How to lead through collective dysregulation
When everyone is on edge and the usual solutions stop working
The last few weeks have stretched many of us to our edges. This week, in conversations with different kinds of leaders across the world, I noticed a pattern surfacing.
We’d be discussing their challenges—team dynamics, strategic decisions, upcoming difficult conversations… And then, almost as an aside, they’d mention it. The thing underneath everything else. They named what’s on everybody’s minds. What we all seem to be experiencing.
“I keep thinking about what’s happening in the U.S.”
“I can’t stop checking the news about...”
“I am anxious because…”
“The team brought up World War III in our last meeting. I didn’t know what to say.”
Each time, I watched their bodies shift. Shoulders raising. Breathing quickening. The leader in front of me—normally capable, experienced, resourced, experts in world-changing work—suddenly looking like they were bracing for impact.
Not just one. First one, then another, and another.
I found my own state reflected in a mirror.
It’s palpable. I imagine you feel it too.
What we are feeling and witnessing isn’t just individual stress anymore. It’s becoming something quite different, something much larger.
I call it “collective dysregulation”.
When the Ground Shifts Under Everyone
You’ve probably felt it too. That sense that your usual resilience isn’t holding as well. Your usual ways of keeping yourself sane, the things that always steadied you feel less effective these days.
The ways you had to create calm now barely touch the edges of the anxiety. You’re more reactive with your team, or your family. Less patient with yourself. Exhausted in a way that sleep doesn’t fix.
I’m finding myself surprisingly jumpy at home, more reactive, less able than usual to tap into my zen mode. Teary when I think of my mum’s impending mortality.
Perhaps you’ve been wondering if something’s wrong with you. I know I have! Whether you’re losing your capacity. Whether you’re not as strong as you used to be.
Let me offer a different frame:
You’re not broken and nothing is wrong with you.
Quite the opposite.
It’s not just you. What we’re experiencing is a normal and appropriate response to our times.
The entire system is activated.
And it’s normal to be collectively dysregulated.
There’s a palpable widespread emotional overwhelm. There’s a sustained physiological stress.
Collective dysregulation isn’t just many people stressed at once.
This is not just something that we can snap out of.
It happens when the whole fabric of society feels unstable and in a constant state of threat. Political systems, social structures, violent events.
Collective dysregulation comes from political chaos that never settles. From climate crisis growing more urgent. From protective policies being dismantled. From international agreements being violated. From threats of war that feel terrifyingly real. From divisive rhetoric that’s become the soundtrack of our daily lives.
Add your own life problems to the state of the world.
And, in response, the nervous systems of everyone around you.
Everything is unstable, reactive, unpredictable. And we are a bit of a mess inside, many of us, all at once.
What’s the Real Problem with Collective Dysregulation?
Humans deeply affect each other.
Your nervous system doesn't function in isolation. It's constantly reading and responding to the people around you. Our brains do this without us knowing. Research has shown that our brains, heart beats and nervous systems attune to and synch up with each other.
It’s actually not strange. We are truly pack animals, not by choice but by a biological imperative.
We are wired to need each other, both for our biological regulation and also for our emotional regulation.
When the environment is harmonious, we co-regulate. Like plucking one string and hearing a nearby one resonate, we resonate with each other, and help bring each other to inner balance.
A gentle touch, an empathic response, and people melt before you and are soothed.
The flip side is that when everyone is activated, that activation amplifies.
Like when there’s feedback in a sound system, one person’s alarm triggers the next until the whole room is screeching with dysregulation.
When no one around you is calm, there’s no steady ground to return to.
We become collectively dysregulated, upset, unstable, unable to bring ourselves to calm and balance as readily as under normal circumstances.
This collective dysregulation has real consequences.
Our nervous systems are not engaged with the world. We might be there but actually absent hijacked. Instead of engaged and balanced, our nervous systems are activated in fight, flight, freeze or fawn responses.
And these states don’t make for clear thinking nor good decision making— precisely what the times require.
Don’t Fall into the Trap: Don’t Go it Alone
The Self-reliance Trap Substack I wrote last September keeps coming back to me with new urgency.
If an avalanche were threatening your town, no one would grab an umbrella and rush out single-handedly to stop it. The image seems absurd. Of course the response would be collective—engineers assessing the risk, emergency responders coordinating evacuation, neighbours helping neighbours to safety. Everyone mobilising together because that’s what the scale of the threat demands.
Yet when it comes to the overwhelming challenges we face—navigating organisational change during global instability, holding space for team anxiety while carrying our own, staying true to our values while systems around us feel like they’re crumbling, keeping yourself and your family in peace (or even safe!)— we easily default to lone tactics.
We think it’s on us, individually, to figure it out. To be strong enough. To know what to say. To self-regulate our way through it. To not need others.
And that’s the trap that in times like these we cannot afford to fall into.
It’s not on you. It’s on us.
Let’s stop marching out with our flimsy umbrellas of good intentions and exhaust ourselves trying to stop avalanches alone.
This approach is actually counter to our neurobiology. We’re biologically wired for connection, and, what’s more, for collaborative recovery.
Research on trauma recovery has revealed that after major crises—earthquakes, conflicts, collective loss—what predicts whether someone recovers or develops chronic trauma isn’t individual resilience or personal coping strategies. Surprisingly, it’s the quality of their relationships. It’s how understanding and attentive people were after the incident.
This human closeness gives them a chance to process what happened and feel connected, cared— and people heal from the hard experience. It’s the power of presence creating human connection.
The experience of not being alone is healing, empowering. Research shows it, but we know it deep down too.
The Way Through: Personal Practice + Collective Support
It’s clear to me that the avalanche that has started requires collective organisation and effort.
Not just to fight it. But to keep ourselves afloat, as effective and healthy as possible so that we can then address it.
Personal self-regulation is essential. Precisely because our nervous system states are contagious, the more quickly and thoroughly you can bring yourself to balance, the more you help calm those around you.
Mindfulness practices work. Research shows they effectively soothe your nervous system and regulate your emotions like few things can.
If you want to start a solid personal practice, I created the When the World Feels Overwhelming collection (£29) for exactly that.
But here’s what we cannot miss: trying to regulate yourself alone in a sea of dysregulated nervous systems is an impossible task.
We need each other, we will find our peace and resilience more readily together.
It’s simply how we are wired.
We need both. A personal practice that steadies you AND a community that holds you.
Nature outings, breathwork, yoga, exercise, evening baths, gratitude practices—these ground you and create your foundation. Your personal self-care practices are non-negotiable right now.
But they are not enough.
Many of us are holding more than feels manageable. The weight increases daily. I’m hearing this constantly, and I feel it too—personal challenges layered with relentless news and looming collective threats.
So the co-regulation aspect becomes non-negotiable, too.
We need the presence of others. Spaces to express ourselves, to process, be listened to, to reflect together. Spaces that make us feel that we’re not carrying this alone.
I have been feeling this need for a while now, and in response, I’ve created the LEAP community—a space for leaders wanting to lead with Empathy, Authenticity and Presence to practice collective regulation together.
We’re not meant to carry this alone. And you don’t have to.
We need spaces to support each other. To rest. To grow our capacity to come back to balance. To develop together.
The LEAP community opens doors January 31st.
If you’d like a glimpse of what’s inside, join the free January Mindfulness Challenge— daily meditations I’ve recorded within the community space to practice together. The challenge runs until the 30th of Jan.
About me
I’m an executive coach and Nonviolent Communication trainer with a background in neuroscience helping purpose-driven leaders transform how they show up under pressure. My work centres on where science meets soul in leadership.
For coaching inquiries: nati@natibeltran.com | natibeltran.com