When Midlife Feels Like More Than You Expected

For many women, midlife can arrive with a sense that life isn’t quite as straightforward as it once was. The responsibilities we’ve carried for years — at work, within families, in our friendships and community roles — haven’t disappeared, and yet something in the background changes. Sleep feels less restorative. Thoughts feel a little foggy. Tasks that once felt manageable now feel heavier. It can be hard to put a name on it, but you feel it: a sense that there’s more to life than you can easily juggle, even when nothing obvious has fallen apart.

A recent survey of women aged 50 and over in Britain has given words to many of these experiences. Almost two in three women in this age group say they are struggling with their mental health as they navigate the changes that come with midlife — from menopause and sleep disruption to relationship shifts, caring for ageing parents and adjusting to children leaving home. For many, this is accompanied by anxiety, poor sleep, “brain fog” and a loss of the zest for life they once took for granted.

Perhaps most striking is how quiet this struggle often is. The survey found that almost nine out of ten women dealing with these challenges don’t seek help. Many feel they have to cope alone, or minimise how they’re feeling because the idea of asking for support feels somehow like giving in — even when the weight of it all is real.

What’s Underneath Overwhelm

This isn’t just about menopause. It’s about transitions that happen gradually and simultaneously: shifts in our bodies; shifts in our roles; evolving relationships; changes in energy and emotional resilience. Each of these on its own can feel manageable, but woven together over years they can create a deep and exhausting pressure that’s easy to overlook until it becomes hard to ignore.

Many women simply don’t talk about this. Society still tends to treat emotional struggle — especially in midlife — as something that should be handled quietly, or something to “power through”. But the survey reminds us that these experiences are common and human, not a personal failing.

The Cost of Keeping It Quiet

When emotional strain isn’t acknowledged, it doesn’t disappear — it accumulates. It affects sleep, concentration, relationships and the simple joy of everyday moments. It becomes harder to notice when you’re depleted, because you’ve become accustomed to pushing through. And without space to reflect on what you’re actually feeling and why, it’s easy to blame yourself rather than understand that what you’re experiencing is a response to real emotional load.

That’s why finding the right kind of support matters.

What Support Looks Like — Beyond a Quick Fix

For some women, support might be practical — medication, hormone therapy, lifestyle adjustment, or changes in work or caregiving arrangements. For others, it’s about having someone to talk things through with — not someone who offers quick answers, but someone who helps make sense of experience and emotion in a grounded, non-judgmental way.

This is where emotions coaching can fill a gap that many traditional services overlook. It isn’t therapy in the clinical sense, and it isn’t a promise to “fix” everything overnight. Instead, it’s a space designed to help you:

• notice what’s been building beneath the surface

• make sense of emotional patterns rather than dismissing them

• recognise what’s reasonable to expect of yourself — and what isn’t

• develop a clearer sense of how you’re feeling rather than just that you’re overwhelmed

For women whose lives are woven with responsibility and care — often for others — having someone who listens deeply and reflects back what you’re actually experiencing can offer clarity and grounding rather than pressure to perform better or be more resilient.

You’re Not Alone in This

The survey’s findings are a reminder that many women are living with these feelings — often quietly and without support. That doesn’t make your experience any less valid. It makes it human.

If this resonated, you might like our occasional reflections and conversations on emotional life, wellbeing and what it really feels like when life feels like a lot.

And if you feel ready to explore your feelings with someone — not to fix you but to understand your experience more clearly — learn more about emotions coaching and how I might support you through midlife.

Why Everything Feels Like Too Much

Often it isn’t one big thing that tips us into feeling overwhelmed. It’s the accumulation of many small, reasonable demands, layered one on top of another, until life begins to feel heavier than it looks from the outside. You’re still doing what needs doing. You’re still showing up. And yet, there’s a sense that everything takes more effort than it should, that coping has become something you have to consciously work at rather than something that happens naturally.

This is usually when people start questioning themselves. Not in a dramatic way, but in the background of everyday life. Why does this feel so hard? Am I just not very good at coping? Is this just me? We tend to assume the explanation must be personal — a flaw, a lack, a resilience gap we haven’t quite closed yet.

But very often, what’s going on has less to do with who you are, and more to do with capacity.

Capacity isn’t one single thing you either have or don’t have. It’s layered, changeable, and deeply affected by the conditions of your life. And when we talk about feeling overwhelmed, we’re often really talking about several kinds of capacity being stretched at once — even if we haven’t named them that way before.

There’s work capacity, for example. This isn’t just about hours or workload, but about responsibility, pressure, decision-making, and the emotional labour that so often comes with work — particularly in caring roles, leadership positions, or people-facing jobs where you’re expected to hold others as well as yourself. Then there’s mental capacity: the ability to concentrate, plan, remember, and problem-solve without every small decision feeling draining. When this is stretched, even simple choices can begin to feel surprisingly heavy.

There’s emotional capacity too — how much feeling you can hold, not only your own, but other people’s as well. Supporting children, partners, parents, colleagues, friends. Anticipating needs. Managing tension. Smoothing things over so life keeps moving.

Alongside this sits energy capacity: sleep, health, recovery time, and the overall load on your nervous system. This is often the first capacity to dip, and the one we’re most likely to ignore or override.

And then there’s life capacity — the background weight of life itself. The admin, the finances, the relationships, the uncertainty, the changes, the griefs and transitions that don’t always announce themselves loudly but still take up space.

You can be coping well enough in one area while another is quietly depleted. And when several kinds of capacity are stretched at the same time, it can feel as though something is deeply wrong, even when nothing obvious has changed. This is often why advice about slowing down or prioritising yourself can feel oddly out of reach. When capacity is already full, there isn’t spare room to rearrange things — there’s just more being asked.

For many people, doing everything isn’t about control or perfectionism. It’s about necessity. It’s about being the one who notices what needs doing and steps in because otherwise it won’t happen. It’s about holding together the practical and emotional threads of a life that relies on you more than feels fair. In that context, exhaustion isn’t a failure — it’s a natural response.

And yet, this is often where self-criticism creeps in. Why can’t I cope better? Why does everyone else seem to manage? Why does rest feel so far away for me? Overwhelm becomes something to judge ourselves for, rather than something to listen to.

Capacity isn’t something you fix by pushing harder or organising yourself more efficiently. It’s something you work with. And that often begins by telling the truth — not in a way that demands immediate change, but in a way that simply names what’s real. What’s taking the most from you right now. Where there isn’t really a safety net underneath. How tired you are, not because you’re weak, but because you’ve been carrying a lot for a long time.

When people begin to understand their experience through this lens, something softens. The constant questioning eases. The pressure to justify how they feel begins to lift. Not because everything suddenly changes, but because the story they’ve been telling themselves does.

If you’ve been wondering whether the way you’re feeling is justified, it probably is. Overwhelm is rarely random. It’s often a sign that too much has been resting on you for too long. Learning to listen to that — without rushing to fix yourself — can be the start of a steadier, kinder relationship with your own limits.

If this piece resonated, you might like to hear from us occasionally. Our newsletter shares thoughtful reflections and gentle guidance for navigating everyday life when things feel like a lot.

And if you’re feeling overwhelmed, confused by your emotional responses, or questioning why things feel the way they do, our 1:1 emotions coaching sessions can help you make sense of what’s happening.

When the Story You’re Living No Longer Feels Like Yours

You might be standing in the kitchen, making packed lunches. Nothing dramatic is happening. No argument. No crisis. Just the familiar rhythm of the morning — coffee cooling on the side, toast popping up, your phone lighting up with emails you already feel behind on.

You might catch yourself thinking, I’m good at this. At holding things together. At anticipating what everyone else might need. At getting through the day without making too much noise. And then, almost immediately, another thought follows: But I don’t remember choosing this version of myself.

It’s not that you dislike your life. You’re capable, loved, respected. From the outside, things look fine. But there’s a growing sense that you’re performing a role you’ve learned very well — one shaped by expectation, responsibility, and what once felt necessary — rather than living from a place that feels true to you now.

When you try to put words to it, they’re hard to find. You don’t want to sound ungrateful. You don’t want to blow things up. You just know that something about the story you’re carrying feels outdated, like clothing that once fit perfectly but now restricts your movement in small, tiring ways.

This is often how it begins. Not with a bold decision or a clear turning point, but with a quiet noticing. A moment where the life you’re living feels slightly misaligned with the person you’re becoming. Where the way you’re seen — dependable, easy-going, capable — no longer matches how you feel on the inside.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since my recent conversation on A Thought I Kept with Hilary Salzman. We talked about storytelling, voice, and self-trust — not as something polished or performative, but as something deeply everyday. The stories we absorb, repeat, and live inside, often without realising we’re doing it.

Hilary shared a thought that has stayed with her for years: if you don’t tell your story, someone else will. It isn’t a warning or a call to action. It’s more like a lens — a way of noticing what happens when we stop authoring our own lives and allow habit, expectation, or other people’s assumptions to fill in the gaps.

Most of us aren’t consciously choosing to live someone else’s story. It happens gradually. We adapt. We respond. We take on roles that make us legible and useful. We learn how to be good — good at work, good in relationships, good at coping. And for a long time, those stories can be protective. They help us belong. They help us get through.

But protection can quietly turn into distance. From ourselves. From our feelings. From the sense of aliveness that comes from knowing why we’re doing what we’re doing.

In the conversation, Hilary spoke about the discomfort that arises when the way the world sees you no longer matches how you see yourself. That mismatch can show up as anxiety, restlessness, or a low-level dissatisfaction that’s hard to explain. You might feel unsettled or unsure, even though nothing is obviously “wrong”.

What stays with me is how rarely this is about needing a better plan or a more confident version of yourself. More often, it’s about noticing. Becoming curious about the stories you’re living inside. Asking gentle questions, not to fix or optimise, but to understand.

Whose expectations am I carrying here?
What version of myself am I maintaining?
What would it mean to tell this story in my own words?

We live in a culture that treats uncertainty as something to overcome — as though clarity must arrive quickly, and confidence comes from having answers. But what if uncertainty is simply information? A sign that something is shifting. A signal that the story you’ve been living has reached its limits.

Hilary talked about how clarity often doesn’t arrive as an answer, but as a feeling in the body — a sense of constriction or ease. A quiet knowing that something no longer fits. And noticing this doesn’t require dramatic change or brave declarations. It can begin by allowing yourself to feel what’s already there, without rushing to make sense of it.

This is where self-trust comes in — not as confidence or self-belief in the motivational sense, but as a willingness to stay present with your own experience. To let your emotions inform you rather than embarrass you. To trust that discomfort isn’t a personal failure, but a reasonable response to living inside a story that’s outgrown its usefulness.

Many people arrive at If Lost Start Here feeling overwhelmed, behind, or unsure why familiar wellbeing advice isn’t helping. Often, that’s because what’s needed isn’t another strategy, but orientation. A way of standing still long enough to feel where you are, and what might be asking for attention.

Living your own story doesn’t mean having a perfectly articulated narrative. It doesn’t require sharing everything or knowing exactly who you are becoming. It’s less about broadcasting and more about authorship — about being able to come back to yourself and say, this is who I am, for now. This is what matters. This is what I’m no longer willing to override.

The stories we tell ourselves shape our nervous systems, our relationships, our sense of belonging. When those stories are borrowed, inherited, or outdated, it makes sense that we feel unsettled. And when we begin to gently reclaim them — not by rewriting our lives overnight, but by listening more closely — something steadies.

You don’t need to force a new story into existence. You don’t need to perform authenticity or prove your voice. Sometimes it’s enough to notice the gap. To recognise the feeling of misalignment without judging it. To stay curious about what’s trying to emerge.

If this resonates, you might want to listen to the full conversation with Hilary on A Thought I Kept. It’s a thoughtful exploration of voice, identity, and what it means to feel more at home in your own life.

And if you’re in a season of questioning — unsure, overwhelmed, or quietly ready for something to shift — there’s support here too. Not to fix you, but to help you find your footing, in your own time, and in your own words.

You’re allowed to pause. You’re allowed to question the story you’re in. And you’re allowed to take your time deciding what comes next.

When No One Is Coming to Save You: Finding Self-Trust in Midlife

Sometimes feeling lost doesn’t look as dramatic as we think it might.

Rather it looks like getting through the day, doing what needs to be done, being relied on — and still having a sense that you’re not quite where you thought you’d be. Or that life feels oddly paused, even though everything is moving. You might not be unhappy, exactly. Just a little unheld. A little disconnected from yourself.

I notice this often when I talk to women in midlife. There’s competence there. So much experience. Caring for everyone and everything. And underneath it all, a feeling that something is meant to shift but absolutely no clear sense of how or when.

That feeling came up strongly for me in a recent conversation on A Thought I Kept with Edwina Jenner. As we talked, Edwina shared an idea that had stopped her in her tracks because it named something she hadn’t realised she was carrying.

The sense that, quietly, she had been waiting.

Waiting for things to feel easier. Waiting for confidence to arrive. Waiting for someone — or something — to step in and make life feel more manageable, more certain, more settled.

When she finally noticed that belief, it wasn’t crushing. It was clarifying.

Because alongside it came another realisation: no one else was coming to save her. She already had more agency than she’d been giving herself credit for.

Many of us arrive here having spent years responding to what’s needed — children, work, relationships, family, emotional labour. We learn to be capable. Reliable. Adaptable. And somewhere along the way, it can become easy to lose touch with our own pull. Not what’s expected of us, but what matters now.

Waiting can feel sensible. Responsible. Even kind. We tell ourselves we’ll come back to ourselves when things calm down. When there’s more space. When we feel more confident. When life gives us a clearer signal. But often, that signal never arrives.

Instead, what we notice are small signs of disconnection. Putting off caring for our bodies because we’re tired. Dismissing creative ideas because they feel indulgent. Ignoring rest, curiosity, or desire because other things seem more important.

In the conversation, Edwina spoke about strength, not as something performative or punishing, but as something built slowly, through attention and consistency. She talked about learning to trust herself again by doing what she said she would do. By listening to what pulled her, even when it felt uncomfortable. By recognising that motivation comes and goes, but self-trust is built through action.

What struck me most was how impactful this actually was.

Believing that no one is coming to save you doesn’t have to mean doing everything alone. It doesn’t mean hardening yourself or becoming self-sufficient at all costs. It can mean releasing an expectation that has unconsciously kept you waiting and turning back toward yourself instead.

There can be a kind of relief in that. Relief in realising you don’t need to become someone else to move forward. You don’t need a dramatic overhaul or a better version of yourself. You need permission to take yourself seriously. To listen more closely to what your body, your energy, and your inner life are already telling you.

When self-trust begins to rebuild, it rarely announces itself loudly. It shows up in small decisions. In boundaries that feel steadier. In caring for your body not as a project, but as a relationship. In choosing what supports you, even when it doesn’t look impressive from the outside.

If you’re feeling lost right now, it might not be because you’re “behind” or “broken”. It might be because you’re between ways of being. No longer able to live on autopilot, but not yet clear about what comes next.

That in-between can feel uncomfortable. But it’s also where attention returns. Where curiosity starts to replace pressure. Where you begin to notice that you already know more than you think.

At If Lost Start Here, we don’t believe that confidence or wellbeing come from fixing yourself or forcing change. They come from reconnecting — slowly and openly — with what matters to you now. From trusting that the things pulling at you are worth listening to.

If this resonates, you might like to listen to the full conversation with Edwina on A Thought I Kept.

And if midlife feels like a threshold you’re standing in — unsure, but ready for something to change — we’ve created a great resource to support that moment.

You can download our free midlife resource here.

Wellbeing Doesn’t Have to Be Hard: A Manifesto for Doing It Differently

What if wellbeing didn’t feel like a job?

There’s something tiring about the way wellbeing is often presented to us, as a series of things we’re meant to be doing properly: routines to get right, habits to keep up with, versions of ourselves we’re encouraged to move towards. Even when it’s well intentioned, it can start to feel like pressure dressed up in pastel colours, another place where we’re measuring ourselves and wondering why it doesn’t seem to land in the way it’s supposed to.

At If Lost Start Here, this comes up again and again in conversations with the people we work with and hear from. It’s not that people don’t care about wellbeing or aren’t trying. It’s that trying to do it right can begin to feel like work in itself, and sometimes like another quiet way of feeling you’re falling short.

So this manifesto begins with a gentler question. What if your wellbeing wasn’t something to chase or optimise, but something you could return to, slowly and with a little more kindness, in ways that actually fit the life you’re living right now?

This piece grew out of the threads we’ve been following in our own work over time: conversations that stayed with us, notes scribbled in the margins of notebooks, moments where we wished someone had said, more clearly, that you’re not doing this wrong. Again and again, we come back to the same idea, which feels both simple and surprisingly difficult to hold onto: your wellbeing doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be yours.

Not an idealised version of you, and not a future version either, but the one that exists here and now, with all its changeability, contradictions, and constraints. When we start from there, wellbeing stops being about keeping up and starts to feel more like listening, noticing, and responding to what actually matters to you in this moment.

We all need small, grounding reminders of that from time to time, especially when life feels loud or uncertain. Words that help us exhale rather than strive, sentences that soften the sharp edges of the day and bring us back to ourselves. That’s what this manifesto is intended to be. It isn’t long, it isn’t prescriptive, and it isn’t another thing to add to your list. It’s simply a list of lessons we’ve learned that you can return to, whether you pin it to your wall, tuck it inside a journal, or come back to it on the days when wellbeing feels like too much to hold.

You don’t need fixing, and you don’t need better habits in order to be worthy of care. What many of us are really longing for is more space to feel like ourselves again, without the constant sense that we should be doing more or doing it differently.

This manifesto doesn’t offer solutions or strategies. Instead, it offers something quieter and, we hope, more sustaining: reassurance, permission, and a reminder that wellbeing can be personal, creative, relational, and shaped by what matters to you and what helps in the here and now, rather than by someone else’s idea of what it should look like.

So take what you need from it and leave the rest.

Which line speaks to you most today, and which one might be worth carrying with you into the week ahead?

• You don’t need to be your best self. Just your kindest self.

• Wellbeing isn’t a destination. It’s an ongoing relationship with yourself.

• You’re allowed to start again. And again. And again.

• The smallest things — a song, a sentence, a coffee drunk warm — can restore you.

• Books, podcasts, art and beauty aren’t luxuries. They’re lifelines.

• Your feelings are not flaws. They’re vital messages of what matters

• You don’t need to fix yourself. You need space to feel like yourself

• Messiness and detours; They’re part of being human.

• Language matters. Speak to yourself like someone you deeply love.

• Connection is wellbeing. You were never meant to do this alone.

If this resonates and you’re curious about exploring what might help you in the here and now, you can find out more about our wellbeing sessions here.

A Better Way to Well: Why Personalised Wellbeing Matters

There comes a point where trying to “look after yourself” starts to feel strangely exhausting.

You’re doing the things you’ve been told are good for you. You’re walking more. You’re resting when you can. You’ve read the articles, listened to the podcasts, saved the posts. And yet, instead of feeling steadier or more supported, you’re left with a sense that you’re somehow falling short.

If this sounds familiar, it’s not because you’re doing wellbeing wrong. It’s because the way we’re often encouraged to approach wellbeing doesn’t leave much room for real life.

Most wellbeing advice assumes we’re all starting from the same place, with the same needs, energy, and capacity. But we’re not. We’re living different lives, carrying different histories, responding to different pressures. What helps one person feel calmer or clearer can leave another feeling overwhelmed or inadequate.

At If Lost Start Here, this is something we return to again and again. Not because we have a neat fix, but because we keep hearing the same story.

People aren’t resistant to wellbeing. They’re tired of advice that doesn’t meet them where they are.

We live in a moment where wellbeing information is everywhere. We know more than ever about our nervous systems, emotions, habits, and mental health. That knowledge can be genuinely helpful. But it also creates a strange pressure — the sense that if we just chose the right tools, followed the right routine, or tried a little harder, we’d finally feel okay.

Instead, many people end up feeling more lost than when they started.

So we’ve been asking a different kind of question.

Rather than “What’s the best way to well?”
We ask: “What matters to you right now and what might actually help?”

A personalised wellbeing prescription starts there.

It’s not a generic plan or a set of instructions to follow. It’s a thoughtful way of reconnecting people with what matters most to them — their values, interests, curiosities, relationships, and needs — and then exploring what could support them in the here and now.

Not in theory. Not in an ideal version of life. But in the life they’re actually living.

This kind of approach recognises that wellbeing isn’t static. What you need during a period of uncertainty, grief, overwhelm, or quiet dissatisfaction will be different from what you need when life feels steadier or more expansive. A personalised prescription adapts as you do.

It also leaves room for creativity and play. Instead of focusing solely on what’s wrong or what needs fixing, we look at what might gently reintroduce energy, meaning, and connection. That might be through nature, creativity, culture, conversation, reflection, or small, everyday rituals that help you feel more like yourself again.

The emphasis isn’t on doing more — it’s on doing what makes sense. Optimism, here, doesn’t come from adding another habit or chasing a better version of yourself. It comes from feeling understood, supported, and reconnected to what already matters to you.

A personalised wellbeing prescription offers a way to cut through the noise and make sense of what might help now. It gives shape and direction without pressure. It supports agency, curiosity, and choice — not compliance.

And importantly, it doesn’t treat wellbeing as something separate from life. It weaves support into your days in ways that feel realistic, human, and sustainable.

If you’re feeling lost, overwhelmed, or dissatisfied with the way wellbeing is presented to you, this is your reminder: you’re not behind, broken, or failing.

You might simply be ready for a different way of being supported.

At If Lost Start Here, our personalised wellbeing prescriptions are designed to help you reconnect with what matters, explore what helps in this moment, and build a more supportive relationship with your own wellbeing — one that feels creative, playful, and personal.

You don’t need fixing. You don’t need perfect habits. Maybe you just need an approach that starts where you are.

Struggling With Comparison? Rethinking Confidence and Self-Trust

This is how it might go. You’re scrolling, or reading, or listening to a podcast, and you notice a flicker of feeling when someone else shares good news. A promotion. A book deal. A confident post about work they love. You’re pleased for them — genuinely — and yet something tightens. A question forms that you don’t quite want to look at too closely.

What does this mean about me?

Moments like this don’t usually come with drama. They’re small, everyday, easy to brush past. But they can linger. And over time, they shape how we see ourselves, how we show up at work, and how much space we allow ourselves to take.

This week on A Thought I Kept, I spoke to Nicky Denson-Elliott, and she brought a thought that disrupted that familiar inner pattern:

In order for me to win, no one else has to lose.

It’s one of those ideas that seems obvious when you first hear it and then quietly radical the longer you sit with it.

Because so much of our inner landscape has been shaped by the opposite belief. That success is scarce. That confidence belongs to certain people, not others. That if someone else steps forward, there’s less room for us. These ideas don’t usually announce themselves as beliefs. They show up as feelings: comparison, jealousy, self-doubt, hesitation.

Nicky spoke about how deeply this conditioning runs, especially for women. How it can shape our relationship with money, confidence, and visibility. How it influences the way we price our work — often not based on its value, but on what feels safe. How it quietly sets women against one another, even when connection and solidarity are what we most want.

What’s important here is that none of this is a personal flaw. These are not thoughts we invented. They’re learned. Reinforced. Picked up over time in workplaces, families, schools, media, and culture. When they surface, they can feel intensely personal but they rarely originate there.

And when life already feels full or uncertain, carrying these inherited ideas can make everything heavier. You might notice it in how hard you are on yourself. In the way you second-guess decisions. In the tension you feel around confidence — wanting it, distrusting it, worrying what it might cost.

One of the most grounding parts of the conversation with Nicky was her refusal to replace one set of rules with another. There was no invitation to be bolder, louder, or more confident in a performative sense. Instead, she talked about noticing. About recognising when a familiar reaction appears and asking, with curiosity rather than judgment: Is this actually mine?

That question alone can create a shift.

Because when we start to see that some of our thoughts are inherited rather than chosen, we don’t have to wrestle with them in the same way. We don’t have to argue ourselves out of feeling jealous or small or unsure. We can simply recognise the pattern, and loosen our grip.

This matters not just for our inner world, but for how we move through everyday life. Especially work. Especially relationships with other women. Especially moments where confidence feels like something other people have access to, and we’re still figuring it out.

Letting go of the myth of competition doesn’t mean pretending everything is fair or easy. It doesn’t mean denying ambition or discomfort. But it does open up a different orientation — one where someone else’s success doesn’t automatically diminish our own, and where confidence can be something we grow into, rather than something we perform.

For many of us, this kind of rethinking doesn’t arrive as a neat turning point. It shows up gradually. In small pauses. In moments where we choose not to rush to judgment — of ourselves or others. In the realisation that uncertainty doesn’t mean we’re failing; it often means we’re paying attention.

If you’ve been questioning old ideas about success, money, confidence, or what it means to be doing “well” in life, you’re not behind. You may simply be noticing that the old maps don’t quite match the terrain anymore.

Nicky’s thought offers a steadier way of orienting. It reminds us that life isn’t a zero-sum game. That generosity — toward ourselves and others — isn’t naïve, but grounding. And that self-trust doesn’t come from fixing or perfecting ourselves, but from recognising which beliefs were never designed to support us in the first place.

You don’t need to know what comes next. You don’t need to replace every thought at once. Sometimes it’s enough to notice which ideas make life feel smaller, and to wonder — without urgency — what it might be like to set one of them down.

If this resonates, listen to the full conversation with Nicky on A Thought I Kept.

And if you need help exploring some of the feelings you have around comparison — jealousy, self-doubt, hesitation — or what confidence even means to you, explore our emotions coaching sessions.

Burnout and Neurodiversity: When the World Wasn’t Made for You

There’s a particular sense of being absolutely and utterly lost that doesn’t come from not trying hard enough.

It comes from doing all the things you’re meant to do — reading the books, following the advice, showing up, pushing through — and still feeling as though something isn’t quite lining up. As if you’re working hard to fit into a life that doesn’t seem to hold you in the way you hoped it would.

For many people, this shows up as overwhelming exhaustion. Or confusion. Or a sense of being slightly out of step with the world around you. You might tell yourself you need more confidence, more clarity, more discipline. Or you might wonder why change seems to come more easily to other people.

This is often the moment people arrive here — not because they want to reinvent themselves, but because they’re looking for something steadier to stand on and anchor themselves in.

One of the things we keep returning to through the podcast A Thought I Kept is the idea that sometimes it’s not a new plan we need, but a new way of seeing. A thought that doesn’t tell us what to do, but helps us understand what’s already happening.

In a recent conversation, Matthew Bellringer shared one such idea. Their “thought kept” was:

“ neurodiversity — and more specifically, the understanding that people experience the world in fundamentally different ways.”

Not just think differently. Not just behave differently. But experience differently: how information lands, how emotions move through the body, how energy rises and falls, how environments feel, how much effort it takes just to get through the day.

Matthew spoke about how this understanding helped them make sense of years of feeling overwhelmed, burnt out, or misunderstood — not as personal failure, but as a mismatch between their nervous system and the systems they were trying to survive within. Burnout, in this light, wasn’t a sign of weakness or poor resilience. It was a signal. A body doing its best under sustained conditions that didn’t meet its needs.

This matters because burnout is often framed as something to “recover from” so we can return to how things were before. But if you’ve reached burnout — whether suddenly or slowly — it’s often because how things were before was never truly sustainable for you in the first place.

For people who are neurodivergent — diagnosed or not — this can be especially true. Many learn early on how to mask, adapt, and perform in ways that keep them functioning, even when it costs them deeply. They may appear capable, creative, competent, even successful — while quietly running on empty.

And for those who love, work with, or manage neurodivergent people, this idea opens something too. It invites a pause before judgement. A moment of curiosity instead of assumption. A chance to ask not “why isn’t this working?” but “what might be happening here that I can’t see?”

What’s important is that this idea doesn’t demand that you identify in any particular way. You don’t need a label for it to be useful. You don’t need to decide whether it “applies” to you. You can simply notice what happens when you hold the possibility that your experience of the world is valid, even if it’s not the dominant one.

Used as a lens, this thought can soften old stories. It can help explain why certain wellbeing advice has never quite landed. Why rest that looks like stillness feels agitating rather than restoring. Why structure can feel comforting for one person and constricting for another. Why what helps your friend recover leaves you feeling worse.

It can also return you to yourself.

Instead of asking how to fix what feels wrong, you might start asking gentler questions. What environments help me feel more like myself? Where does my energy actually go? What does my nervous system need to feel safe enough to rest, curious enough to engage?

This isn’t about optimisation or self-improvement. It’s about orientation. About finding a framework that helps you trust your own signals again, rather than overriding them in the hope of becoming someone else.

At If Lost Start Here, we believe that change doesn’t begin with pressure. It begins with understanding. With recognising that you’re not behind, broken, or failing — you’re responding, with more awareness, to the life you’re living.

Sometimes, one idea can hold that understanding for you when everything else feels wobbly. A thought you can return to when things don’t make sense. A lens that helps you see yourself, and others, with a little more compassion.

If this idea resonates, listen to the full conversation with Matthew Bellringer on A Thought I Kept.

And if you’re finding yourself at a point where you want support, explore the coaching and resources we offer here.

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.