When Life Happens, You Don’t Have To Lose Your Grounding

Anxiety·sarie taylor·Feb 20, 2026· 5 minutes

This week I had a car accident.

Everyone is okay. The kids are okay. The car is just a car.

But I’m not going to pretend it wasn’t horrible, because it was. The moment you realise you’ve had a bump is one thing. The moment you realise you’ve got children in the car is something else entirely.

It shakes you. Not just in your body, but in your mind too.

And that’s what I want to talk about today, because so many of us assume that if we feel wobbly after something happens, it means we’ve “lost it”. Like all the understanding, all the calm, all the progress has vanished and we’re back at the beginning.

That isn’t how it works.

A scary experience can flood your system, but it doesn’t define you

After something frightening, your system does what it’s designed to do. It wakes up. It alerts. It scans. It replays. It tries to protect you.

That doesn’t mean you’re suddenly broken.

It means you’re human.

And if you’ve ever struggled with anxiety, overthinking, panic, health anxiety, any of it, that post-event alertness can feel especially loud. Your mind can start offering you story after story.

“What if it happens again?”
“What if I’d been two seconds later?”
“What if I can’t cope?”
“What if the kids are traumatised?”
“What if I never feel normal again?”

The mind is brilliant at creating convincing movies.

But movies aren’t reality. They’re thought.

The difference between what happened and what your mind is doing with it

Something happened. A real event.

And then your mind will do what minds do: it will try to make sense of it, prevent it, rehearse it, control it, explain it.

That second part is where we suffer.

Not because we’re doing anything wrong, but because thought is powerful. It doesn’t arrive as “here is a thought you may enjoy.” It arrives as truth. It feels like fact.

When the mind is in a stirred-up state, even neutral thoughts sound urgent. Even sensible thoughts sound terrifying.

So if you’ve had a wobble after something scary, one of the most helpful things you can remember is this:

Your mind being loud does not mean danger is still happening.

It means your system is still settling.

You don’t have to get over it quickly to be okay

There’s a pressure people put on themselves after an event.

“I should be fine by now.”
“I should be grateful.”
“I shouldn’t feel this anxious.”
“Other people have it worse.”

That pressure is like adding a second accident on top of the first.

This is important: You don’t need to argue with your feelings. You don’t need to analyse them. You don’t need to do the mental gymnastics of “fixing yourself” back to calm.

Often the most compassionate thing is simply to notice:
“Ah. My mind is busy.”
“Ah. I’m feeling sensitive.”
“Ah. I’m in a shaken-up state.”

And then let that be true, without turning it into a personal failure.

The nervous system knows how to reset, even when you don’t help it

One of the most reassuring things I’ve seen, again and again, is that human beings reset naturally.

We don’t have to force it.

Sometimes it happens after sleep. Sometimes after laughter. Sometimes after a cry. Sometimes after a cup of tea and a boring TV show that gives your mind a break from itself.

I know that sounds almost too simple, but that’s the point.

Wellbeing doesn’t require your intellect.

It doesn’t require you to “do it right.”

It’s already built in.

Even after shock. Even after a rough day. Even after your mind has been doing laps around the same scary thought for hours.

What to do when your mind keeps replaying it

If your mind is stuck in replay mode, here are a few gentle reminders. Not techniques you must do. Just guide rails.

1) Don’t treat every thought like an emergency

A replay is not a prediction. It’s your mind processing, not your future being decided.

2) Come back to what is true right now

Right now, are you safe? Right now, are you breathing? Right now, are you in this moment?

You don’t have to live in the “what if” to be prepared. That’s a myth anxiety sells.

3) Let your state be what it is

If you’re shaky, you’re shaky. If you’re tired, you’re tired. If your mind is loud, it’s loud.

You don’t need to win a battle with your experience.

4) Connection helps the system settle

Sometimes you don’t need a solution. You need a person. Someone to sit alongside you, or to hear you, or to make you laugh at the absurdity of what the mind is doing.

Being human with another human is wildly regulating.