Are you Hyper-vigilant?
If you’d like to find out are you hyper-vigilant? Then have a look at the warning signs…
Do you:
- Struggle to switch off
- Have trouble sleeping, waking up at any noise
- ‘Body-scan’ and feel anxious at the slightest feeling of nausea (often caused by anxiety!)
- Constantly scan your surroundings in case you see/hear vomit
- Struggle to eat in public, monitoring people around you, your food and how you’re feeling
- Pick up on other people’s reactions and what they say
- Analyse food, check sell-by-dates, avoid eating at other people’s houses (or sneakily go to their fridge/bin to check the cooking instructions and sell-by-dates!)
Hypervigilance is a state of increased alertness and extreme sensitivity to yourself and your surroundings. When you’re always on high-alert, it means you’re living in a pretty much constant state of stress arousal. This can make it hard to switch off and relax. Many people live their entire life like this so don’t even realise they’re hypervigilant! When you don’t know what a unique state this is, you assume everyone around you is also picking up on the same small cues that you are – it’s very likely they’re not even noticing them!
Research shows hypervigilant thinking is a key part of emetophobia. You are no doubt hypervigilant to any threats that might make you sick/involve someone else being sick. In social situations, you can also be sensitive to other people’s opinions of you, picking up on any social cues that might be negative. When you’re constantly on-edge and brooding about these experiences, you can easily get tunnel vision, which is your body’s way of responding to a threat by zooming in on it. Have you ever heard someone say they felt sick and suddenly your senses were amplified and all you could focus on was them? That’s tunnel vision! It’s a smart defence when there’s a real threat, but it’s unhelpful when you’re always on high-alert, zooming in on even small cues. You can’t concentrate on anything else, you lose perspective and feel more stressed – it’s an unhelpful cycle!
If you’re afraid of being sick, it’s likely you’re hypervigilant to your own body – ‘body-scanning’ for signs you might be unwell.
Unfortunately body-scanning can create a viscious cycle. The more you focus in on tiny feelings in your body, the more tunnel vision you get, the more you lose perspective, the more anxious you feel, the more your stress response creates physical symptoms. You end up feeling what you were scared of feeling to start off with, and probably end up having a full blown panic attack! “Individuals with this condition [emetophobia] have a tendency to check and monitor interoceptive stimuli [bodily sensations] such as nausea that in turn makes them more likely to feel sick.” (Jong, 2012)
We’ve looked at the link between hypervigilance and emetophobia, but being hypervigilant is not all bad! You’re probably very bright and observant, able to take in and appreciate the world around you. When you’re acutely aware of social signals (when they’re not being interpreted negatively!) you can pick up on how your friends are feeling – these are great attributes!
And remember, these negative effects of hypervigilance are only temporary – you can get rid of them as with everything else that’s stopping you thriving. That’s what we’re here for, to teach you how you can take control of your mind and become so powerful in your mental health that hypervigilance is no longer a problem.
✨ Some top tips for now though ✨
- Start recognising when you’re hypervigilant
- Challenge your thoughts and give yourself perspective over the situation – ‘This is me just creating this anxiety which is making me feel sick, it’s not reality.’
- Take some time to really do something that will help you de-stress and unwind.
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