In Uncertain Times, This Is Where You Start — Part 1

The first in a 7-part series to help you stay calm, clear, and steady — no matter what comes next. I'm republishing the post today

Mar 21, 2025

What We’ll Cover Today:

How prolonged stress shows up in daily life
Why this matters more than you think
Lasting calm takes more than one tool
Step 1: The first—and fastest—tool you have
Breathing Exercise #1: Natural Breath Awareness
Conclusion: Steadiness in uncertainty comes with practice

Friends,

Most people assume their greatest risk in a crisis is external — money, safety, freedom. But in truth, one of the most dangerous things you’ll face is the wearing-away of your capacity to stay centred: the steady, almost imperceptible erosion of your ability to think clearly, to act decisively, and to navigate uncertainty without being crushed by it.

Your nervous system is built to respond to threat. That’s its job. When something destabilises your environment, it kicks in fast — adrenaline, cortisol, hypervigilance. But this response is only designed for acute danger — a moment of crisis, a short burst of intensity — followed by recovery. What it’s not designed for is prolonged uncertainty. Crisis that doesn’t end. The kind that builds slowly and never quite peaks, where the goalposts keep shifting, the rules keep changing, and every day erodes your sense of safety. That’s when your nervous system starts to fray.

How Prolonged Stress Shows Up in Daily Life

You know what that's like, because we've been here before: five short years ago, when the global pandemic hit. So, I don't need to ask if you're being affected. For so many, the signs are already there — and they’re getting harder to ignore. But in case you're wondering, this checklist might help:

• Mentally, you’re spinning. A constant hum of what-ifs and worst-case scenarios. You jump between news feeds, trying to grasp what’s happening, but the more information you consume, the more uncertain you feel. You want clarity. Direction! Answers! But all you seem to get is noise.

• Your focus is fragmented. You start things but don’t finish, because your concentration slips, the mental load is relentless, and you can't seem to hold onto the thread. Even routine tasks feel heavy, like you’re pushing through quicksand.

• Maybe your sleep is fractured. You wake in the early hours, heart pounding, thoughts racing, unable to switch off. Or you feel wired all day but bone-tired at the same time — like your whole body's tense, bracing for what comes next, though you don’t quite know what that is.

• You may feel your body flagging — headaches, gut issues, random aches that seem to come out of nowhere. You're either comfort eating or picking at your food, and caffeine barely touches the fatigue or tips you into jittery anxiety. You feel too wired to rest, and too exhausted to act.

• Your tolerance is thinning. The smallest things set you off — you're irritated, frustrated, snappy with the people you care about. Your tetchiness is keeping them at arm's length, at a time you most want to draw them close.

• Through it all, you feel like you're teetering on the edge of overwhelm. Like the demands of life — work, family, planning, preparing — are stacking faster than you can manage. You’re stretched thin, don’t know where to start, and wondering how much longer you can do this.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Why This Matters More Than You Think

This is what it looks like when your nervous system is under siege from constant, low-grade stress that never lets up. It’s the toll that prolonged instability takes — and if you don’t know how to interrupt it, to bring yourself back to centre, it will keep building until you shut down, or are overwhelmed.

I’ve been there. I’ve lived through it. I know the costs.

And here’s the hard truth: the longer you stay dysregulated, the harder it will become to pull yourself out, and the more damage it will do. Not just to your health, but to your capacity to respond intelligently to what’s coming next. In a slow rolling crisis, that is a liability you cannot afford.

If you went through lockdown during the pandemic, do you remember how it felt? How surreal it was to be told you couldn’t leave your home unless it was essential? Not being able to visit loved ones for three whole months. Wondering how long it would last, and whether you had the mental fortitude to get through it. And then, after six weeks or so, when you saw other countries start lifting restrictions — the immense relief you felt, realising you were halfway through, that there were only a few more weeks to go?

Let's be clear about where we are now: this — whatever ‘this’ turns out to be — is only just beginning. And it seems probable that it will stretch for several years. The pandemic has already primed your nervous system to be that little bit more on edge, that little bit more wary, that little bit more anxious. So you’re likely to have to last for longer — with less.

This is why learning how to regulate your nervous system isn’t a luxury. It is self-care, but not the soft, indulgent kind, not a ‘nice-to-have’. It’s a survival skill, and one of the most essential ones you can develop. Because if the world doesn’t stabilise — and you need to understand that it may not, for a while — you will need to be the one who does.

One final point on this: if you — like me — are not neurotypical, have an underlying anxiety disorder, or unresolved trauma, then this is especially important for you.

Lasting Calm Takes More Than One Tool

I specialise in stress and anxiety management. Both have a bi-directional relationship with a dysregulated nervous system. And no matter what anyone tells you, from my own experience of navigating a similar crisis, one tool alone is not going to be enough to help you manage your nervous system response.

Imagine trying to tackle a complex DIY project with only a pair of pliers. You can’t measure or cut wood with them, and you certainly can’t drive in a nail. It doesn’t matter how good the pliers are — they’re simply not enough to handle the project, so you won't move forward. Trying to manage a prolonged crisis with a single stress management tool is like that.

You don’t just need something that calms you for a moment. You need something that helps you get balanced and centred — whether you’re being thrown off by the latest news update or trying to sleep through the night without your system kicking into overdrive. Because in the middle of a prolonged crisis, your nervous system doesn’t just need to settle. It needs to learn how to stay regulated — not for an hour, not just to fall asleep, but to stay grounded through the night, through the day, and through the relentless uncertainty that lies ahead and keeps building.

You can only learn to do this the same way you learn to master any other skill — through practice. Repeated, regular practice. If that sounds like a chore, I'm not going to lie — yes, it can be. This is why I developed a simple, science-backed process to make it easier to sustain. And when I say simple, I mean it literally: you lie back, close your eyes, and listen. No striving, no discomfort, just peace.

There are four parts to the process. Research, which I'll share with you, shows that each part communicates powerfully with your nervous system, in a language it understands. (Because the nervous system doesn’t respond to logic; you can’t think your way out of high alert.) Each of the four parts signal to your nervous system via a different pathway. When you layer these signals, as I'll teach you to do, they reinforce each other.

The result is a clear, consistent signal to the brain that there’s no immediate threat, that it's safe to stand down. That signal allows the nervous system to shift out of high alert and into a state of calm — not just briefly, but in a way that actually holds. The result isn’t just short-term relief, but a return to balance, so your mind clears, your body rests, and you regain the capacity to deal with what’s in front of you.

Just to clarify, these four parts are not linear steps for you to move through one by one (because who has the time for that in a crisis, right?) They’re stacked, meaning they work together, at the same time, to create a stronger effect than any single one can achieve alone. It’s that stacking — those signals working in sync — that makes the process so effective. That’s why the shift happens — not just surface calm, but a deep, lasting regulation that holds.

Don't get me wrong, though: it's not a 'one-and-done' thing. There's not even a pill that has that kind of impact. It's still best to do it frequently, but it's not a chore, it's enjoyable — as is the end result.

That result is a real, measurable transition out of fear, anxiety, or anger and into a state of balance and deep rest, where both your body and mind can recover and reset. And in a prolonged crisis, that’s what you need — something that doesn’t just calm you in the moment, but helps you stay steady over time.

Over the coming weeks, I'm going to share with you, my YTSN readers, the four-step process I use to regulate my nervous system, calm my emotions, and slow a racing mind. For me, it works in any circumstances. And once we've finished with that, I'll be sharing other tools and skills to help further strengthen your resilience.

Step One: The First and Fastest Tool You Have

Step one is learning to control your breath.

Breathing isn’t just oxygen in, carbon dioxide out. The three lobes of your lungs (well, 2 lobes left; 3 lobes right) are directly wired into your autonomic nervous system. Specifically, into the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) which triggers your stress response — ‘fight, flight, or freeze’ — and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) which brings you back to calm — ‘rest and digest’.

When the SNS is dominant, your brain sends signals to your lungs, triggering short, sharp, shallow breaths. That’s because the upper and middle lobes of your lungs are rich in neurons that receive and send signals to the SNS. When the PNS takes over, signals are sent to the lower lobes, prompting long, slow, deep breaths that naturally calm the body.

But here’s the thing: the signalling between your brain and lungs is bi-directional. Your brain sends instructions to your lungs, but your lungs also send signals back. So when you breathe from the lower lobes, you’re not just calming your body — you’re telling your brain that all is well, and it can stand down.

That’s why learning to control your breathing isn’t just helpful, it’s foundational. As in, kindergarten stuff.

Here’s why.

Your breath is the only part of your stress response you can shift at will. You can’t tell your heart to slow down on command. You can’t force your muscles to stop tensing, or switch off adrenaline release. But you can change the way you breathe, and when you do, you send a powerful signal to your entire system: it’s safe, you can rest, you’re not in immediate danger.

For those of you who’ve already learned — or tried to learn — breath control, I can sense the slump in your shoulders, the disappointment setting in. So let me speak to you first.

Some of my clients with anxiety struggle with breath control. When your default for years has been shallow, chest-based breathing, the diaphragm can feel locked in place, unwilling to budge. And the more you strive to get it right, the harder it becomes. It’s disheartening, I know.

But there’s a shortcut you probably have not been taught before.

You can change the way you breathe simply by moving your attention to different parts of your body. Let's give it a shot.

Stop whatever you’re doing for a moment, and see if you can feel your breath at the tip of your nose. Now, notice how you’re breathing. To feel your breath there, you’ll likely find you’re breathing very shallowly — drawing air only into the very top of your lungs. Yes?

Now shift your attention to the back of your throat. Try to feel your breath there as you inhale and exhale. Notice how much more deeply you’re breathing now — am I right?

So, it doesn’t need to be difficult to change your breath, no matter how stressed, fearful, or angry you’ve become.

And if you’ve already mastered diaphragmatic or belly breathing, that’s great news —you’ve already built a solid foundation for where we’re headed. Tune back in a couple of weeks from now, and I’ll show you how to take that foundation and develop it into something that delivers exponentially greater relaxation. In the meantime, keep practising! You're training your nervous system every time you do.

To your first breathing exercise then.

Breathing Exercise #1: Natural Breath Awareness

Sit in a comfortable, upright position on the floor or in a chair. If in a chair, don’t slump in an armchair please. A kitchen chair is best. Do what you can to keep your spine straight, but not erect.

Bring your awareness to your breath. Without trying to control your breath in any way, just become aware of the natural incoming and outgoing breath. You are breathing every moment of your life, but you are not conscious of the process. Now, for a short time, you are going to simply observe each and every breath.

As you do so, you will move your attention to different areas of your body, and notice whether you can feel any sensation as you breathe. In some places it may be obvious to you as the sensation will be strong; in others you may feel nothing at all. That's absolutely fine because this is all about learning how YOU breathe naturally. Don't interfere with your natural process of breathing, just be aware of it, and let yourself relax into its constant ebb and flow.

Breathing in and out in your normal rhythm… is your natural breath fast or slow? Would you consider it to be deep or shallow, regular or irregular? Are there any breaks in your breathing or is it a smooth continual breathing in and out?