Permanent Crisis: How to Survive in a World of Unceasing Upheaval

"Permacrisis" — Collins Dictionary's word of the year 2022 — describes a feeling familiar to many: a state in which crisis doesn't end but flows into the next. Pandemic, economic instability, geopolitical upheaval, climate anxiety — these aren't separate events, they are a continuous background.

1. What Permacrisis Does to the Nervous System

The nervous system is evolutionarily tuned to acute stresses with recovery periods. Permacrisis disrupts this cycle: the recovery phase doesn't arrive because the next threat appears before the response to the previous one has concluded.

Result: chronic elevated cortisol, depletion of regulatory resources, growing anxiety and a sense of helplessness.

2. Psychological Symptoms of Permacrisis

• Numbness: "I can no longer react to news"
• Object-less anxiety: background sense of threat that cannot be eliminated
• Chronic fatigue: even without obvious causes
• Difficulty with long-term planning: "Why make plans if everything can change?"
• Moral fatigue: from the constant need to monitor, respond, "hold together"

3. Resilience Under Permacrisis Conditions

Resilience research shows: resilience is not the absence of stress response, but the ability to recover. Under permacrisis conditions, this means:

Deliberately creating "recovery islands" — even small ones. Managing information flow: not everything requires your attention. Strengthening social connections. Maintaining bodily resources: sleep, movement, nutrition.