Stress is rarely treated as an illness in its own right. It is usually described as a reaction, a by-product, something secondary to what is “really” wrong. But when the brain–mind is seen structurally, something different becomes clear. Stress is not just a response to difficulty. It is a condition in which the system is prevented from returning to baseline.

In the body, chronic stress is now widely recognised as a contributor to disease progression. Long before symptoms appear, prolonged anticipation and threat signalling alter immune regulation, inflammatory balance, sleep, repair, and recovery. The system does not collapse all at once. It adapts to pressure by staying alert. Over time, that alertness becomes the problem.

When disease is diagnosed, the stress loop often intensifies. Fear of the future, loss of certainty, and identity disruption add a second burden to the first. Treatment may address the pathology, but the system as a whole remains in defence. Recovery slows not because the body lacks capacity, but because that capacity is continuously diverted into managing threat. In this way, stress becomes a second illness layered on top of the first.

There are rare cases in medicine where disease appears to regress in ways doctors cannot fully explain. These events are carefully described as spontaneous regressions, not cures, and they remain unpredictable and uncommon. What makes them interesting is not that they can be replicated, but that they reveal something about the system. In many of these cases, a profound shift occurs before improvement is observed — relief from prolonged fear, resolution of deep stress, or a return to psychological stability. Medicine cannot claim causation here, but it does observe that when the system exists chronic defence, regulation sometimes changes in unexpected ways.

This does not mean disease can be cured by mindset, nor does it place responsibility on the patient. It simply points to a structural truth: when the brain–mind is no longer locked in threat, the body is no longer forced to operate under conditions that undermine repair. Healing, in this sense, does not mean cure. It means allowing what is already coherent in the system to be carried forward, while what is unresolved is no longer dragged into every moment.

The same structure appears at the level of society.

When a society is exposed to prolonged uncertainty, ambiguous threat, and unresolved disruption, it enters a similar state. Resources are diverted into defence and repair. Institutions become reactive. Long-term planning gives way to short-term stabilisation. Creativity narrows into maintenance. As with the body, nothing dramatic needs to happen for degradation to set in. The system simply stops resetting cleanly.

Under chronic societal stress, populations live in anticipation rather than presence. Political narratives harden. Identity becomes brittle. Every new event is interpreted through the lens of unfinished disruption. Effort increases, but coherence does not. Just as in chronic illness, stress becomes self-perpetuating — not because anyone intends it, but because the system no longer knows how to stand down.

Recovery at the societal level follows the same principle as recovery in the body. It does not begin with force or control. It begins when uncertainty reduces enough for the baseline to stabilise, when the threat no longer has to be carried forward into every decision. What is already whole in the system can then persist. What was never resolved no longer dominates the present. Only under those conditions does adaptation become possible again.

This is why prolonged stress is so damaging, whether in a person or in a culture. It does not destroy directly. It exhausts quietly. It prevents arrival. It keeps the system repairing the past instead of responding to what is actually here.

Seen this way, stress is not simply something to be managed or endured. It is a signal that the reset is being interrupted. Healing, whether personal or collective, begins when that interruption ends. Not everything changes at once. Nothing needs to be forced. But when the system is no longer trapped in anticipation, recovery has somewhere to happen.

When basic economic conditions remain unstable, stress becomes systemic. The same pattern that disrupts an individual’s nervous system appears at the level of households, institutions, and nations. The scale changes, but the structure does not. Rising prices, insecure work, and uncertain futures act as continuous threat signals, preventing both individuals and societies from returning to baseline. Planning collapses into short-term survival, and effort is consumed by repair rather than adaptation. Nothing needs to be deliberately imposed for this to happen. A system that cannot settle will naturally organise itself around defence.

This is why economic stress feels personal even when its causes are abstract. The individual nervous system is not separate from the society it lives within; it is nested inside it. When millions of people are held in prolonged anticipation, the collective system mirrors the same state. Politics becomes reactive, institutions lose coherence, and long-term creativity gives way to maintenance. In this sense, the relationship between the individual and society is not metaphorical but structural. Each reflects the same inability to reset. Recovery, at any level, begins not with control or acceleration, but with the restoration of conditions under which baseline stability can return.