When Uncertainty Hits Close to Home

If you have ever lived in the Gulf, or if you have colleagues, friends or family there right now, the last few days have probably felt like something more than just following a news story.

We lived in Bahrain, Abu Dhabi and Oman over a period of ten years. Our youngest child was born in Bahrain.

I'll be honest with you, I spent most of the weekend refreshing news sources, looking for something reliable, something that would help me make sense of what was happening to places I still carry inside me. By evening my brain was foggy, my sleep was poor, and I felt a low hum of anxiety I couldn't quite shake.

For my local friends, it was distant. For me it was immediate and important in a way I couldn't easily explain. That particular loneliness, caring deeply about something that doesn't register for the people around you, is something I suspect a lot of people with ties to the region are feeling right now.

It was only when I reached for my own psychological tools that things began to settle. Which is what I want to share here, in case it's useful for anyone else.

What the Refreshing Is Actually About

One of the most common patterns I see in people navigating uncertainty is compulsive information-seeking. The endless scrolling. The checking of multiple sources. The hope that one more article will finally provide the clarity that the last ten did not. The logic feels reasonable: if I just understand the situation fully enough, I will feel less anxious.

But it does not work.

Because the anxiety is not coming from a lack of information. It is coming from a lack of control. And no amount of information resolves a lack of control.

What the refresh cycle actually does is keep your threat system activated. Every new headline is a fresh signal that danger exists. Your cortisol stays elevated. Your sleep suffers. Your ability to be present gradually narrows. I know this professionally. I experienced it yesterday anyway.

The answer is not to disengage. If you have people you love in the region, staying informed matters. But there is a real difference between intentional, time-bounded engagement with the news and allowing it to take over your attention continuously. One keeps you informed. The other keeps you disregulated.

 What Actually Helps

Before reaching for coping strategies, the most useful thing you can do is name what you are feeling honestly. Not reframe it. Not silver-line it. Just say it plainly.

I don't know what's going to happen. I have no control over this. And that is genuinely hard.

Research on affect labelling, the act of putting words to what we feel, shows it actually reduces activation in the brain's threat centre. Naming our experience does not just help us process emotionally, it physiologically quietens the alarm. It is a better starting point than any strategy.

From there: separate what is within your control from what is not. You may not be able to affect what happens in the Gulf, but you may be able to reach out to someone there, or support an organisation working in the region. Small, concrete actions within your sphere restore a sense of agency, which is one of the most powerful antidotes to helplessness.

This Is Also Grief

Here is what I think is an important thing to say, and the thing that gets talked about least.

When a place you love is in crisis, especially a place where your children grew up, where you built friendships, where you felt genuinely at home, there is real loss involved. Loss of the version of that place that existed in your memory. Loss of the sense that the world is stable enough to hold the things you care about.

Grief does not require a death. It requires attachment and disruption. And many of us who spent meaningful time in the Gulf are attached to it in ways that are hard to articulate to people who have not been there. The warmth of it. The texture of daily life. The sense of belonging somewhere that surprised you.

If what you are experiencing has a quality of sadness beneath the anxiety, a heaviness that feels different from ordinary worry, that is not disproportionate. It makes complete sense. 

You Are Allowed to Step Back

The news cycle is designed to keep you activated. The architecture of how we consume information is built around your threat response, not your capacity for clear thinking.

You get to make different choices. You get to decide when and for how long you engage with the news. You get to put your phone down and be present with the people in front of you.

None of this means you do not care. Some of the most caring people I know are also the most deliberate about protecting their capacity to stay present and functional. They understand that burning out on anxiety does not help anyone, least of all the people and places they are anxious about.

Your nervous system is responding normally. The question is whether you are going to let it drive, or whether you are going to sit alongside it with some compassion, and make conscious choices about how you respond.

That choice is always available to you.