Grief isn’t just cognitive — it’s visceral. Breath, movement, music, crying, stillness — these aren’t indulgences. They’re how your body integrates the experience. As Georgina said, “We are so heady. But there is so much knowledge in the body.”

4. Let joy have a seat at the table

Joy doesn’t replace grief. It companions it. Finding joy again isn’t a betrayal of your sadness — it’s part of what sustains you. You’re allowed to laugh. To sing. To dance. Even while you’re broken-hearted.

5. Ask for support from someone who gets it

You don’t have to figure this out alone. Talking to someone trained in emotional literacy, regulation, and compassionate witnessing can help you feel seen — especially when your grief doesn’t look “typical.” That’s what emotions coaching is for.

Grief doesn’t come with a rulebook. But it can come with support.

If this resonates with you — if your grief feels different, or hard to name, or hard to carry — I’d love to invite you to:

Georgina shares her story of loss, joy, dancing through grief, and why your energy — even in the darkest moments — is your currency.

If you’re navigating something tender, tangled, or hard to name — this is the space for you. Emotions coaching is not about fixing you. It’s about helping you meet what’s here with more understanding, care, and clarity.

You don’t have to go it alone.

And your grief doesn’t have to look like anyone else’s.

If You’re Self‑Cared‑Out: How to Move from Doing to Being Seen

You’ve done the rituals — the colouring‑in, the bubble bath, the breaths, the affirmations. And yet, you still feel drained.

In a recent conversation on A Thought I Kept, I asked psychologist and author Suzy Reading: “What is the one thought you have kept?” Suzy’s answer: “I am someone worth caring for.” And in that simple sentence lies the pivot many of us need — from checking the self‑care box to stepping into the kind of care we might be missing.

1. The Self‑Care Loop: When Doing Becomes Disconnection

Suzy begins the conversation by admitting that it was a “very dreary Friday” and she hadn’t had her usual morning walk to clear the jangly energy. Yet here she was, making space for the conversation and acknowledging the discomfort.

“I’ve got some jangly energy going on too … but you know, we make space for it and it’s all right for it to be here.”

That’s the thing. We often rush into another self‑care “thing” to fix the feeling, rather than giving ourselves permission to simply have the feeling.

If you’re someone who’s been doing self‑care, but still feels numb, overwhelmed or disconnected, consider this: maybe it isn’t more rituals you need — but a different relationship to care.

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2. Worthy of Care: The Thought that Changed Everything

At its core, Suzy’s inquiry reveals something many of us never gave ourselves permission to believe: I am someone worth caring for.

She traces that thought back to her late teens and how it’s marks key turning points — a knee injury in her competitive ice‑skating days, becoming a mother, losing her father.

In each, the practice shifted from “perform better” to “treat myself as though I’m worth care” because, as she said:

“If you don’t do that, you’re not going to be here anymore.”

For those feeling burnout, disconnected or emotionally exhausted — the very phrase says this: you do not have to wait until you’ve earned care. You are already worth it.

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3. The Barrier: Selflessness, “Not‑Enough”, and Silence of Needs

Why is this so hard? Suzy outlines layers upon layers of cultural messaging:

• A “good baby” is one who doesn’t cry. How does that shape how we regard feelings?

• A “good child” is one who doesn’t question adults. How does that influence advocating for ourselves?

• Women especially carry messages of being selfless, resilient, productive, grateful. In the process our feelings and needs become invisible.

• “You mustn’t be selfish. You must be selfless… our own personhood, turning attention inwards … feels shame‑inducing.”

So if you feel lost, exhausted, invisible — it might be less about you doing more and more about you giving yourself permission to need and receive. The blankness you feel might be the space where your needs weren’t asked, seen or met.

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4. Self‑Advocacy: The Relational Layer of Self‑Care

Here’s where it deepens: self‑care is not just about self‑soothing or solo rituals. Suzy gently expands it to include receiving care and asking for what you need.

She offers real, grounded advice:

• Practice asking with “safe people” first.

• Instead of “I don’t mind where we go,” say “Here’s a place I’d enjoy. What about you?”

• Be clear: “I feel unappreciated and taken for granted. Would you help me?"

For anyone feeling disconnected — this is an invitation to turn invisible needs into visible requests. To start the conversation with yourself and others. To move from surviving to being supported.

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5. Overwhelm, Midlife & the Invitation to Receive

If you’ve been pushing through for years, if you’re mid‑life and your body is starting to whisper (or shout) “slow down”, you might realise the old methods aren’t working. Suzy shares:

“I could muscle my way through anything … until my body said sweetheart you cannot just railroad and muscle your way through everything.”

And so we pivot. We honour the winter seasons of life. We ask:

• What have I weathered?

• What do I need now?

• Can I allow someone to help?

At the close of the episode, Suzy gives a simple but potent practice: every time you sip water (or tea, or whatever you have), place a hand on your heart and say: “I am someone worthy of care.” Use it as a daily touchpoint.

“Where am I at? What do I need?”

Because relational wellbeing isn’t a luxury, it’s a lifeline.

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6. What You Can Do Right Now

If you’re reading this and you feel drained, disconnected or simply over it — try this:

1. Pause for one minute, put a hand on your heart and say: “I am someone worth caring for.”

2. Write down one need you have today. (No judgement.)

3. Make one gentle request from someone you trust. It could be: “Would you hold space for me for 10 minutes this week?” or “Could you help me with X so I don’t burn out?”

4. Listen to the episode of A Thought I Kept where Suzy and I unpack all this in vivid detail. (Link below.)

5. If you feel comfortable, share this page or the podcast with someone you trust — being seen is the other half of caring.

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If Suzy’s thought — “I am someone worthy of care” — stirred something in you, our Coaching Sessions are here to help you gently unpack those feelings, reconnect with your needs, and practice the relational skills of self-advocacy.

Whether you're overwhelmed, self-cared-out, or simply seeking a safe space to feel seen, we’re here.

How We Cope: The Hidden Language of Emotions, the Body, and Self-Harm

We are taught to say “I’m fine.”
We are rarely taught to notice what we actually feel.

And almost never taught what to do with it.

This week on the podcast, I spoke with Beth Derry — resilience coach, Havening practitioner, and founder of Lovely Messy Humans — about one idea that changed everything for her:

“I'm bringing the realization that I had not actually that so long ago, still in my forties, about the sheer power that our nervous system has over every aspect of our life, our health, our happiness, our relationships, our work, and yet we have not talked about it. And when I started to learn about it and go deeper into it, it really changed everything.”

It made me wonder: What would our lives look like if we were taught nervous system literacy in school?

If we knew that emotional coping isn’t a flaw — but often a biological response?
If we stopped seeing anxiety, anger, or shutdown as personal failures… and started seeing them as signals?

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When We Don’t Know How to Cope

When we don't understand our internal worlds — when we push away feelings, or panic in the presence of them — we disconnect. From ourselves. From others. From the cues that could help us come back to safety.

As Beth so gently shared, many of us live in the edges of our window of tolerance. We function. We show up. But we’re often one thing away from emotional overload. Or from total shutdown.

And in those spaces, we might turn to whatever makes the pain disappear.
Even if just for a moment.

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Self-Harm and the Misunderstood Body

One of the most powerful parts of this conversation was Beth’s perspective on self-harm — especially among young people. A topic often clouded by fear, shame, or silence.

She explains that self-harm is rarely about wanting to die.
It’s often a desperate attempt to feel something, or regulate overwhelm.
A bid for connection. A tool of survival. A nervous system trying to find relief.

That reframing changed something in me. As a parent. As a coach. As a human who once believed that emotional intensity was a flaw to fix.

We talk a lot about mental health. But nervous system health? Still a gap.
And yet — it’s at the heart of how we process everything.

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What I’m Taking With Me

Here are just a few shifts I’m sitting with after this conversation:

• Emotions are messengers, not enemies. Every feeling we have — from anxiety to anger to disgust — evolved to help us survive. They’re not the problem. They’re trying to point us to one.

• We don’t need to be experts. But we do need to get curious. Especially when we find ourselves spiralling, shutting down, or stuck.

• Self-harm isn’t attention-seeking. It’s often connection-seeking. And our first response should always be: safety, gentleness, and holding the door open for conversation.

• Talking therapy is powerful — but sometimes we need the body in the room. Beth’s work with Havening is just one example of how physical practices can help calm the nervous system and unlock healing in a different way.

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For You, If You’re Feeling Lost

If you’re feeling emotionally full to the brim…
If you’re shut down and not sure how to begin again…
If your teenager seems unreachable…
Or if you simply want to understand why you react the way you do —

This episode is an invitation.

To move slowly.
To get curious.
To stop blaming yourself for feeling everything (or nothing).
To start gently noticing the signals your body has been sending all along.

Listen to this week’s episode: Lovely Messy Humans: Understanding Self-Harm, Emotional Coping, and the Nervous System with Beth Derry. Available now on A Thought I Kept

And if you need more support and understanding as you explore your emotional life, book one of our 1:1 online sessions.

What to Do When You Feel Creatively Empty

You know the feeling. That bone-deep tiredness that no nap or green juice will touch. The ideas that once came freely now feel flat. The excitement that used to buzz in your chest has turned to static.

If you’ve been feeling creatively empty — like your spark has left the room — you’re not broken. You’re burnt out, or as entrepreneur and founder Liana Fricker calls it, maybe you’re just in a “burndown.”

When Liana hit burnout — again — in 2023, she realised that it wasn’t a one-off collapse. It was part of a repeating pattern. She’d push hard, build momentum, connect dots, gather people, spark ideas — and then, suddenly, the tank was empty. She had to start “by designing my work life and just my general life in such a way that creates that space so I can stay open.”

Liana calls herself an “idea-laying machine.” But even machines need power sources — and her old ways of working (and marketing herself online) weren’t sustainable anymore.

So she began to experiment. To unlearn. To ask a different set of questions:

• What if I stopped performing consistency and started trusting my energy instead?

• What would work look like if it was slower, tactile, real-world?

• What if connection — not content — was my strategy?

These are some of the wellbeing practices and mind shifts that helped Liana rebuild creative energy — not by working harder, but by reimagining what “working” means.

Each one is a quiet act of resistance against burnout culture, and a reminder that creative energy is not infinite but it is renewable.

1. Stop Performing Consistency — Start Practising Self-Trust

The advice we’re given online — “be consistent!” — often misses the truth that not all brains or energy cycles work in straight lines. For Liana, the key was designing routines that flowed with her energy, not against it.

She now plans her month in cycles: high-energy weeks first, slow restoration later. Some weeks are for ideas, others are for Antiques Roadshow and weighted blankets.

“If all I could do was meditate in a sauna and watch Antiques Roadshow with my weighted blanket at 3 p.m. on a Wednesday, I can do that. Because that might be what the burndown needs, right?”

Try this: Instead of scheduling every day equally, design your calendar like a tide chart. Plan creative work during your high-energy phases, and build in restorative “ebb” weeks.

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2. Redefine Burnout — and Learn Your ‘Burndown’ Pattern

Liana differentiates between burnout (the big collapse) and burndown (the mini energy crashes that happen every few weeks).

When you start to recognise these smaller cycles, you can respond before the full crash.

Notice:

• Do you have predictable weeks of high motivation followed by emotional flatness?

• Do you overcommit when your energy peaks?

• Can you give yourself permission to pause before you’re forced to stop?

Reframing burnout as cyclical rather than catastrophic helps turn it from a crisis into data — something you can observe, not judge.

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3. Design for Energy, Not Productivity

“I think if you're someone who suffers from quite big burnouts or you've had a few in your life and you're over the age of 40, you may want to take a step back and ask yourself, what is this internal engine that keeps making me run at full speed, ultimately off a cliff?”

So she began to design her days not for output, but for energy flow. She created conditions that help her stay open — like attending real-world gatherings, limiting context-switching, and making space for brainfood conversations.

“I absolutely came home buzzing with energy, being in a room, in a curated space. It didn't feel too overwhelming, but just with so many interesting people telling me interesting things, that kind of cup is very full.”

Try this: Once a week, replace a Zoom call with a walk, a museum visit, or a local event. Think of it as refuelling, not slacking. Creative energy is relational.

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4. Feed Your Brain (and Body) With Connection

Liana describes herself as “best with a spark” — someone whose creativity ignites in conversation.

That spark doesn’t come from scrolling; it comes from connection. The quick chat with a stranger, the serendipity of a room, the awkward but alive feeling of being seen.

“Whereas if you're on your phone or on your laptop, it's like the closest you'll ever get to an invisibility cloak, right? You can choose whether to engage or not.”

For those feeling creatively apathetic, connection might be the antidote — not to produce something, but to remember what it feels like to be moved.

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5. Reframe ‘Anxiety’ as Excitement

A subtle but powerful reframe:
When your heart races before a new project or social event, what if it’s not anxiety — but excitement?

“The moment when I realized that what I would have described as anxiety was excitement was huge for me. Because even calling it anxiety changes the relationship with it. It's something to stop doing.”

Reinterpreting physical sensations as energy — rather than threat — can turn overwhelm into motion.

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6. Build a Creative Ecosystem

Liana also began thinking about wellbeing like professional athletes do: as a team effort.

“There's no athlete that goes to the Olympics that does not have a sports psychologist and a physio and a chef and because the machine is this integration it needs specialists.”

That might mean therapy, coaching, accountability partners, or simply the people who remind you to rest.

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7. Let Rest Be an Act of Mastery

Creativity needs stillness. For Liana, that looked like allowing emptiness — even boredom — without guilt.

“I was absolutely an empty vessel. There was no guilt because there was no energy for guilt. There was no shame because there was no energy for shame. Like, right. I was just empty.”

This is her glass of water philosophy:

“You know no one's gonna say how dare you have a glass of water. Why are you getting up to get a glass of water? What? You are gonna fail. Sometimes my glass of water is antiques roadshow.”

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Creative fatigue, burnout, apathy — these aren’t signs of weakness. They’re signals. Your body is trying to tell you something.

When you stop trying to perform consistency and start listening to those signals, you create space for something far more powerful than productivity: self-trust.

And maybe, what looks like burnout is actually your creativity asking for a different kind of rhythm — one that includes silence and conversation, slow design and sparks of engagement.

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If you want to explore these ideas further, listen to my conversation with Liana on the podcast A Thought I Kept.

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Need some support as you navigate life’s ups and downs, explore our 1:1 coaching sessions.

Are You Giving All Your Attention to Negative Emotions?

When Amanda Sheeren (co-founder of If Lost, Start Here) joined me on A Thought I Kept, she brought a thought that had stayed with her for years:

“Even in the darkness, there is light.”

It sounds simple but it came from a place of burnout, emotional overwhelm, and the quiet collapse that can happen when we believe we’re doing everything “right.”

In the episode, Amanda shares a moment from early motherhood: two small kids, no sleep, therapy for the first time. She described showing up to those sessions thinking she’d be praised for being emotionally attuned. “I was validating every feeling. I was letting my kids be sad, be mad, feel all the things.”

But then her therapist asked her something that stopped her in her tracks:

“Is it possible that you're giving all your attention to negative emotions?”

That was the pivot point.

When Feeling Deeply Becomes Feeling Stuck

If you’ve ever been told to feel your feelings — and taken that advice seriously — you may know this space. You learn that sadness, anger, and frustration are valid. You work hard not to bypass or brush past what’s hard.

But here’s the catch: when we spend all our energy in the shadow emotions, we can forget to make space for joy, hope, and light. And those emotions need practice too.

In emotion coaching, we talk a lot about awareness, validation, and regulation. But there's a step people often miss:

Attention. Where are you placing it? What emotions are getting airtime?

Validating sadness is powerful. But so is dancing in the kitchen. So is naming a moment of peace, or laughing at the squirrel outside your window — something Amanda shares in the episode that shifted how she related to joy.

Emotions are not just there to be survived. They're part of what makes life meaningful — all of them.

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What Are You Practicing

In the episode, Amanda reflects on how her own attention began to shift. Not through gratitude lists or forced positivity, but through tiny joys. A squirrel doing something weird. A rainbow on a grey day. The “glimmers,” as some researchers call them.

And with time, those small practices started to grow into something more sustainable — a full-spectrum emotional life, not just a deep one.

Interested in Emotion Coaching?

We offer 1:1 emotion coaching sessions for people wanting to better understand their emotions — parents, creatives, leaders, those who feel a lot and want to feel more resourced doing it.

Explore our coaching offers here

How Heiter Moments Can Help Us Recover from Burnout

When Katharina Geissler-Evans first hit burnout, she was in her twenties, commuting long hours, studying full-time, and working alongside it all. “I was constantly on the go and never thought about myself,” she says. “That’s when I crashed.”

“ “I couldn’t work anymore from one day to the next. There was a chance I would fail my course. And all I did was cry.””

In the depth of it, Katharina hoped someone else might help her out of it. But one evening — collapsed on the bathroom floor — something shifted when she realized that she was the only one who could look after herself.

Katharina didn’t know the full shape of her recovery yet. But she started with seeking out the things that she used to enjoy prior to driving herself into a hole of work and study.

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What Burnout Can Teach Us

Burnout so often comes when we’ve overextended ourselves. When we’ve said yes to too much. When the doing has crowded out the being.

Katharina realised she needed to get back in touch with the version of herself before it all became too much.

“I had to find Kiki again. The version of me before the stress.”

That meant reconnecting with the person who liked sitting in a café with a book, or going for a walk, or making something with her hands. Katharina began with those tiny gestures: coffee, walks, candlelight, creativity. Just really small things that she knew she was capable of at that point. And from those small things, she built something beautiful — not just for herself, but for others too.

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Heiter: Small Joys We Can Return To

The German word heiter translates to light-hearted, cheerful, serene — but Katharina has reimagined it as something deeper. Something more intentional.

For Katharina, heiter isn’t about perfection. It’s not the glossy kind of joy. It’s about the joy found in everyday life — the quiet, steady kind. The kind you can build a life around.

It was through this lens that her lifestyle brand and independent magazine heiter was born. And even now, 10 years in, that original spark — the idea that we can choose to create joy, even in hard times — is still at the heart of her work.

There’s something radical about choosing joy when we’re overwhelmed. About stepping away from the pressure to keep going, and instead choosing to pause.

Katharina still grounds herself in everyday practices, her non-negotiables whether that’s a gratitude ritual with her children at bedtime or a morning cup of coffee, fully savoured. Things that already make a massive difference in her life. Because burnout recovery doesn’t always look like doing less. Sometimes it looks like doing differently.

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The Invitation of Heiter

As we head into darker months, many of us feel that familiar sense of depletion. But what if, like Katharina, we could meet it with softness?

“Figure out what you love at this time of year,” she suggests. “For me, it’s pumpkin soup, lighting candles, making comfort food my granny used to make. These moments matter.”

Heiter isn’t a prescription — it’s a permission. A permission to reconnect with your own joys. To remember what restores you. And to begin, again, from there.

Take one small heiter moment this week — a walk, a warm drink, a candle, a laugh with someone you love. Could that help slowly bring you back to yourself.

And if this conversation resonates, listen to the full podcast episode with Katharina Geissler-Evans wherever you get your podcasts.

Or read the extended conversation over on our Substack at More Good Days.

Why Feeling Your Emotions Can Be So Terrifying and What to Do About It

Have you ever felt like the tiniest thing , an unexpected email, a message left on read, a look, a tone, a bill, sends your whole system into overdrive?

In this week’s podcast episode, I spoke to massage therapist and bodyworker Carrie Ekins about emotional overwhelm, emotional exhaustion, and how to begin feeling safe enough to feel our feelings, even when it feels absolutely terrifying.

Carrie shared a thought that changed everything for her:

“Everything is a saber-toothed tiger.”

It sounds playful, but it's a serious insight. Because for many of us, our nervous systems are constantly interpreting life’s daily stresses as if our actual survival is under threat. The primitive parts of our brain haven’t evolved fast enough to know the difference between a demanding boss and a predator in the wild.

So instead of processing an email or a conversation, our bodies kick into survival mode — fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. Over and over. Day after day.

And what gets missed? The essential third part of the stress cycle: processing.

The Truth About Emotional Overwhelm

So many of us are living in a constant state of emotional hyper-vigilance. And the more we try to push through, the more disconnected we become, from our bodies, from our feelings, from ourselves.

As Carrie so beautifully put it:

“… I have to learn how to feel my emotions, even though that is absolutely terrifying because nobody's given me the tools, no one has shown me how to walk this path, nobody has shown me how this feels. Why would you want to do that? That all just sounds like mortifyingly awful…”

And so, when emotions do start to rise, they feel unbearable. Too big. Too much. Too dangerous. Like saber-toothed tigers of the soul.

But the truth is, your feelings aren’t trying to hurt you. They’re trying to help you find your way, back into your body, back into your breath, back into your life.

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What If You Didn’t Have to Be Afraid of Your Emotions?

Carrie talks about the power of simple practices that help us shift from stress and shutdown into softening and why softening is not weakness, but wisdom.

It’s not about going on a 10-day silent retreat or becoming someone you’re not. It’s about finding small, meaningful ways to reconnect with your body:

• Placing a hand on your chest and simply breathing

• Listening to the birdsong out an open window

• Dancing in your kitchen or humming your favourite tune

• Noticing the texture of the ground beneath your feet

These are what Carrie calls wellbeing anchors: tools that remind your body it’s safe to soften, to feel, to rest.

And from that place of safety, emotional overwhelm starts to ease. Emotional exhaustion starts to heal. The stories your body has been holding start to shift.

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Softening Isn’t a Flaw — It’s a Superpower

There’s a story many of us carry that if we let go, if we soften, we’ll lose control. We won’t be prepared. We’ll get eaten alive by the saber-toothed tigers of our inbox, our timelines, our expectations.

But what if softness is what helps us survive?

What if being more in our bodies — in our breath, our senses, our full emotional range — is the very thing that keeps us rooted, resourceful, and resilient?

As Carrie said,

And when you have that moment, when you come back into your body and you can feel your feet on the ground and you can feel your hand on your chest, it's really magical because literally it's like everything opens up. Like your hearing becomes more accessible and your vision is clearer and brighter. And these are physiological changes because your stress has dropped, your cortisol has dropped and your body has instantly responded with allowing yourself to be more present and more there. And that's the beauty of just softening.

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We’re All a Little Overwhelmed Right Now

If you’ve been feeling emotionally exhausted, like your nervous system is fried and you can’t stop bracing for the next disaster — you’re not “weird” and you’re certainly not failing. You’re responding the way any human would in a world that has asked far too much for far too long.

But there’s another way. One where you can start to feel your feelings without drowning in them. One where you don’t have to do it alone.

Listen to the full conversation with Carrie Ekins on Substack here, Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You’ll find that it’s a gentle, playful, radically human exploration of what it means to come back to yourself, one breath at a time.

And if you’re curious about exploring your own emotional life in a deeper, supported way, enquire about our 1:1 emotions coaching. It’s a safe, compassionate space to learn how to feel your feelings — and feel safe doing so.

Because your emotions aren’t saber-toothed tigers. They’re just messengers. And they might be waiting for you to listen to them.

How to Pay Attention (When the World Keeps Pulling You Away)

If you’ve been feeling overwhelmed, scattered, or a little bit lost lately, we’re with you.

This is an age of constant distraction — and for many of us, that means we’ve stopped paying attention. Not just to the world around us, but to ourselves.

We move through the day with noise in our ears, tabs open in our brains, and a quiet sense that something is missing — even if we can’t name what.

So what would it mean to really notice our lives again?

The Gift of Noticing

In a recent episode of my podcast, A Thought I Kept, I spoke with Andrea Rathborne — a storyteller and creative leader — about a memory from her early twenties that still lives vividly in her mind. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t loud. It was a simple, wordless exchange with an elderly woman in Greece, sitting on a stone step, snapping beans in the morning light.

There were no profound quotes. No life-changing advice. But that small, silent moment stitched itself into the fabric of Andrea’s life. She describes her memory as a kind of Morse code, made of dots and dashes — tiny gestures and longer scenes that, together, form her library of moments.

But this conversation made me think: what happens when we lose the ability to notice?

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Distraction Is a Mental Health Issue

There’s growing research around attention as a form of wellbeing. When we’re constantly pulled between notifications, tasks, and worries, our brain stays in a reactive state — flooding our nervous system and draining our energy.

Distraction disconnects us, from ourselves, from others, from the present moment.

But when we pause long enough to really notice the light in the kitchen, the warmth of a shared task, the quiet rhythm of our breath, something shifts.

Paying attention does three powerful things:

1. Regulates the nervous system: Deep presence signals safety to the brain. It slows the stress response and brings us into calm.

2. Builds emotional resilience: When we’re present, we can process emotions as they arise — instead of stuffing them down or numbing out.

3. Reawakens connection: To beauty. To meaning. To other people. To ourselves. And that connection is the antidote to loneliness.

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What Are We Even Paying Attention To?

That’s the other part of this, right? It’s not just about being mindful for the sake of it. It’s about what we’re turning toward. Noticing can be the very beginning of holding on.

Because when we pay attention, we don’t just see the world more clearly. We start to remember who we are.

So what’s worth noticing?

• The texture of your day — not just the events, but how they feel

• The people you love, and the way their voice sounds when they’re excited

• The in-between moments— reading a beloved book, making tea, watching the rain

• Your own thoughts — especially the positive ones you keep coming back to

These are the things that make up a life. And there’s value in noticing them.

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5 Everyday Ways to Pay Attention (That Actually Feel Good)

You don’t need a 30-minute meditation practice or a digital detox to get started.

Here are a few gentle ways to return to presence today:

1. Choose one daily ritual to do without distraction. Drink your coffee without scrolling. Fold laundry while listening to yourself. Let one small thing become sacred.

2. Keep a Dot + Dash Journal. Inspired by Andrea’s Morse code metaphor, jot down: One dot: a fleeting moment that caught your attention. One dash: a longer memory or thought you want to hold onto. This builds your own “library of moments.”

3. Practice sensory noticing. What can you see, hear, smell, taste, or touch right now? Anchor yourself with one detail from each sense.

4. Look for everyday awe. Wonder is good for the nervous system. A tree against the sky, your child’s laugh, the smell of lavender. Notice something that makes you come alive, even a little.

5. Draw your day in five lines. Not an artist? Even better. Use five quick lines or shapes to represent how your day feels — not what happened, but what it felt like. A scribble. A curve. A burst. It’s a way to bypass the brain and check in through creativity.

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If You’re Feeling Lost…

Start with your attention. Don’t try to solve everything at once. Just slow down enough to notice the moment you’re in.

Name one thing. Feel one breath. Stay with it for a beat longer than you normally would.

And maybe that becomes your first dot — the first piece of a new way of being. Not a perfect or polished one. But a path back to presence, and maybe even to yourself.

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Want to Go Deeper?

You can listen to my full conversation with Andrea Rathborne on the podcast here:

Or join me over on Substack at More Good Days, where I share weekly reflections, prompts, and gentle reminders that life is made of tiny things, that are still yours to notice. .

Announcing our Autumn Program | Where Do You Go When You’re Not Sure What You Need?

Maybe something has shifted, but you can’t quite name what. You’ve got too many browser tabs open — in your head, and on your laptop. You're doing all the right things, but they don’t feel quite right anymore.

Autumn has a way of stirring up questions we didn’t know we’d been carrying:

• Do I still want this?

• Why don’t I feel like myself?

• What would feel like mine again?

You’re not quite in crisis, but you are feeling disorientated, and maybe longing for something that feels better than where you are right now.

That’s what we’ll be exploring together this season.

The Season for Turning Inwards

At If Lost Start Here, we hear a lot of stories that begin in this foggy middle place.

Like the woman who told us, “I haven’t connected with myself in months. I’m just in the mix of it all, not really in my life anymore.”

Or the client who shared, “I’ve got space now that my youngest is in school — but I don’t know what to do with it”

Or the midlife creative who sat with us and said, “I think I’m grieving a version of my life I never got to live. And also, I’m wondering what’s next.”

This time of year — as the light changes, the calendar flips, and the quiet gets a little louder — is when many of us begin to tune into these fundamental questions we might have about our lives. Wondering “what now?” and “what’s next?”.

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A Way Back to Yourself (That Doesn’t Ask You to Do Even More)

This season, we’re not offering more pressure to transform. We’re offering a place to just explore where you are. A way for you to get to know what you really think and feel — just a little more consciously.

We’ve designed our Fall Wellbeing Programme as an invitation to find your way if you’re feeling just that little bit lost right now:

Lost & Found Sessions

Book a one-to-one online coaching sessions, designed for anyone feeling lost, disconnected, overwhelmed or simply curious. These provide the vital space to name what’s shifting and hear think yourself again. They are a great place to start.

The Wellery (on Substack)

A weekly-ish newsletter with thoughts on emotional wellbeing, curiosity, and creative living. It’s less about giving advice, but more about exploring how to do life together, with more thought and intention.

So Emotional: The Midlife Edition

Coming soon: a course and community for anyone navigating the emotional ups and downs of midlife. We'll share stories, tools, and insights that don’t minimise the messiness, or the possibility, of this period in our lives.

A Thought I Kept (Podcast)

Each week a guest share the single idea they haven’t let go of, when they might have all the rest. It’s perfect for anyone feeling overwhelmed by all the life advice out there.

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Our Autumn Program is designed to help you look at your days a little differently. Noticing what feels out of rhythm. Following what brings energy instead of obligation.

We’ve worked with people who thought they needed a new job but actually needed to make space for creativity. With those who were looking for a plan but found their values instead. And with people who’d gone quiet on themselves for so long they forgot how to listen and were surprised by how quickly that voice returned.

• Feeling lost is often just a sign that you’ve outgrown something.

• Or that something inside you is ready to be heard.

• Or that a new question is forming, even if you don’t have the words yet.

Whatever it is: you don’t need to figure it out alone, or all at once.

You just need somewhere to start.

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Want to Come With Us?

We’re using this space — our journal — to share gentle prompts, real stories, and ideas for a more creative and conscious kind of wellbeing.

Here’s how you can explore more with us:

• Subscribe to our newsletter — for more ways to well

• Listen to A Thought I Kept — our wellbeing podcast about life’s most lasting ideas

• Book a Lost & Found Session — if you need some support

• Join the waitlist for So Emotional— if midlife is bringing things up for you

• Visit us over on our Substack at More Good Days.

Or just explore our website for more guidance for everyday life.

Sometimes the most powerful move is noticing that you’re ready to begin.

We’re glad you’ve found us.