hypervigilance

If you are obsessing over stuff, it's because you are emotionally dependent right now.

Hypervigilance reveals the nervous system instability and deregulation.

If you're hypervigilant, it's because your nervous system is entirely dysregulated right now.

Again, now we've got a diagnosis.

And the part is, the idea of that is to transition back to civilian life.

We don't want you going from that locked and loaded mindset that you have in combat, which is effective in combat, but then you come home and that same, you know, think about just hypervigilance, classic PTSD symptom, right? Hypervigilance is very good in a war zone.

It keeps you safe.

hyper vigilance in a civilian environment not as effective so a lot of these things that the american army has an acronym called uh battle mind i think it's called familiar i don't know if this is maybe a newer thing okay it's their it's their uh training for how to come home and so like b is buddies a is uh aggression right aggression is good in a war zone it's not good when you're with your wife and kids um T is targeted lethality, right? You want to be lethal in a war zone.

Before we go into the teaching, I wanna show you what the research says about what you've just heard described, because I think caregivers deserve to know that what they're experiencing has been studied, documented, and named by researchers around the world.

Hypervigilance in caregiving is not a personality trait.

It is a psychological adaptation.

Research defines it as a state of being highly or abnormally alert to potential danger or difficulty, and in caregiving populations, it has been documented as one of the most common and most sustained nervous system responses to chronic caregiver stress.

All right, let's build the framework, because understanding what's happening is the beginning, but I wanna give you something you can actually use.

What hypervigilance actually is and why it develops in caregiving.

Hypervigilance is your nervous system's response to an environment where threat has been real, repeated, and unpredictable.

It is not the same as anxiety, though it can coexist with it.

Very bleak.

Hypervigilance, the dread, the allostatic exhaustion, the contempt, the phantom limb pain, the sabotage.

So the obvious glaring screaming question is, why on earth do people stay?

That is the million dollar question.

It experiences it as a threat.

That's what hypervigilance is.

Hypervigilance is your nervous system going, something bad is coming, stay ready.

And it doesn't care that you're only watching your own stomach.

Your body cannot tell the difference between a threat outside of you and watching for one inside of you.

And I am speaking from experience here.

Hypervigilance shrinks our world.

However, awareness helps us to practice moderation and non-excessiveness.

That's another one of the virtues that we practice in Pranic Healing.

On top of this, your brain becomes hypervigilant after infidelity.

Hypervigilance is basically just the idea that you're not wanting to be blindsided again.

You're wanting to make sure that you don't get caught off guard again.

And so you start to become intensely aware of things like changes in your partner's voice, inconsistencies, like minor inconsistencies in what they say.

A kid who learned how to read a room for danger before he learns to read gets very good at exactly one thing, scanning the room for threats forever.

Hypervigilance was my first job.

Watching the front door, watching the beer count, watching the mood of my mother and my stepfather, watching if anything was going to tilt and get off keel.

That skill kept me alive at eight.

Our brains are creatures of habit.

We have decades of reps. Hypervigilance has become extraordinarily efficient and the dominant pathway for our brain.

There are these things that happen inside our brain called ants, automatic negative thoughts.

And you, my friend, probably have lots of ant invasions.

I want you to notice the sort of vicious circularity here.

Chronic stress makes you hypervigilant.

Hypervigilant sharpens your threat bias and your negativity bias.

Those biases make you notice more danger.

Noticing more danger produces more stress.