Heightened anxiety, fractured sleep and the steady compulsion to refresh news feeds are, mental health specialists say, not signs of weakness but of biology. Across the United Arab Emirates, as regional tensions persist and emergency alerts puncture the routine of daily life, many residents describe a nervous system on edge. The aim, clinicians note, is not to banish anxiety altogether. It is to prevent a short-lived stress response from hardening into something more enduring. A nervous system on alert “Emergency alerts activate the amygdala, the part of the brain wired for survival,” said Jan Gerber, founder of Paracelsus Recovery. The amygdala functions as an alarm system, he explained, primed to detect danger before the rational mind has had time to assess the facts. The body does not always distinguish neatly between a direct physical threat and a disruption to routine. “To the nervous system, a predator and a piercing emergency tone can feel identical,” he said. Dr Jane Halsall described the most common reactions during periods of geopolitical strain as hypervigilance, difficulty sleeping, irritability and intrusive “what if” thinking. Many people find themselves repeatedly checking updates, seeking reassurance or grappling with a diffuse sense of lost control. Physiologically, the body […]