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UAE: How to manage anxiety, mental health during times of global uncertainty
If you are feeling like this, what you are experiencing is a biological response to uncertainty, not a personal failing
- PUBLISHED: Thu 16 Apr 2026, 1:36 PM
In times of sustained uncertainty, it is entirely human to feel unsettled, anxious, or unlike yourself. The constant shifts, the loss of predictability, and the sense that familiar structures are no longer fully reliable can create a persistent unease. Some people notice waves of fear, while others feel restless or heightened. These responses are not signs of dysfunction. They are your nervous system adapting.
From a neurological perspective, when the brain perceives unpredictability as a potential threat, stress systems become more active. This can lead to heightened alertness, difficulty relaxing, and fluctuating emotional states. At times, this state can sharpen our sense of what matters. At others, it can narrow perception and lead to more reactive decisions.
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If you are feeling like this, what you are experiencing is a biological response to uncertainty, not a personal failing.
Try to translate those difficult emotions
During difficult times, experience often arrives in the body long before it reaches language. A tight chest when you hear a distant sound, a constant scanning of your surroundings, a fatigue that doesn’t seem to resolve with sleep. You may find yourself speaking rapidly, or unable to speak at all, cancelling plans, or moving through the day in a kind of suspended state. These responses are your nervous system attempting to process that sensation of a threat. To manage it, try to give these sensations some form. You could write a few words, say to someone, ‘I feel unsettled,’ or simply acknowledge to yourself, ‘this is fear.’ When experience is named, it becomes slightly more bearable.
Contextualise the feelings
Part of what makes uncertainty so destabilising is that it disrupts our usual frame of reference. As a result, your reactions can start to feel disproportionate or unfamiliar. But, try to remember that you are responding to a situation where outcomes are unclear and control is limited. Under those conditions, heightened fear, irritability, or emotional fluctuation are to be expected. Try to approach these heightened emotional states gently and with a great deal of compassion. It will not remove the feeling, but it can soften the sense that something is wrong with you.
Practise the worst case scenario
Write down a list of your fears and what would happen if they came true. For instance, ask yourself, if you couldn’t support your family, what would happen next? Keep going until you’ve exhausted the list of worst possible outcomes. In doing so, we process our emotional reaction and separate it from reality. This, in turn, gives us a sense of control over the situation.
Pay attention to your thinking
In a normal scenario, when we spot danger in our immediate environment, fear shoots a signal to our brain, we evaluate the risk it poses to our survival, and we respond accordingly. However, when we lack the knowledge needed to assess the risk, our feelings may fill in that lack of information for us.
However, the problem with panic is it’s perpetual. Until we know what the future holds, it will keep creating worst-case scenarios in our heads, which escalates our fear, and works against our best interest. As a result, try to become aware of when panic has taken over your decision making. If you feel the symptoms arise, it is vital to acknowledge the existence of the feeling, but not react to it. Practising mindfulness and meditation are tools we can use to increase our emotional awareness and avoid acting on our anxieties.
Maintain some form of routine
A routine helps us structure our daily experience, which enables us to feel more in control. Simple, consistent actions such as waking at the same time, moving your body, or maintaining elements of your usual routine will provide you with a sense of continuity and soothe that part of your brain seeking predictability. These are small but important signals that not everything is in flux.
Try not to project your feelings onto others
Under sustained stress, the psyche naturally looks for somewhere to place its tension. Irritation with a partner, sudden conflict with colleagues, or a fixation on minor issues can become more frequent. You might snap at an employee over something small or become disproportionately worried about a detail that would not normally concern you. Often, this is internal strain seeking an external outlet.
The underlying process is unconscious: when you cannot identify or express your own feelings, directing them outward can feel like relief, as if part of the tension has been externalised. While it may bring temporary release, it ultimately increases stress over time. Whenever possible, pause and ask yourself, “What am I actually feeling right now?” This simple question can interrupt the reflex to project distress onto others and create space for a more considered response.
Allow for laughter, for oddness, for release
Even during stressful times, or perhaps especially then, the human system seeks moments of release. You may find yourself laughing in ways that feel out of place, making dark jokes, or suddenly crying without a clear reason. There can be something almost absurd in the contrast between external reality and small, human moments. This is not inappropriate; in fact, it is one of the mind’s most sophisticated ways of regulating itself. These moments allow the nervous system to discharge tension and briefly step out of constant vigilance.
Remember that no one is immune to fear
Periods of crisis can create an unspoken expectation to remain composed, especially when others depend on you. If you are running a business or making decisions that affect livelihoods, it can feel as though there is no room to falter. Yet fear does not bypass those with responsibility. It is okay to feel, at times, as if you are breaking. That moment is not failure, it is the nervous system reaching its limit and asking for a pause.
Finally, and above all else, pay attention to warning signs that your system may be under too much strain. Persistent anxiety, ongoing low mood, disrupted sleep, or changes in behaviour are signals that uncertainty is beginning to affect your mental health.