Help with Hypervigilance
Let's do a quick check-in. Are you having intrusive thoughts, worst-case scenarios you can't stop thinking about, and feeling like the world is now a bad and hopeless place?
Are you losing interest in things that you used to enjoy, and generally feeling detached, numb, and negative?
Are you incessantly checking the news?
If any of this sounds like you right now, I’m with you. We’re experiencing hypervigilance, which is a psychological effect of chronic stress or even trauma.
Hypervigilance means being overly attentive to your environment because you are afraid something terrible is about to happen. It involves scanning for threats, but more than we need to. It’s like we don’t want to be surprised by bad news, so we think we can anticipate it.
Only, that’s not how it works. Hypervigilance actually does the opposite of protecting us.
(I’m teaching an online workshop on Self-Care and Hypervigilance on 3 April. Sign up here.)
Hypervigilance wears down your immune system. It takes the energy you need for life and spends it on surveillance, the whole time telling your body that now is a dangerous time to rest, relax, or otherwise take some small pleasure for yourself.
One example of hypervigilance is preferring to read pages of COVID social media instead of exercising or eating breakfast at a reasonable time. We feed the stress of hypervigilance when we scroll for undetermined amounts of time, our shoulders locked, our breath shallow, our minds racing.
Stress, Trauma, and Hypervigilance
Once activated, it's hard to down-regulate hypervigilance. By the time it happens, the stress that’s causing it has usually been around for a long time. With COVID, experts say that we will have long months ahead.
The timeline of hypervigilance is important to recognize, because if we don’t intervene, it keeps going. When we’re hypervigilant, we become avoidant and prefer to isolate alone because we feel safer that way.
But reacting to hypervigilance with isolation is the worst thing you can do because it knocks away your support system at the very moment you most need it.
When I was recovering from PTSD, it was extra difficult for me to stay in regular contact with my closest friends. I felt so sensitive and activated, even a little bit of socializing felt exhausting. I had to learn interrupt the hypervigilance, to get out of it. Otherwise, I would still be there, exhausted from trying to protect myself from life.
With COVID, we’re all in this together. It will take time and focus, but we can learn how to move out of hypervigilance and slow things down.
If, like me, you’re a PTSD survivor, you are likely very familiar with our friend, hypervigilance. It’s the part of us that doesn’t want to try because we’re afraid that we might not be up to the challenge. It’s easy to slip into negative self-talk and not realize it, when we’re stressed.
The hypervigilance we are experiencing right now reminds me of how it felt in the aftermath of trauma, when it felt like everything was a potential threat. Being on constant lookout for danger was exhausting. I know I was quiet and withdrawn to family and friends.
It’s 100% okay to feel quiet, withdrawn, and negative these days. What’s important is to recognize it, feel it, and know that when you’re ready, it doesn’t have to always be that way.
Shifting the Stress Response
Hypervigilance is a stress response, part of a freeze cycle where we can't get away from the stressor and are forced to adapt to the danger. We can't escape COVID, so we start to try to anticipate what's next.
We read the news, scanning for new stories as if that will give us a sense of mastery over the situation, but of course it only feeds our mind's fears and thirst for more.
We start to see threats everywhere we look, and we are constantly scanning. This is exhausting, physically and emotionally, and our attention suffers. It's harder to focus on the things we need to, no matter how hard we try.
Trying to force yourself out of hypervigilance is about as effective as trying to score a football goal by yelling at the television.
If we want to overcome this, we’ll need a better way.
Because hypervigilance is a stress response, we can recognize when we find ourselves there.
This is often when we're caught in the emotions of the moment, reading bad news, particularly when scrolling on social media. It is especially bad when we’re trying to sleep.
That's the other thing about hypervigilance, which you probably know already: it messes with your rhythms and your sleep. And quality sleep is one of the key things we need right now, for our immunity and well-being.
I don't need to tell you more reasons to get help with your hypervigilance. If you're experiencing it, you already know what I mean.
If you'd like to explore more direct practices that help, sign up for the free online workshop I'm giving on Self-Care and Hypervigilance here.
The workshop is on Friday 3 April 4 pm PT / Saturday 4 April 12 pm NZ. Send me your questions in advance. I'll be sending out the recording, but you need to register to receive it. You can register here.