The false activation of the instinctive responses - hypervigilance
Hypervigilance is a state of increased alertness, constant scanning for potential threats, and a continual state of flux expecting a potentially life-threatening event to occur at any moment. Even the slightest trigger can create an overwhelming sense of anxiety and stress.
Hypervigilance is often associated with those who have experienced repeated traumas, survived abuse, been subjected to unstable parenting through alcohol, drug dependency or severe mental health issues or have been involved in combat.
A bit like the lookout in a Meerkat colony, only without any sleep, break or respite – on constant duty over weeks, months and even years, weary, fatigued and often hoodwinked as the exhaustion plays tricks on the lookout’s sensory input.
Or perhaps you can liken it to the security guard of your being, your ‘self’ that is overworked, hasn’t had any sleep for aeons, isn’t provided breaks from duty and is operating on a high-stimulant cocktail of stress hormones and caffeine equivalent.
In many therapeutic models, hypervigilance can be described as a ‘part’ of you. We have many parts, some that seek excitement or joy, some that are responsible for telling you that you are tired, and some that are protectors that jolt you at the driving wheel if you become a touch too weary-eyed. We have parts that judge ourselves and others, parts that avoid or want to over-achieve, these are just a few of them.
Hypervigilance activates our instinctive responses. The most common is the Flight, Fight, Freeze responses, mobilising us to run away, stand and fight or freeze in a hope that the threat will think we are dead and move on (more accurately thanatosis or tonic immobility).
In the work that I do, I also include the responses of Numb, Vomit and Dissociate and find that these are equally as common. Numb removes all emotion, usually when the emotions are so overwhelming that we cannot process them. Vomit is frequently felt as nausea at lower levels and Dissociate is an out-of-body experience or a feeling of disconnect from the physical body.
As a protector, hypervigilance takes its role in protecting its human very seriously and to levels of perfection that stretch the imagination and is often falsely activated.
The false activation of the instinctive responses can lead to poor perception of what is and what isn’t a threat to life.
For example, a person who jumps at the sight of a vacuum hose that moves similarly to a snake, or a child that is fearful of a shadow in their room that turns out to be their dressing gown. Or, perhaps a person that spends ages preparing for a relatively short, familiar and easy outing, considering and planning for all eventualities, taking supplies ‘just in case’ and if the slightest thing is outside their expectation, fear, panic and overwhelm activate the instinctive responses.
When hypervigilance becomes a repetitive state, then the brain alters its processing to accommodate this new ‘norm’ and makes looking for potential threats easier – it creates an autopilot. Autopilots can also be considered to be a level of unconscious competence a bit like just knowing how to write your name without thinking about it, waking up just before the alarm or driving/riding a bike. All of these actions have been repeated so often that we become unconsciously competent and create an autopilot.
The same can be said of any thought, behaviour, or activity a person repeats often enough, our brains will make it easier to access these thoughts, behaviours or actions and create autopilots.
Autopilots can be life-enhancing or life-limiting for our brain has no preference, this is because it is an efficiency machine that focuses on either avoiding pain or seeking pleasure. This is why it can be so difficult to break a limiting behaviour such as smoking or biting your nails. Often a person will report that they don’t know why they do it and struggle to stop it because they are thinking or doing it almost automatically.
If we consider that our brains behave a bit like a muscle in the human body. If you exercise muscle, it becomes stronger. To begin with, exercising a weak muscle is difficult. It takes times and consistent practice to strengthen the muscle and results take time to become noticeable. Once the desired level of strength is achieved then maintaining strength is a lot easier.
The human brain is similar in that, to begin with, learning to walk is tricky, it takes many attempts and failures and gathering lots of feedback before walking is mastered. Now, if you were to attempt to unlearn walking, that too would be very difficult, if not impossible to achieve (unless an injury of some kind has happened).
Hypervigilance is a ‘brain muscle’ or a part of you that has been exercised a lot. Hypervigilance has become strong and operates on autopilot, but before you despair, please remember that anything that has been learnt can be unlearnt and being hypervigilant can also be unlearnt as long as you are willing to put in the work to strengthen other parts of you and stop strengthening hypervigilance.
Unlearning hypervigilance is simple but not necessarily easy. There are 5 simple steps to unlearn hypervigilance and strengthen calm, confidence, peace and self-assuredness (these seem to be the required recipe to quieten hypervigilance and give the Meerkat/Security Guard a well-earned vacation).
Step 1. Notice that you are being hypervigilant. You cannot change something that you are unaware of.
Step 2. Pause, the temptation is to allow your thoughts to run off into your default instinctive response.
Step 3. Choose an alternate state such as calm, confidence, peaceful, self-assured or any other way of being that allows you to take back charge of your thoughts, feelings, behaviours and actions.
Step 4
a) Connect with times that you have been in the chosen state. This requires good visualisation techniques that you may or may not have (if you struggle with this then 4b may be the answer).
b) Use a guided visualisation or mind gym technique to bring your mind and body back to the present. Breathing techniques also work very well.
Step 5. Decide what is a better thing for you to be doing (distract yourself with something that has a purpose) and redirect your focus to that.
Although these steps are simple, it may not be easy to implement them in the beginning, be kind to yourself whilst you are practising and learning to change the way you think and behave. If you don’t then all that will happen is that you will probably inadvertently introduce another ‘part’ of you that is highly likely to trigger the hypervigilance even more – such as frustration or anger and you’ll end up in a very messy looping of destructive patterns of thought.
I’ve written this article with the desire to empower you to make changes for yourself, however, this may not be possible as often these ‘parts’ have developed their strength and may not so readily want to let go of something that is keeping you safe.
I offer a number of guided visualisations for free that help to interrupt the predictable patterns of these ‘parts’ and give you the headspace to start making changes.
On my website, these can be downloaded for free under resources:
https://beu.org.uk/shop/3-2-1-self-hypnosis-for-calming-your-mind-and-body
https://beu.org.uk/shop/mind-gym-training-sensory-version-1