What is Hypervigilance?
Not many people are too familiar with what hypervigilance is. Hypervigilance is defined by WebMD as “the elevated state of constantly assessing potential threats around you.” We have to understand that in the early days of humans, we constantly had to be on alert. We had to fend ourselves off wild animals and fight for food. It was necessary for survival. Those experiences are still hardwired in our DNA, alongside modern traumas. Everyone is familiar with words like stress and anxiety, but how does hypervigilance differ from regular nervousness?
Let’s break it down. Stress is what you feel you are dealing with an unsettling, long-term issue. An example of a stressful situation might be a difficult semester in college where you’re overwhelmed by due dates and exams. Anxiety is a normal emotion experienced by everyone. Anxiety can be caused by a situation like having to give a presentation at work. It’s that nervousness you feel and that difficulty to calm down as you ruminate about what might go wrong. However, when anxiety becomes this persistent feeling even without a cause, it may be a mental health condition. Hypervigilance is about being on high alert in a situation. It’s the result of your mind being in a heightened awareness of the environment.
In a state of hypervigilance, you might scan the environment for any threats. You might have an unusual response to sensory stimuli and appear to constantly be on edge. It feels like this inability to relax where everything feels like a danger. If you ever walked alone at night in an unfamiliar, dangerous neighborhood, you will know what I’m talking about. However, in that situation, it’s understandable to feel like and it’s there to protect yourself. But to feel this hypervigilance all the time when there really dangers is different and it’s exhausting. You might notice this in someone if they are constantly checking their surroundings. We all experience this and sometimes it’s a protective instinct. However, prolonged states of feeling overly alert are often the result of trauma or a mental health condition.
After experiencing a tragedy in society, we might experience mass amounts of this heightened alertness. Think about post-9/11 and when we were coming out of the pandemic. People had an altered perception of the world around them, yet many didn’t recognize what it was.
Some signs include jumping at noises, sitting near exits, excessive worry, increased heart rate/breathing, emotional outbursts, irritability, attention, sleep and social issues, and difficulty trusting. Being in a prolonged state of this can have an impact on your mental and physical health, so it’s important to have an awareness of it.
I hope this helped give a background on this area of mental health that I feel isn’t discussed enough. This article from Cleveland Clinic will give a more in-depth background on what this is. Remember, we’ve been through a lot in our lifetimes. And now add on our current affairs, personal trauma, generational trauma, and the increase of traumatic experiences in certain careers. You will see that a lot more of us than you think are experiencing this. Having an awareness is the first step to learning how to help ourselves and others when experiencing it. I always suggest continuing to stay informed of different areas of mental health, you never know how much it can really help yourself or someone!
