If Lost Start Here is a guide for the anxious, curious, lonely and lost. Featuring everyday places and at-home prompts designed to help you live a life that feels good.
If Lost Start Here is a guide for the anxious, curious, lonely and lost. Featuring everyday places and at-home prompts designed to help you live a life that feels good.
You’ve chosen the Mental Wellness Pathway.
Anxiety and depression are rapidly rising, and our ability to talk about and treat these conditions is changing. What’s available to us is also shifting. Beyond the usual suspects, medication, and talk therapy, there’s more, much more – initiatives, spaces and people that can help us in new and creative ways. If you feel any of these conditions, others feel it too, and people are doing great, non-stigmatizing things about it.
Many of these draw from people’s own frustrating experiences finding the help they need. Whether in the case of Ciaran Biggins of MindFood talking to people and realizing that the day centers that they attended weren’t giving them the sense of purpose and connection they were looking for.
Or Ali Strick, founder of Arts Sisterhood, who tried to find art therapy groups in London, but found instead “programs within medium-security mental hospitals that needed a doctor’s referral, art therapy for children or the mentally/physically disabled or extremely expensive one-on-one art therapy.”
Or with Bryony Gordon of Mental Health Mates who wanted “a kind of regular meet-up that other organizations have, such as Alcoholics Anonymous, but aimed at people with mental health issues, and for that to be combined with getting out the house and doing some gentle exercise: in our case, walking.”
Below are some suggested places to head when you’re wobbling, struggling, plummeting, or just drowning and not really waving at all.
We’ll be shining a light on the ones that now exist to get you more comfortable with the world and with yourself.
Here we’re roaming across the expanded field of therapy. Finding places that teach emotional intelligence, that promote happiness, that have your back in new ways. We’re looking for consciously designed spaces that put you and your mental well-being at the center of what they do.
Explore 42 Acres, a 173-acre regenerative estate and nature reserve in Somerset offering transformative retreats and nature-based experiences. Swim in the lake, meditate in the treehouse, or nourish yourself with farm-to-table food grown on-site.
Discover a community of friendly and fun-loving women of all ages, backgrounds and fitness levels based in the UK. With Women Outdoors, founder Emma Winters has created an environment where you can be your authentic self, develop outdoor skills, connect with like-minded women and go home with a big smile on your face.
Discover why we’re supporting Mental Healh Swims, the multi-award-winning mental health peer support community.
Discover an annual festival that uses creativity to explore mental well-being, and that’s finding ways to use performance to make happier brains.
We find out about London's Premier LGBTQ+ Boxing Club and the role that both the mind and community can play in physical wellbeing.
Talk Club is creating the space for much-needed conversations about men’s mental health. Meet Ben Akers, its inspirational founder, who is leading the change in how men think about mental fitness and emotional strength.
We talk to Rachel Ashe about the social enterprise she founded that offers mental health peer support through cold water dips.
A group of lads in Wales is making conversations about men’s mental health more acceptable at their cafe headquarters and beyond.
London’s Freud Museum shares the legacy of the founder of psychoanalysis while giving the practice of therapy modern relevance.
Therapy has changed. We’ve rounded up some of the new places and platforms bringing this practice into our modern world.
A London based not-for-profit bringing the therapeutic benefits of gardening to young people and changing who gets to garden one project at a time.
How a small town in England is teaching us the value of community.
With Frazzled Cafes, our mental wellbeing has hit the High Street. Comedian Ruby Wax has created safe spaces to talk at M&S locations across the UK.
The Psychology Fringe Festival is giving us some much needed alternatives for ways forward and ways of being. They are bringing to the fore increasingly urgent conversations created by the circumstances of our rapidly evolving world by the people who understand them most. That’s a new kind of festival that we all need to exist.
As MindFood’s motto goes, “Gardening is cheaper than therapy and you get tomatoes.” The Ealing-based social enterprise has this idea at its core: it’s founded on nature and uses food as the framework for figuring out our mental health concerns.
Bryony Gordon launched Mental Health Mates as “a sort of walking/running group for the people for whom it is perfectly normal to feel weird”. Right from its start in London a few years ago people have consistently shown up, with outings now throughout the UK and abroad.
With Okay Humans, founder and LMFT Christy Desai is modernizing and destigmatizing therapy to help more people feel better, stronger, and more alive.
Discover San Francisco’s Queer LifeSpace which offers safe, affordable and accessible support for the queer community. We invited them to tell us about their approach and how people can access their services from wherever they are.
Which cafes do more than get you started in the morning? Here we’re featuring a handful of cafes that go beyond coffee to our communities, our planet, even our minds.
Therapy has changed. We’ve rounded up some of the new places and platforms bringing this practice into our modern world.
From providing access to therapists who understand the experiences of Black Women to offering products and publications that destigmatize common mental health issues, Therapy for Black Girls is an online space dedicated to encouraging the mental wellness of Black women and girls.
Waking up in Joshua Tree was waking up in another world. Had I even seen the sun rise before? Had the light ever touched anything with such intention?? It hit me fairly quickly what people find appealing about this place. In the light of day, the landscape feels less like a barren wasteland and more like a waiting canvas, a palpable feeling of possibility filling the limitless space.
A birdwatching collective founded by and for people of colour that’s as much about mental health, creativity, ecology and community as ornithology.
Sidewalk Talk takes the psychotherapist’s couch outdoors, creating the space for anyone to be heard.
This International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating female-identifying space makers. Since we launched If Lost Start Here, we’ve found again and again that many of the places that are thinking about our mental wellbeing differently have been founded by women.
For Roos Stallinga riding a bike is both an art and therapy, making ourselves, and the world around us, a better place. Ride with Roos in Barcelona, Amsterdam and New York.
Street Wisdom is prefacing a way of being that feels critical now. It’s untethering us from devices, it’s getting us back into our heads and bodies, it's making us sit with ideas again, and it’s offering us the space, time and tools to allow new perspectives in.
The distinct yellow pop of this life-managing brand has found infinite ways to weave itself into our lives. And this has all been done without ever really talking directly about our mental health - which is maybe the most genius thing of all.
We talked to the founder of the world’s first Poetry Pharmacy about why poetry still matters.
Two Chairs is doing therapy differently. We spoke to its Director of Brand Strategy about why the model of delivery has been so broken but also why therapy itself isn’t.
We talk to the British journalist Toni Jones, Founder of Shelf Help about the bookclub that became a global movement and why its her mission to make self-help accessible, collaborative and cool.
Discover how to understand and enhance positive emotions to improve your emotional wellness. This guide explores the science behind positive emotions, their impact on mental health, and practical strategies to cultivate joy, contentment, and resilience in everyday life. Boost your well-being and reduce anxiety by embracing positive emotions.
Discover practical strategies to overcome perfectionism and improve your well-being. This guide offers insights into managing perfectionism, reducing anxiety, and achieving a healthier work-life balance. Learn how to set realistic goals, embrace flexibility, and find fulfillment beyond the pursuit of perfection.
Discover how to create a self-guided wellbeing practice that can take you from overwhelm to calm. Where would you like to explore in your life?
Don't let midlife be a time of uncertainty and confusion. Embrace the opportunity to rediscover yourself and create a future filled with purpose and joy.
Discover how Taylor Swift's music fosters emotional connection and self-discovery. Learn how her songs can help you connect more deeply with yourself and build meaningful relationships with others.
Discover how expressive writing can boost mental health and creativity. Learn how this simple practice helps deepen awareness, process emotions, and unleash imagination. Explore key exercises for immediate well-being benefits.
The best self-help books by female authors for when you're feeling lost. These five non-fiction books are our go-to reads when we need more practical support for our mental health and emotional wellbeing.
Learn how you can create a plan for better well-being, one that supports you in exploring your life with curiosity.
Struggling with Imposter Syndrome and self-doubt? Discover expert strategies to step into self-belief.
Discover science-based well-being practices to boost positive emotions, decrease negative emotions, and support yourself in feeling better. Fold these well-being tips into your plan for better emotional and mental health.
Found your way around our Mental Wellness Pathway? Ready to head somewhere else? Where do you want to go next?