Are We Supposed To Fight Our Hypervigilance?

[OneToughCookie]

I just worked out and was walking back from the track when my own thoughts triggered me. I felt unsafe and continuously scanned the environment for threats until I was back in my room. I live in a city, so it's not totally senseless to be vigilant, but scanning the shadows under cars in a parking lot, thinking about how any skater passing me could stab people as he passed them for fun, and checking over my shoulder as I speed-walked away when a drunk guy said "it feels like I've seen you forty times today" definitely fall into hyper-vigilance. My question is, when I find myself scanning the shadows, searching for threats, etc., should I stop myself? I tried to notice things that indicated the world was a safe place (all the times cars wait for people to cross the crosswalk, etc.), but I've no guidance on how to respond to that symptom.

 

[sun seeker]

This is weird... but useful to me to note. I started to write an answer, which began with the general answer that yes, we are supposed to fight our hypervigilance because it retrains our brains to, well, be less hypervigilant.

I was going to go on to say that the theory is all very well, but I don't know how to tell the difference between hypervigilance and normal vigilance... i.e., things that have a one in a million chance of happening and you would be better off relaxing, and things that actually might happen and you need to take some precautions, so I'm not one to be handing out advice on how to accomplish this.

But then I got scared that you would follow my advice and be less hypervigilant, and something horrible would happen as a result, and it would be all my fault.

Bad things happening to other people and it being my fault is one of the things I'm hypervigilant about. Can you tell? :rolleyes:

Would somebody else who can give a more reasoned answer please chime in here and bring some sense into this discussion? :eek::banghead::bag:

 

[Tinyflame]

Are We Supposed To Fight Our Hypervigilance?

Yes, I think so. If it's considered a symptom & we want to be more asymptomatic.

Ironically though, I think because countering involves relaxing, it's like saying 'hurry up & relax'. To accomplish it, I think I need distraction, that is less focus than more, or rather focus on something else. Many can do it with mindfulness. I find I can only get mindful of things or ideas or such that catch my interest.

 

[Sideways]

Two approaches I have to this (and bear in mind that I'm agoraphobic, which is a lot like hypervigilence gone mad), premised by: noticing shit isn't the problem, it's getting distressed that's the problem.

Example: noticing whether people are hidden under cars. Is that a Jason Bourne thing where people might be hiding under a car waiting to...er, scramble to their feet and chase me down? Or is it at the other end of the spectrum, which is actually just Mindfulness, like, wow, guy under the car, noticed that, that's weird, what else around me right now am I noticing? My hypervigilence is somewhere on a spectrum: Jason Bourne style? Distressing, problem. Mindfulness, good thing. Tricky!

So, first, is it interfering with my function? Buses drive me batty, but I don't need to use buses. No problem, avoid buses, Ragdoll one, hypervigilence nil. Sitting in a classroom? Waaaay stresful, but I need to be able to do that. I make it as comfortable as I can and, yep, have to fight it. Gotta concentrate on my lecturer, not people walking behind my chair. Function impairment means time to intervene, otherwise? Pfft!

Second, is it causing distress? Walking down the street again, noticing people under cars. Is it causing me distress? What I'm actually monitoring there, though, is my SUDS, not "how much stuff am I noticing". If my suds go up? Yes, time to combat the hupervigilence. If not? It's just querky, not actually a problem. It's the distress, not the actual 'noticing' that I'm focused on.

Funnily enough, if I did ever notice someone under a car, I'd probably be more concerned about whether they're okay than whether I'm okay. Why afe you under a car, because that doesn't seem like a safe place to have a snooze!?! So, that's a pointless thing for me to be worrying myself about. Pointless worry? I try and focus on other stuff (ironically, I turn to mindfulness!) because there's better things my brain could be doing with its time than just plain pointless worry. But then, worry and hypervigilence are 2 different things, and worry is something that I throw my cbt at...which is a different thread entirely!

 

[Friday]

I've found that what works best for me is to go the other way. Deliberately scanning, manually assessing as dismissing things item by item if I have to (hate that, it's slow and gives me a headache), until my hypervig is retrained to stop assessing everything as a threat (useless), and my vigilance is back. AKA situational awareness is spot on, automatic, and subtle as hell.

Vigilance? Useful.
Hypervigilance? Not useful.
Scanning is a part of both, so I use it as a bridge between the two.

ETA @Ragdoll Circus is dead on, about distress.

 

[Tinyflame]

I can't say I recognize how distressed I feel (or my body feels) until I notice what my body is doing. But mentally I usually, or often, feel - Idk- in a sort of denial?, versus what my body 'thinks' about the degree of threat. Can't really explain it well. :rolleyes:

 

[Sideways]

@Junebug - trauma tends to teach our brains to stop noticing our suds. We're always distressed, so it the brain just switches off noticing. That means that for a lot of us, we have to go back to school, and reteach our brain to notice. Monitoring suds at regular intervals on a scale of 1-10 is a fave exercise for psychologists the world over! I did it for about 6 months straight, every day, throughout the day. 6 months is overkill, but I can now say quite comfortably that noticing your suds is something that you can teach your brain to do again, pretty much as naturally as you drink a glass of OJ.

 

[Tinyflame]

trauma tends to teach our brains to stop noticing our suds. We're always distressed, so it the brain just switches off noticing.

Yes @Ragdoll Circus those are exactly the words to describe how it feels/ the experience of it. Thank you.

ETA, it's sort of like saying, it doesn't shock me, it doesn't surprise me- doesn't even bother me- then I'm throwing up, and shaking. Doesn't affect me though. :whistling: :oops: :rolleyes:

 

[sun seeker]

Many can do it with mindfulness.

I think I'm experiencing the effects of not having had any coffee this morning. The first time I read this sentence I thought it said, "Money can do it with mindfulness." I thought, "Oh! So that's what my trouble with mindfulness has been all this time, why did no one tell me?!"

 

[OneToughCookie]

I'd never heard of SUDS before. What's the purpose of noticing them? Is it to try and decrease your SUDS in the presence of the trigger over time? Can you explain why/how they help your recovery?

 

[Sideways]

Suds = Subjective Units of Distress
ie How distressed do I feel right now, on a scale of 1-10.

Hypervigilencs is one of the symptoms that reflect the constant physically aroused state that we end up in when we've had trauma. Ordinarily, a person might wake up and their suds are about 2. Then they seethe bedroom window has been broken, they panic that someone has tried to break in, and their suds shoot up to 7. Then they see a dead bird on the floor, realise that's what broke the window, and their suds head back down again.

The average Joe tends to have a natural awareness of when they're starting to feel distressed. They feel the knot in their stomach and they know: I'm upset/stressed/etc and they respond to bring that yuck feeling down. With trauma patients, you often stop noticing what your body is telling you, and because you spend all day, every day, feeling pretty distressed, you stop realising that. You stop noticing the messages that your body is sending you that you need to find calm. You stay in a constant state of hyperarousal. Hyperarousal starts to feel normal.

By monitoring your suds, you teach your brain to start noticing again. You start to develop skills and lifestyle behaviours that bring your baseline back down to what everyone else works with. It's a way of overcoming hyperarousal, constant anxiety, hypervigilence, and learning to detect and respond to signals from your emtions and body that you're too stressed out.

It also helps stop the peak hyperarousal situations from happening. Really bad anxiety or panic attacks etc. By bringing your baseline down, you can take on more stress without going straight to 10. If your baseline is 6, you can't take much more stress before you peak. So we work to bring it down, and the things that might previously have been snough to get you to 10, may now onky get you to 6, so you cope better without completely flipping out.

By regularly monitoring your suds, you start to notice again when a situation has sent your suds sky high, so you can respond to it earlier. Instead of getting into fisty cuffs with the guy at the bar picking a fight, you realise earlier that your suds are going up, and instead of hitting 10 and punching the guy in the bar, you notice that you're at 7 or 8 and it's time to take action, so you walk out of the bar instead of punching said idiot.

V brief overview of suds. Most T's I reckon would know about suds and be able to talk to you about learning how to monitor them and improve your daily hyperarousal symptoms. Often stuff you don't even realise is a problem or abnormally stressed.

 

[pixel]

And can you please explain what SUDS even is, please :bored:
Am thinking the DS stands for Distressing Symptoms? Is it Super Ultra Distressing Symptoms? :notworthy:

I started to write an answer... I was going to go on to say that...but I don't know how to tell the difference... then I got scared that you would follow my advice.... and it would be all my fault.

this is too cute! :happy: made me smile. i loved your train of thought, im on the same thought-highway, too :p


@OneToughCookie great thread question :tup:
it has never even occurred to me that hyper vigilance is thing to be battled with.
but isn't it in part due to an enlarged amygdala, which is largely under automatic control by the brain? or are we discussing the hyper vigilant thought processes? :alien: (<----- my brain melt face)

wow you guys! you're always learning me stuff! :D