Hypervigilance is a heightened awareness of your surroundings. It's a common symptom of PTSD, as well as a few other conditions.
If you experience hypervigilance, then you might feel like you're always on edge, easily startled, oversensitive to danger, or unable to relax and feel safe. You might notice that your body reaches for a fight-or-flight response much more quickly than other people or takes longer to calm down. Some people describe hypervigilance as being stuck in a fight-or-flight response even when their surroundings are safe and familiar.
Examples
One of the more commonly given examples of hypervigilance is discomfort with sitting with your back to a room, turning off the lights, or otherwise being physically vulnerable even when you rationally know that there's no danger. Hypervigilance isn't just about the physical environment, though- it can also affect your social environment and internal experiences.
You might find that you constantly monitor the thoughts and feelings of everyone around you, or that you can't emotionally tolerate conflict and disagreement. People might see you as unpredictable or sensitive because you react very strongly to small things. Criticism might feel like an attack even if you asked for the critique.
Small, passing comments might feel like they imply something that the person never actually said (E.G. someone says, "nice sweater," and you get stuck wondering if they mean that they hated the shirt you wore yesterday). You might feel that other people have to be kept happy at all times or else something terrible might happen. People pleasing, reassurance seeking, or controlling behavior might feel like your only options to stay safe socially.
On the other hand, you might feel unable to trust others, or you might push people away because the presence of someone else feels unsafe. You might constantly watch for signs that someone is going to hurt or leave you, then act on those signs even if the person hasn't actually done anything to you. It's also possible that you might decide not to care about anything or anyone so that nothing can hurt you.
Some people feel stuck constantly thinking of everything that could possibly go wrong and how they'd respond to it, and they might interpret small misfortunes as signs that everything is about to fall apart. Small body signals that most people ignore could be interpreted as signs of danger or illness. A person might try very hard to avoid all thoughts and feelings that cause discomfort even if doing so hurts them- even moreso if those things are related to a past trauma.
Hypervigilance can be exhausting. You're aware of so many things all the time, trying to juggle them all, and human bodies aren't made to do that 24/7. A lot of people wind up feeling tired, angry, depressed, or upset because they can't relax. It can make it hard to sleep or focus.
Our Experience
Personally, hypervigilance feels like ambient terror or uncomfortable physical alertness that doesn't have a clear cause or resolution. It's just there, constantly, like our brain taped down its alarm button. I usually describe it as "you know when you lean back in a chair and almost fall over, and you get that bolt of fear? That, but it doesn't stop."
It also shows up as difficulty trusting people and situations. In the past, I often got stuck in loops of trying to "fix" people because letting them be responsible for themselves felt unsafe, which did a lot of damage to everyone involved. Other people here were stuck pushing friends away, hurting themselves to try to calm down, or choosing not to have any friends in the first place. It didn't make the fear go away, but we didn't know what else we could do.
Hypervigilance doesn't have to be a permanent state of being, and it can be unlearned by learning coping skills that allow you to feel your emotions without being overwhelmed, then gently exposing yourself to discomfort or (perceived) risk and learning to tolerate it better.
Self-soothing skills have been extra-helpful for me, though it took a while to be able to do something like "take three deep breaths" without feeling worse. As kids, we were often punished for needing time to calm ourselves down, so a lot of us learned that we weren't allowed to take a moment to soothe ourselves. I had to figure out why it felt like I wasn't allowed to calm myself down before I could actually do it. Taking a deep breath has gotten easier now that I can recognize that trauma response and tell myself, "if someone gets mad at you for trying to calm down, then that's their problem, not yours".
I still have a hard time trusting people, but I've learned that they have to be responsible for themselves and their own issues. "Fixing" people doesn't help them. It takes away their chance to learn how to help themselves, hurting them in the long run.
Alt text duplicated below the cut.
[Image ID start.]
Red, who is surrounded by warning symbols and looks annoyed: "What the hell, man, this sucks! I'm not even anxious, why the fuck is our body on alert? We're fine!"
Echo, popping in: "That'll be the hypervigilance. From the PTSD. You know, the 'my body is on alert for danger even when it's safe' symptom. Did you not notice it before?"
Red, now infuriated and throwing her hands in front of her: "No! I was too fucking pissed off to be unsettled!"
Blue: "Want me to take over?"
Red: "Please!"
Blue: "Yay :3"
Blue switches in abruptly, looking fairly happy. The warning symbols in the background are still there, but dimmer. Echo walks out of the panel.
Red, throwing her hands up in frustration: "Why do you get to be relaxed?!"
Blue: "I'm not, I'm just ignoring the horrors :3"
Red: "What."
Blue, starting to sweat: "If I stay busy with fun stuff, then I don't get sucked into feeling bad, and then it's okay."
Red, concerned: "Are you… okay? Is that why you're like this all the time? I thought you were just being annoying on purpose."
Gwen, smiling and poking her head in from the side of the panel: "Wow, rude."
Blue: "As long as I have stuff to do, I'm fine, yeah!"
Red: "Are we all just trying to avoid our own body freaking out all the time? Fuck."
Echo, peeking back in: "Sounds familiar."
I’m in a bit of an art block so I wanted to update this piece! Crimson was removed because he doesn’t really have eyes?? Feel free to do this for yourselves!!
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