India, Oct. 5 --
Prakriti Saxena Poddar, Clinically Trained Mental Health & Wellbeing Expert, Global Head at Roundglass
A friend once told me she checks her bank balance the way some people check the weather. First thing in the morning, almost without thinking, she braces for what she'll find. She isn't in debt and her job is secure enough. But the checking has become a ritual, a small act of vigilance against a future she can't fully control. I hear versions of this story often from clients and colleagues and even from strangers at conferences who approach me after a talk to ask why they feel so on edge when nothing has technically gone wrong-yet.
That word "yet" holds the answer. It's the difference between being stressed about something that has happened and being on guard for something that might, and the two are not the same.
The body doesn't wait for bad news
When we've been worried about something and then it happens, like a job loss, a market crash, or a diagnosis, the body can experience a strange kind of relief because at least now it knows what it's dealing with. Uncertainty denies us even that. The brain, unable to predict an outcome, simply keeps the worry switched on. Researchers have found that this unresolved not-knowing can be more taxing on the nervous system than confirmed bad news, because the threat never resolves into something the body can respond to and then recover from. Instead, the sympathetic nervous system stays activated, cortisol stays elevated, and that hum of low-grade alarm starts showing up in your sleep and digestion, how often you fall sick, and how thin your patience wears by six in the evening.
This is the biology behind the exhaustion so many of us experience even when nothing truly catastrophic has happened.
Bearing the weight of the future
There's a term researchers have introduced for this particular kind of dread: future burden. It is the stress that builds from living with weak financial safety nets, where a single setback could cascade into several. It isn't the same as ordinary worry. It's the ruminating and calculating, again and again. What happens if the roof needs repair and school fees are due the same month? What troubles me most as someone who works in wellbeing is that future burden doesn't sit quietly in the background. It reaches forward and takes from the present. The hours you have with your family today are spent imagining a future that may never play out the way you fear. That is real time lost.
When a scarcity mindset narrows the world
I've watched the scarcity mindset do something particularly unkind: It convinces people that joy is a luxury item, one of the first things to go when money feels tight. The dinner with old friends gets postponed. The hobby that requires a few new materials gets shelved. People don't always realize that this is precisely the wrong moment to let those things go. Connection and small pleasures are part of what builds the resilience people will need to get through the very uncertainty they're bracing for. Cutting back on time with others and everyday joys isn't prudence. It's often the first crack in the foundation that helps one withstand instability.
What financial pressure does to a relationship, a decision, a Tuesday.
Financial worry exacts a cost most people don't track: mental bandwidth. That strain reduces focus, patience, and the ability to sit with a decision instead of rushing it. Partners who were once easygoing become short-tempered over small things, like whose turn it is to load the dishwasher, while the real issue remains unspoken and emerges in other ways.
In the face of uncertainty, decision-making tends to split into two unhelpful patterns. Some people start grasping at quick relief through an impulsive purchase or a hasty job change. Others go the opposite way and freeze: avoiding the phone call, the paperwork, or the conversation because not deciding feels safer than deciding wrong. Long-term commitments, like a wedding date, lease, or career pivot, start to feel like risks no one wants to take. This is often when people drop the habits that help them cope, like morning walks and a regular sleep schedule, and fall back on easy shortcuts because doing so feels like lightening the load, even though they ultimately add to it.
What truly helps
Anxiety about economic uncertainty is understandable in these times, but it doesn't have to run the show. Here are a few practices I keep coming back to, both in my own life and in my work.
Regulate before you decide. A nervous system on high alert makes poor decisions look reasonable. A few minutes of breathwork or grounding, like simply noticing your feet on the floor, before a big decision can help bring your awareness and judgment back online.
Ground yourself in where you are. Meaning and connection don't live in the imagined future. They live in the here and now. A daily habit of present-moment awareness, even for just five minutes, pulls attention away from rehearsing "what if" scenarios and back to the only place where life is happening.
Sort the controllable from the uncontrollable. You cannot control interest rates or the job market. You can control how you spend this evening, what you eat, and who you call. Recognizing that distinction makes something that felt out of your hands a little more manageable.
Lean into routine, not away from it. When the wider world feels unpredictable, the body finds safety in the daily walk, the set wake time, or the weekly Sunday call with family. Routine may seem boring when life is unstable, but it keeps you steady.
Find what matters beyond the balance sheet. Money is one measure of a life, not the whole ledger. Reflecting on what you value (a relationship, a craft, a faith, or a place you love) and finding a small, daily way to honor it provides something steady to return to when the numbers change from day to day.
Economic uncertainty isn't going away on any predictable timeline. Even though the market is beyond our control, the nervous system is not fixed. It responds each day to what we choose to do next. Unlike the market, that is something we still get to decide.
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