Have you noticed the continued increase in anger and aggression in our communities?
It’s something that started a few years ago when we were all under pressure.
Across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, validated research from high-pressure environments like universities has been clear:
👉 Distress increased sharply during lockdowns
👉 Tolerance for frustration dropped
👉 Boundaries between roles blurred
👉 Conflict began showing up not as rare violence, but as frequent aggression
As restrictions lifted, those pressures didn’t disappear; they returned to everyday life in our workplaces, public services, retail, transport and neighbourhoods.
This is what communities are now experiencing:
🚫 More verbal abuse and intimidation
🚫 Faster escalation in everyday interactions
🚫 Lower thresholds for anger and confrontation
🚫 Higher psychological impact on frontline workers and volunteers
🚫 A normalisation of behaviour that would once have been unacceptable
This is about systems under long-term strain and people carrying unresolved stress into shared spaces.
As all studies have shown, and as ongoing reviews will show, these trends were predictable.
At WARN International, we use this kind of cross-sector evidence to inform our programmes.
We track early indicators, post-restriction patterns, and validated trends, and then develop programmes to mitigate the negative effects.
Our programmes are built to help people recognise escalation early, to respond safely, and to protect their own wellbeing before harm becomes routine.
If we all look to research to support foresight, foresight might just help more people to stay safe and well.
Let’s talk!
Sleep!
“If you’re wired at night, what actually helps?”
After sharing why so many people are experiencing bad dreams, early-morning waking, and feeling wired yet tired. The next question always comes - So what can I actually do at night?
Here are some things that genuinely help a busy nervous system calm down.
First, lower the bar; the fastest way to stay wired at night is trying too hard to sleep.
Sleep responds to safety. The goal at night isn’t to force sleep; it’s saying to yourself, “I’m allowed to rest, sleep will come later.”
This mental shift alone can help.
Start with a 10–20-minute buffer before bed that tells the body to stand down. Some examples include:
✅ A warm shower or bath
✅ Gentle stretching (not exercise)
✅ Sitting quietly with a drink (not alcohol) and low lighting
✅ Calm, familiar music
Consistency matters more than technique.
Next, just before bed, write down any worries, reminders, or thoughts you might have.
If you wake at night, stop arguing with your mind. If you start the chatter inside your head, it keeps the nervous system switched on.
Here’s what helps instead:
👉 Slow breathing (longer out breath)
👉 Gentle reassurance (“I’m safe right now”)
👉 Imagining something neutral and repetitive (walking a familiar path, waves, a train journey)
You’re not trying to sleep; you’re trying to stay out of threat mode.
Reeducate the nervous system during the day. What shows up at night is often what the nervous system didn’t process during the day.
Throughout the day, to reprogramme your brain, start:
⏸️ Having brief pauses during the day
😮💨 Take moments of slow breathing
🌳 Step outside
📋 Do one thing at a time.
Lastly, be kind about dreams. This one is close to my heart.
Bad dreams don’t mean you’re a bad person or regressing; they often mean the emotional system is processing things that finally feel allowed to surface.
If you wake from a disturbing dream:
✅ Remind yourself it’s memory + emotion, not a prediction
✅ Ground in the present
✅ Avoid analysing it at 3am
If you remember one thing, you don’t fix nighttime wiring with force. You calm it with permission, predictability and compassion.
You can access our sleep tips document here 👉 https://lnkd.in/ewwvA4vB
Let’s talk!
Should we blame our behaviour on our past or our brain?
When we behave out of character, most of us don’t look outward.
We turn inward; we feel regret and shame. “That’s not who I want to be.”
So should we blame our past, our trauma, our neurodiversity? Or, should we simply apologise and promise to do better next time?
Neuroscience gives us a more honest and uncomfortable answer.
Our past and our brain do influence our behaviour.
Decades of research show that past experiences, particularly trauma, leave measurable imprints on the brain.
Stress and adversity alter how the amygdala (threat detection), hippocampus (memory), and prefrontal cortex (self‑control) communicate with one another.
In simple terms, when the brain feels threatened, regulation drops before intention arrives.
The same applies to neurodivergence. ADHD, autism and related neurodevelopmental profiles involve differences in self‑regulation, emotional processing, and impulse control, particularly under stress.
Yes, our brain, traits and our past shape our reactions.
But there is a difference between a reason and an excuse.
Research from top universities consistently shows that while neurobiology constrains behavioural flexibility, it does not remove responsibility.
Trauma can reduce regulation in the moment, neurodivergence can make change harder, and stress narrows behavioural options.
However, none of these erase accountability.
What research does show is that behaviour change requires capacity, not just insight.
When the prefrontal cortex is offline, through overwhelm, fatigue, trauma activation, or sensory overload, the brain defaults to learned patterns, not values.
So what does responsibility look like?
✔️ Owning the behaviour
✔️ Naming context (without hiding behind it)
✔️ Apologising cleanly
✔️ Actively working on regulation, not just intention
This is supported across trauma‑informed neuroscience, behaviour change research, and neurodiversity‑affirming models.
Your past may explain why something was hard. Our brain may explain why it happened faster than our choice, but responsibility lies in what we do afterwards.
Blame doesn’t change behaviour, shame doesn’t either. Understanding paired with accountability does.
Let’s talk!
(Yale School of Medicine; Harvard/McLean Hospital – Trauma & Resilience Lab).
(Stanford Neurodiversity Project; Scientific Reports, Nature Group, 2025).
(Frontiers in Psychology, 2023; BJPsych Open, 2025).
(Psychology Today – Neurobiology of Trauma).
(Harvard & Yale trauma research; Stanford Neurodiversity Project).
The Two Most Requested Workshops.
The two most requested programmes we’re delivering right now are:
🔀 Managing change
🗣️ De-escalation
They’re seeing real impacts when change and escalating behaviour aren’t handled well:
📈 Increased conflict and complaints.
🥱 Fatigue and withdrawal from otherwise capable staff.
💥 More reactive decision making.
🚑 Leaders spending time managing fallout instead of leading.
When people don’t feel equipped to deal with what’s coming at them, emotionally or behaviourally, pressure can show up elsewhere.
De-escalation is about difficult interactions with the public, but it’s also about how people can regulate themselves under stress and recover faster after the interaction has passed.
Managing change is about teaching people to accept disruption, but it’s also about supporting them in maintaining confidence, clarity, and control as expectations, roles, or direction keep shifting.
The true value in our workshops shows when:
✅ People are able to respond instead of react.
✅ Conversations don’t spiral unnecessarily.
✅ Teams are supported to function despite uncertainty.
✅ Leaders have the ability to spend less time firefighting and more time leading.
That’s why we focus on practical behavioural shifts that people can apply immediately.
When organisations invest in supporting people with the tools to manage pressure in the moment, the benefits extend well beyond change or conflict.
Let’s talk!
Is ADHD The New Normal?
I get asked this a lot, is ADHD the new normal?
Alongside this question is another: Is ADHD different in men and women?
Recently, I saw a post from someone newly diagnosed with ADHD.
He shared that part of him hoped he didn’t have ADHD. He said it felt like “everyone has it now”, and he likes to be different.
For decades, ADHD was understood through a narrow lens: the disruptive, hyperactive young boy in a classroom (aka me).
Large bodies of research show ADHD is a neurodevelopmental difference affecting how the brain regulates attention, motivation, emotional intensity, and impulse control, across the lifespan (Harvard Health Publishing).
That biology is real, measurable, and it’s not a trend.
Men and women often experience ADHD differently!
Research consistently shows that boys and men are more likely to present with external symptoms of hyperactivity, impulsivity and visible behavioural disruption.
This is why they’re often identified early.
Females more commonly present with internal symptoms - chronic overwhelm, emotional dysregulation, perfectionism, anxiety, shame and exhaustion. They cope and mask until they burn out.
While boys are diagnosed far more often in childhood, adult diagnosis rates between men and women are nearly equal, pointing to decades of missed identification (Current Psychiatry Reports, 2024).
Hormones add another critical layer. There is a well-documented interaction between oestrogen and dopamine, meaning ADHD symptoms in women can fluctuate. A factor historically absent from diagnostic models (Journal of Psychiatric Research / Monash University).
Many women were simply mislabelled.
So, is ADHD the new normal? Short answer: no.
Despite rising diagnosis rates, high-quality meta-analyses show no meaningful increase in true ADHD prevalence over time once diagnostic changes and methodology are accounted for (Molecular Psychiatry / Nature Group, 2025).
What has changed is the world we’re asking brains to function in. Modern environments:
🧠 Overload attention systems
🧠 Demand constant self-regulation
🧠 Remove recovery time
🧠 Reward speed over depth.
When the external structure disappeared, particularly during and after COVID, ADHD traits became impossible to hide.
Population-based studies show a sharp rise in adult diagnoses post-pandemic, not because people suddenly wanted ADHD, but because coping strategies collapsed (https://lnkd.in/eUdbk6Pe)).
Which brings me back to that man’s comment: “I didn’t want the diagnosis because everyone seems to have it now.”
A diagnosis doesn’t make you less unique. It simply explains why your uniqueness often came with extra weight.
We’re witnessing the end of decades of misunderstanding. For many people, that explanation is the beginning of understanding and self-compassion.
Understanding who we truly are and explaining a lot of the ‘why’ behind why we didn’t seem to ‘fit in’.
Let’s talk!