It has become known as the “war of nerves”. An apt name for a jittery, jangling time in British history, consumed with fear of what may be coming, in which the sheer unpredictability of life became – as the historian Prof Julie Gottlieb writes – a form of psychological warfare. Contemporary reports describe “threats of mysterious weapons, gigantic bluff, and a cat-and-mouse game intended to stampede the civilian population of this island into terror”.
It all sounds uncannily like life under Donald Trump, who this week marched the world uphill to war, only to amble just as inexplicably back down again. But Gottlieb is actually describing the period between the Munich crisis of 1938 and the blitz beginning in earnest in September 1940. Her fascinating study of letters, diaries and newspapers from the period focuses not on the big geopolitical picture but on small domestic details, and what they reveal about the emotional impact of living suspended between peace and war: companies advertising “nerve tonics” for the anxious, reports of women buying hats to lift their spirits and darker accounts of nervous breakdowns. We did not, contrary to popular myth, all Keep Calm and Carry On. Suicide rates, she notes, rose slightly.
How do you live an ordinary life under the shadow of a war? Though for now that shadow has thankfully receded, this peace remains uneasy. If he did use force against Greenland he would be unstoppable, Trump boasted, before conceding that actually: “I won’t use force” – nor the threatened trade tariffs either. Well, not today, anyway. Tomorrow, who knows?
I’ve written before about what this age of US anarchy means for governments, scrabbling to adapt to life without a superpower ally. But it’s less clear how the rest of us – doing the school run, taking the bins out, wondering what exactly Victoria Beckham did at Brooklyn’s wedding – are supposed to respond to vague exhortations to become more resilient, or get on a war footing.
Emily Thornberry, Labour chair of the foreign affairs select committee, described this week how a friend had been so scared watching Keir Starmer’s press conference on Greenland that she burst into tears. Parents of teenage sons, in particular, are fielding difficult questions about whether they might have to fight in some looming world war three. High-street business owners will be bracing for another slump, knowing that anxious people tend to stop spending money.
So it felt surreal to walk out of a bleak briefing on Trump hosted by the Institute for Government thinktank this week on to streets full of people jogging, window-shopping, going out for dinner like nothing’s happening. The public mood seems almost as disconnected from the seriousness of the moment as in the weeks before the first Covid lockdown, when pubs were full even as intensive care wards overflowed with the dying.
Yet two days on, I’m wondering whether the joggers and the window-shoppers were on to something. The threat remains real enough. But the challenge for anyone not professionally involved in countering it may be learning to live with chaos as our new normal, rather than panicking every time Trump does this. Frivolity might be crucial to staying sane.
Don’t get me wrong: the golden rule remains never to normalise Trump or his wildly transgressive presidency. But in everyday life, when something is not within your power to change – and what can an ordinary British person realistically do about a rogue US president? – people adapt to survive, imposing some semblance of normal life on the palpably abnormal. It’s how we coped with lockdown, how Belfast lived through the Troubles, why Finns were advised (after the invasion of Ukraine reignited old fears of Russian invasion) to create a daily routine and stick to it, while being careful not to project their own anxiety on to their children.
We could use a Scandinavian mindset now, a certain emotional sturdiness. Just as Danes pride themselves on fostering emotional resilience in their children, Finland is famous for sisu – Finnish for the mix of collective grit and resolve arguably required for living along the Russian border in a country where winter temperatures can hit minus 40. It’s a particular kind of resilience that doesn’t just rely on toughness, but on strong social bonds encouraging people to pull together – survival prospects increase in a crisis where neighbours pool resources – and a healthy work-life balance to keep stress low.
The final ingredient is preparedness, or taking practical steps to control whatever risks you can control, which helps with the otherwise soul-sapping feeling of powerlessness engendered by a modern war of nerves. Though following official advice on how to prepare for interruptions to power, or water, or wifi – designed to counter the threat of hybrid warfare by Russia or China, perhaps involving the sabotaging of energy supplies, banking systems or internet connections to demoralise and frighten people – may not sound very soothing, preparing for the worst can help manage the fear of it.
Perhaps the hardest skill to master, however, is knowing when to just switch off. The last time the world supposedly held its breath like this, during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the absence of rolling news and smartphones made it possible to block out the possible end of days if you wanted to. Now, we’re steeped in a social media culture that portrays looking away as immoral. But though as a lifelong news junkie it pains me to say so, not everyone is obliged to personally bear witness to everything all the time. Resilience in 2026 isn’t doomscrolling yourself into depression but knowing how to arm yourself with just enough information, before putting the phone down and watching The Traitors. For perhaps above all, surviving a war of nerves means taking your pleasures where you can.
“Apple blossom snowing in the garden,” wrote Virginia Woolf in her diary in the spring of 1940, on a day that jarringly combined the invasion of Holland and Belgium with the small personal satisfaction of posting off some book proofs. “Leonard [her husband] says he has petrol in the garage for suicide should Hitler win, but we go on. It’s the vastness and the smallness that make this possible.”
The entry is tinged with the guilt of dwelling on small joys amid such horror, but it’s perhaps only the comfort of the former that make the latter psychologically possible to absorb. To live only and always in the vastness would drive you mad. It’s all right, sometimes, just to watch the apple blossom fall.
In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
• This article was amended on 23 January 2026. Due to an editing error, an earlier version said that the Cuban Missile Crisis took place in 1961 instead of 1962.
