I’ve worked on services for people in real crisis, including cancer patients, drink spiking victims and distressed business owners in lockdown. But it wasn’t until my father died and I began supporting my mother that I realised how easily our words, however well-intended, can cause harm.
My mother wasn’t traumatised in the conventional sense. She was bereaved, elderly, and trying to cope with unfamiliar technology. But as I guided her through pension forms and health service portals, I found myself shouting at screens, hunting down support helplines, and untangling clumsy, automated letters. I’d helped design some of those services. And I couldn’t make sense of them.
If someone like me, a senior content strategist with four decades of experience, struggled to get through a GOV.UK form, what chance does the average user have?
This is what we call micro-trauma. And if you write for financial services, public sector clients, or anyone with a regulated offer, it’s a risk you can’t afford to ignore.
What is micro-trauma and why should copywriters care?
Micro-trauma is the drip-drip impact of everyday stress compounded by confusing, overwhelming or emotionally insensitive content. It’s not about PTSD or high-profile life events. It’s the cumulative effect of money worries, health issues, the weather, endless email notifications, relationship problems at home or work, war and famines in the news, concerns about loved ones and pets, faulty equipment and so on. And it’s exacerbated by a cold error message after 45 minutes of form-filling, by tone-deaf FAQs, robotic chatbot loops or contradictory instructions that leave users blaming themselves.
Your user isn’t lazy. They’re stressed. Or grieving. Or afraid to get something wrong. And when that’s the emotional baseline, your copy either helps or harms.
Micro-trauma matters because it directly affects comprehension. And if people can’t understand your message, they can’t act on it. That’s not just poor UX; it’s poor copy.
The way people process information and engage with services has fundamentally changed since the Covid-19 pandemic and repeated lockdowns. This isn’t just anecdotal. Findings from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), the National Health Service (NHS) and academic studies demonstrate a clear and lasting impact on our collective ability to focus, remember, and comprehend content.
During the pandemic, 1 in 3 adults (32%) reported they were so stressed they struggled to make basic decisions such as what to wear or eat (ONS, May 2021). ONS data show that this still affects many people today.
A major study from Birkbeck, University of London, found that mental health symptoms in England remained significantly elevated a year after the final lockdown ended. Young adults, remote workers and those experiencing loneliness or pre-existing health conditions were especially affected, with many still struggling to focus and cope with daily demands.
Now, five years later, new studies are revealing what many of us have sensed anecdotally: this wasn’t a temporary disruption. It was a profound psychological reset. And not always in ways we’ve accounted for.
According to the NHS and ONS, a significant number of people in the UK continue to experience symptoms of ‘long Covid’, which include difficulty concentrating, memory problems and what’s often called ‘brain fog’. These symptoms directly affect people’s ability to process information, manage complex tasks and engage with digital services.
In the UK, teachers and health professionals continue to report significant increases in anxiety and behavioural issues in children who missed critical social development milestones.
In France, where I spend half my time, a recent survey found that over 30% of 18–24-year-olds still report emotional difficulties that started during lockdown and haven’t gone away.
In the US, emergency room visits for youth mental health issues remain significantly higher than pre-2020. Among older adults globally, including those in Australia and Canada, levels of digital confidence, social resilience and motivation have declined and remained low.
This isn’t about past trauma. It’s about ongoing adjustment. People haven’t simply returned to who they were before. In many cases, they’ve become someone else entirely, more hesitant, less resilient, more cautious and more forgetful.
Research published in the British Journal of General Practice and by the NHS confirms that increased stress and anxiety during lockdowns led to measurable declines in mood, memory and cognitive function, particularly among older adults.
Cognitive overload
However, there is robust evidence from the UK that cognitive overload, driven by information overload, daily stressors, and the relentless pace of current affairs, remains a common and significant issue. Over a third of UK adults report daily debilitating stress due to information overload. This includes the pressure to process vast amounts of emails, news, social media, and digital documents at work and in personal life.
Sixty-one per cent of people say that keeping track of information from too many sources is a significant concern in their daily lives, and 34% say that they struggle to absorb all the content presented to them.
Cognitive overload is increasingly recognised in UK workplaces, especially since the Covid-19 pandemic. It occurs when working memory is over-stimulated by too much information or multitasking, compromising the ability to think, organise and plan. The stress from this overload has tangible effects: 44% say it affects their sleep and relationships, and 35% feel anxious, fidgety and unable to relax as a result.
The Stress Management Society highlights that information overload reduces attentional resources, impairs decision-making, and increases regret and difficulty in processing complex tasks.
Micro-stressors, such as small, everyday frustrations like running late, minor mistakes at work, or misplacing items, are reported by 45% of Brits as quietly wearing them down. For younger adults, this figure rises to 65%, indicating a generational impact.
At the same time, 40% of adults with credit or loans reported experiencing stress due to their debt, as announced by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in its Financial Lives May 2024 survey. Many organisations will have clients who fall within this 40%, facing not just financial challenges but also emotional and mental strains.
This isn’t just a UX issue, but a compliance issue
In the UK, services that confuse, mislead or overwhelm users may fall foul of the law. If you’re writing for banks, insurers or investment platforms, you’re already bound by the FCA’s Consumer Duty, which requires firms to deliver “good outcomes” and prove they’ve made communications clear, not just accurate.
Public sector contracts will expect you to meet Plain English standards. Under the Equality Act 2010, you’re also legally required to make services accessible to disabled users, including those with cognitive impairments or fluctuating capacity.
And don’t think you’re off the hook if you’re working in B2B. Everyone, in every context, deserves content that doesn’t cause harm.
Real-world lessons from services I’ve helped fix
Here are a few examples from my own work and what they taught me about reducing micro-trauma:
Universal Credit — For some time, I was responsible for all online content for the UK’s main welfare system. My user research showed deep mistrust in government services. Why are you asking this? What do you need it for? I cut the number of questions by up to 70% in some journeys, simply by challenging every piece of data we asked for. But even a word like “partner” caused confusion in user testing. Many thought it referred only to same-sex relationships. We learned that every term, no matter how obvious to us, had to be tested for how it lands emotionally and cognitively.
COVID-19 business grants — During lockdown, I helped to create rapid, automated background checks for emergency business grants for the Cabinet Office. Our counter-fraud system checked data with Companies House, HMRC, credit rating agencies and other sources in a split second, but users didn’t believe it. They assumed it was too fast to be accurate. We added a fake 10-second egg timer to reassure them that checks were happening. It was pure psychology and satisfaction scores rose dramatically.
Cancer Research UK — I led the revision of over 5,000 pages of cancer advice and information, accessed by more than four million people each month. One key change: using collapsible sections (“accordions”) to allow users to control what they see and when. Especially for people dealing with illness, that sense of control, deciding when to read about side effects, for example, made the experience less overwhelming.
Ofsted — The regulator for schools and childcare in England had five separate paper forms for prospective childcare providers. People had to read a 70-page manual written in postgraduate-level English. Many ended up in tears on the helpline. I replaced it with a single online form with embedded help text and examples. It cut helpline calls and time spent correcting errors by more than half.
None of these services were broken. But they all needed a cognitive accessibility lens. Because a design that only works for calm, well-rested, digitally literate users is a design that fails.
What copywriters can do right now
You don’t need a new qualification to spot and reduce micro-trauma. But you do need to question a few assumptions:
- If your client says “it passed legal,” ask if it passed a stress test. Would this message make sense to someone who is tired, grieving or overwhelmed?
- Test content under real-world conditions. Not just for comprehension, but for emotional impact.
- Use COGA principles. The W3C’s guidance on cognitive accessibility encourages clarity, consistency, reduced memory burden, and trust-building.
- Avoid shame triggers. Words like “failed,” “ineligible,” or “you must” often compound users’ sense of inadequacy.
- Challenge internal bias. “Users just need to read it properly” is not a defence. It’s a red flag.
This is your competitive edge
Clients don’t just want beautiful copy. They want results, with fewer complaints, less rework, higher conversion and lower risk.
And the copywriter who can explain micro-trauma to a regulated client? Who can show how better content builds trust, reduces harm and aligns with Consumer Duty?
That copywriter becomes indispensable.