The Hidden Cost of Uncertainty in Healthcare
If you work in healthcare, you already know this: the hardest part isn’t always the long hours or the full caseload. It’s that you never really know what’s coming next. Will your shift stay calm or turn into a storm? Will the world outside your hospital walls throw another curveball before you even catch your breath?
That constant unpredictability can take a toll. And here’s why.
Why Your Nervous System Feels the Pressure
The brain’s main job is to predict what’s ahead. It does that to save energy and keep you safe. But when the outside world feels uncertain your brain works overtime trying to predict what comes next. Often, those predictions lean negative — not because you’re pessimistic, but because that’s your brain’s way of keeping you safe.
The result? A drained “body budget.” You feel tired, tense, maybe even snappy with colleagues. Not because you’re weak or failing, but because your nervous system is burning through fuel just trying to stay ready for whatever might happen next.
The good news? You can help yourself stay more energized by finding an embodied anchor. It will provide your system stability — even if the situation itself hasn’t changed.
How Uncertainty Shows Up Differently for Everyone
Uncertainty can have its effect on how confident you feel. We all experience uncertainty in a different way. And it doesn’t just live in your thoughts — it shows up in your body. It might appear differently for you than for your colleague. For one it might feel like a knot in the stomach. For another, irritability that comes out of nowhere. For you, maybe it’s the buzzing in your mind that won’t switch off, even when you’re off shift.
What makes all the difference is noticing how unpredictability manifests for you. Discovering your individual reaction in different situations is key to learning how to make a shift.
By tuning in to your internal state — using your interoception — you are developing the foundation of personal resilience and alignment. This is a core component of the wellness practice of embodiment for healthcare professionals.
Everyone is Unique
We stress the importance of realizing the uniqueness of our reactions in different situations. Not everyone reacts the same and by recognizing this we can be more patient with our co-workers, partners, and community and, importantly, with the patients we work with.
There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to coping with uncertainty.
Happily, you don’t need a big time commitment in order to reset when you’re feeling uncertain. Even 30 seconds of conscious breathing or centering can make you feel more grounded and improve your focus, regardless of what’s going on around you.
Stress recovery research indicates that making micro-breaks throughout the day can help you regulate your nervous system, shift your focus, and restore mental clarity.
You can experiment with different ways to make a micro-break:
Simple Tools to Find More Confidence
- Breath — Expand your inhale, letting it fill into your toes and fingertips. Lengthen and prolong your exhale, letting it trickle out the soles of your feet and fill the space around you. This focus on breath can be just the ticket when the world around you is overwhelming.
- Grounding — Feel your feet supported by the floor or ground. Imagine that you have roots that extend to the center of the earth. Grounding calms you, gives you much needed support when you are in doubt.
- Spaciousness — Remember that your body is mostly space (and the rest is water . . ).So recognize that. Let yourself feel light and airy. Make the space inside your body equal the space on the outside. Maybe doing this gives you an alignment that powers you forward despite uncertainty.
- Dimensions — Play with how you sense dimension. What does it feel like when you expand the area in front of you? Behind? Does one feel more or less stable? What about to the left and to the right? Above and below? The space around you can feel give a sense of support and you can use that as an anchor point in times where you need extra support.
Clarify What’s Within Your Control
Part of what makes uncertainty so overwhelming is the sense that you have to hold everything — even things you can’t control. Separating what’s in your circle of concern from what’s in your circle of influence helps you redirect energy to where you can actually make a difference.
📝 Try this practice we developed: What’s On Your Radar?
Taking a bit of time to clarify what is within your sphere of influence can provide you with some much needed mental space. And it’s possible your brain might hold onto the information for future reference!
Meeting Uncertainty with Presence
You can’t control what the next shift, patient, or headline brings. But you can shape how you meet it. Each time you take a moment to ground, breathe, or feel your feet under you, you remind your system that stability is available — even when the world feels unpredictable.
This is the quiet strength of embodiment for healthcare professionals: responding with presence instead of reacting from stress, so you can keep showing up with compassion and energy that lasts.
👉 Curious to explore this more? Try one of our embodied tools from When the Body Comes to Mind or download our free exercise What’s on Your Radar? to clarify what’s truly yours to hold.
Body Comes to Mind provides EMBODIED skills and practices to the globe through online courses, skills labs & workshops to enable people to take care of themselves while caring for others.
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