Everything Feels Uncertain: Effects on Body, Mind, and How to Respond
If I had to choose one word to describe where our world is right now, it would be uncertainty. Everything feels like it is shifting beneath our feet. What once felt stable now feels fragile. Priorities that seemed obvious a few years ago suddenly feel strangely irrelevant. The uncertainty is not limited to one domain. It shows up politically, socially, economically, environmentally, technologically. It is global and personal at the same time.
I find it useful to think of uncertainty less as an event and more as an atmosphere. It is the air we are breathing. Of course, “certainty” has always been an illusion. Life has never truly been certain. Yet something about this moment feels different. The magnitude of the uncertainty, the relentlessness of it, the scale and the breadth of it, feel new. There is very little relief, very little let-up.
What uncertainty does to the body
When unpredictability is constant, the nervous system reads a background threat. It slips into a mild, chronic fight, flight, or freeze. Not a sharp spike of terror, but a low hum of “I am not sure I am safe.”
Over time this:
Drains energy and disrupts sleep
Flattens mood and fuels anxiety or depression
Shrinks our capacity to focus, plan, and create
In survival mode, imagination takes a back seat. At work we tolerate less ambiguity. At home we get irritable or shut down. Our range narrows.
What uncertainty does to the mind
The brain craves patterns, clarity, and coherence. When life stays uncertain, it often copes by flattening complexity into binaries: Right or wrong. Us or them. True or false. Human or AI.
Binaries feel like solid ground. We pick a side, find belonging within that side, and enjoy the relief of “certainty” and “clarity”. Then blame arrives. If there is an us, there must be a them, and they are the problem.
This creates a toxic loop:
Uncertainty rises; so
We create binaries to cope; which means
We choose a side to feel ‘certain’; and
We blame the other side for creating tension and uncertainty;
Conflict grows and uncertainty rises again
However, binaries are inherently false. The world is not made of pure opposites. Pro-Israel / Pro-Palestine is way too simplistic a framing and forces a false choice or side. Reality is complex. There is always a centre, a spectrum, a space where seemingly opposing truths meet and interact. What gets lost in this loop is the centre: the place where complexity lives.
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Responding well: balance and choice
If uncertainty cannot be solved by creating certainty, the question becomes how to move within it. I want to offer two things to hold on to: balance and choice.
Balance: a living posture
When we talk about uncertainty, I find it useful to think about balance not as a neat solution, but as a posture. Balance gives us a sense of manoeuvrability and movement, but also a sense of level. Crucially, balance responds to movement. Balance is not about walking on a perfectly flat surface. It is about maintaining a certain attention, tone and tension as the ground shifts. Sometimes balance requires rigidity, sometimes softness. Sometimes it looks like leaning more to the left when we are tipping to the right. Balance is an active, living thing.
Balance is not about sitting forever in the middle. It is about understanding that we will move to the left and to the right, or to opposite ends, and then asking: how do I move back towards a more centred position when I am feeling off-kilter?
When we talk about work–life balance, for example, it is not about a perfect 50/50 split. There will be times when work legitimately needs more of us. That can be fine for a period. The question is: how do we compensate and restore balance in other ways, at other times? The same applies to our political ideologies. How are we creating a balanced view? Are we consuming media only from our own side, or are we deliberately exposing ourselves to perspectives that challenge us, to see if we can balance ourselves out?
In practice:
Inputs: balance your media diet; seek views that challenge your own
Habits: balance action with rest, solitude with connection, headlines with nature
Consumption: balance convenience with care for the planet; desire with consequence
Work and life: accept uneven seasons, then restore equilibrium on purpose
Brittle certainty digs in its heels. Balance stays flexible. Flexibility is what survives a moving world.
So the questions become: Where do I feel unbalanced?
Choice: agency in small acts
We cannot control the storm, but we are not only its victims. Yes, things are uncertain. Yes, there is mistrust and misinformation and conflict. Yes, there are real structural forces that limit or shape what is possible for many people. And still, within that reality, we do have moments of agency. We have choices about how we respond, about who we become, about how we treat one another.
Even in uncertainty we have choices:
Love or resent
Shut down or check in
Consume everything or curate inputs
Stand rigid in a camp or step slightly towards the centre
Ignore mental health or seek support
The key is conscious choice. In survival mode we react. Conscious choice slows down, notices what shapes us, and chooses with awareness. You may still choose your camp. Do it with your eyes open.
Daily questions for a centred life
Where do I feel off balance, and what one action moves me towards centre today?
What can I give my nervous system that builds safety, a walk, a call, a pause?
What perspective have I avoided that would widen my view?
How will I soften one binary and hold more complexity in this conversation?
Who do I choose to be here, now?
We may not be able to create certainty, but we can cultivate centredness. We can hold complexity with courage, choose curiosity over contempt, and honour our agency when the world feels out of control.
In all of this, I choose who I will be.
