Escaping Hypervigilance

Can anyone focus on anything right now?

If you are like me, you have spent the last few days imagining worst-case scenarios. I'm not going to list mine for you because I know you already have your own.

I wake up in the middle of the night, cycling them through my unquiet mind, waiting for my self-soothing to make an impact. Eventually, with the help of my hops, valerian, and passionflower tincture (aka the Three Sisters of Sleep), I usually settle back into the warmth of bed until morning.

But it takes a massive effort. Deadlines, work stuff, it all keeps happening. Groceries, the pandemic, trying to create our own wellbeing in a world like this often feels like a futile exercise.

I understand why people give up. Cynicism is a natural defense. So is pretending like we don't care what happens.

This is why "manifesting" has always left a bad taste in my mouth. Because "manifesting" says that if my imagined horrors happen in the future, it's at least partly because I "manifested” it with my negative thoughts.

Such bullshit.

Even if you don't have a trauma history, with the pandemic and all the ongoing geopolitical crises, you have likely experienced hypervigilance.

Hypervigilance is a state of high alertness that never stops. People who experience hypervigilance can't relax or let their guard down. We don't feel safe because we believe that at any moment, something bad is about to happen.

Hypervigilance is an attempt to control an uncertainty by always paying attention. If we are hypervigilant, we unconsciously think that we will be able to see and therefore cope with what's coming. This "watch and wait" approach doesn't have much power in it.

Hypervigilance is a protection mechanism. It's also a symptom of trauma.

People with Post-Traumatic Stress (or PTSD, but I don't like to call it a "disorder") often have extreme hypervigilance around anything that reminds us of the original trauma. We can easily become fixated on trying to control our environment to avoid the dangers we think we see on the horizon.

Hypervigilance is not the same thing as conscious awareness or presence. Instead of making us feel safe, it is like an ongoing stress response in the body. Hypervigilance sees the future as one of looming and impending doom. It’s always waiting for the worst to happen.

It might sound easy to think that way.

The world is changing faster than we can keep up with. The change causes an unparalleled level of stress. But rather than preparing us by strategically thinking ahead, hypervigilance creates a distorted version of the future.

The truth is, we have far more agency and opportunity than hypervigilance makes us think we do. But in its grips, it's really hard to see things that way.

The problem with hypervigilance is obvious from the name: it never goes away. We don't get a break from the trigger-haired reactivity or the negativity that skews everything it touches.

The field of trauma resolution has had a paradigm shift in the last two decades. Now we know how to resolve trauma, not just recent trauma but even early childhood trauma or events that happened decades ago. These same trauma resolution tools can be used to help with hypervigilance.

I'm going to share a simple tool that will allow you to escape from hypervigilance. I'm not saying it won't come back — it will. But each time, you'll be able to use the tool and the hypervigilance will have less of a hold on you.

When we recognize our stress and trauma symptoms for what they are, we have a choice about how to respond.

Choice is everything.

If we choose to resolve the hypervigilance, we find mental peace and quiet. We finally get to enjoy the feeling of setting our mind at rest. We physically relax and settle, our breath deepens and drops more into the lower belly and the diaphragm. We feel safe enough to connect with others in a mutually-enjoyable way.

If we choose to minimize and ignore our hypervigilance, we are stuck in an ever-increasing intensity that is hard to get out of. Our mind, exhausted from the tension of forever scanning for imminent danger, takes on a negative outlook. We become irritable and unreasonable, often without knowing it.

How to Shift Your Hypervigilance

1. Recognize that you are having a stress response.

When we are feeling hypervigilant, the body is in a stress response. We are on high alert for danger to happen at any moment. In the body, the sympathetic nervous system initiates a massive biochemical response that impacts the entire system.

The mind races fast. We often feel the release of the stress hormones adrenalin, and shortly after, cortisol. We experience a sudden urge to fight, flee, freeze, and/or fawn towards the threat.

Hypervigilance doesn’t care if the danger ever comes, it’s about anticipating the threat. So it will stay there, standing sentinel forever – until you interrupt it and intervene.

2. Allow yourself to feel the stress response and let it move safely through your system.

Hypervigilance is easy to normalize in ourselves and others, especially during challenging times. But to move through it, don't try to hide or minimize it.

Hypervigilance is a trauma response so it will loop on repeat until we resolve it. We don't want it to do that. And it doesn't have to.

Let the body metabolize the stress by supporting your natural process. Breathe, shout, move, shake, make weird noises. Get physical and help the body move the tension out. Do what feels good.

3. Give yourself time to relax and reset.

After you allow the body to release, you will likely feel a drop in your energy levels. This is a sign that it’s time to relax.

When you next have a moment, make time to lie down and close your eyes. You could cover your eyes and forehead with a cloth, or maybe use a blanket to create a feeling of weight over your body. As you self-soothe, focus on your breath.

Sometimes it’s hard to relax because we’re out of practice. Hypervigilance doesn't prepare us to, what with the sense of impending disaster.

That's why it's important to consciously create the conditions for your own wellbeing.

Walking, cooking, dancing, gardening, journaling, art, talking with a friend, all of these things create a deep sense of connection to ourselves that resets the nervous system and re-establishes wellbeing in the body.

 When we finally release the hypervigilance, it feels amazing.

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I invite you to go through the steps each time you experience hypervigilance. You’ll start to see a difference. But don’t feel like you need to get it right.

As my yoga teacher used to say, "It's a practice, not a perfect."

Don't get discouraged. Hypervigilance is something we are likely to experience daily in the world we live in right now. It's a normal response when we feel overwhelmed.

The opportunity is, again and again, to come home to ourselves and access an internal state of wellbeing.

If the hypervigilance is persistent or starts to interfere with daily life, you may want to explore working with a trauma specialist, like the trauma resolution work I offer in my private practice.

The events that cause hypervigilance are beyond our control. But we get to decide how to react. And like I said, choice is everything.

Good luck.

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Thank you for reading!

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