Hi everyone and welcome to my letter H post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I want to talk about a major symptom of (complex) PTSD which I struggle with a lot: hypervigilance.
Hypervigilance is an increased awareness of one’s environment and seemingly unimportant details in it. That is, often people who experience hypervigilance constantly scan their surroundings for signs of threat, but that doesn’t mean they’re hyper aware of everything going on. In fact, they often miss out on actually important aspects of their surroundings, such as missing part of a conversation they’re having.
There is a sensory aspect to hypervigilance, ie. increased sensitivity to noise, smells or other sensory stimuli. However, there are also cognitive and emotional aspects to it. People who are hypervigilant due to (complex) PTSD often overanalyze the things happening around them and too easily perceive them as threatening.
I for one commonly overanalyze things that I perceive. It doesn’t help that people often expect me to appraise already overloading stimuli differently based on other factors involved. Like, due to being autistic, I get very easily overwhelmed by loud noises, crowded environments, etc. However, due to both autism and C-PTSD, I also overanalyze my perceptions. For example, I often judge myself for being overwhelmed because, for instance, my fellow residents “can’t help” making certain noises.
People with complex PTSD often experience hypervigilance about other people’s intentions too. I for one am always looking for signs that the people who mean the most to me are going to betray me. It’s not like I want to, but that’s been my experience most of my life.
Hypervigilance can also show up in physical symptoms. An increased startle reflex is part of the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Many people with (C-)PTSD also struggle to relax even when there are no sudden stimuli or changes to the environment. Which, now that I type it, I realize is nonsense: the environment is always changing even when people who aren’t neurodivergent or trauma survivors or both, do not notice. I last week had a meltdown because I was overwhelmed by the sounds in the living room, only to be told by the staff that it was totally silent. Well, except for a fellow resident’s tablet, the TV, the dishwasher and I’m not even counting the relatively “minor” everyday sounds, like birds chirping outside, the staff station clock ticking, etc.
Anyway, hypervigilance like I said can show up as physical symptoms. Many people experience an increased heartrate, heavy breathing, higher blood pressure, etc. After all, stress (and hypervigilance is majorly stressful) activates the body’s nervous system.
I don’t yet know what can be done about hypervigilance. I follow movement therapy, but so far, it’s incredibly slow-going. It doesn’t help that, like I said above, the world is ever-changing. In other words, even though my therapist talks about baby steps, I know the real world doesn’t work like that.
A Multitude of Musings 
At one time you needed the hypervigilance to survive. It’s hard to turn that off.
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It is indeed. Thanks for your kind comment.
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Astrid:
I think of all the sayings like The price of freedom is vigilance and “Toujours Vigilance” [for those commenters who do not know French – toujours is always] is kind of my personal motto/sayings.
When the students were taking Daphne du Maurier’s REBECCA in April and May 1998 my compeers were realising how the narrator/protagonist – and the author! – attached information or signals to what might be small details otherwise.
It’s not the size of the detail {or the problem! contrary to what some therapeutic programmes may say} – or even the significance.
It’s whether it can threaten you or otherwise hurt you – and “you” can contain circle of concern like the people; place and thing you care about and who care about you.
When something you previously didn’t or wouldn’t care about affects you in that way – the “hyper” in hypervigilance is there.
And sometimes at least there is “hypo”vigilance especially with the pre-traumatic self.
For example: the person might not care or understand much about danger.
I was primed and wired for hypervigilance in the late 1980s around the time I moved to a new house which was not my grandmother’s house.
I had become aware – and sensitised – to my parents talking. Posibly – and highly probably – about me.
And, well, arguing.
And – not respecting privacy or secrecy.
Especially, doubly, and multiply: with other people who I had had no basis to trust. AND it affected me differently with people I knew and COULD trust or had various opportunities to trust and interact with more generally.
I did not experience hypervigilance about people’s intentions until I interacted in larger groups – and especially when my peers and I were entering into intimate relationships.
Between March and September 2001 I was part of an online PTSD group.
In PTSD space – hypervigilance was part of the big three – avoidance of reminders of the “original trauma” [and successor/secondary references] and intrusive thoughts.
Judging and shaming yourself when it comes to other people and their noises/language/communication is also a precipitating factor in my own PTSD experiences.
I would specifically be hypervigiliant about interruption; disruption; distraction within a classroom situation during teaching and instructional time.
The physicality would be big: tensions in muscles; headaches [which I had developed already by 1991]; dizziness; and flight response.
In that same literature group where we studied REBECCA I had frozen when everyone else had left the lecture/tutorial.
And, yes, this included my critical friend who I had spent a lot of time with in the last two years prior to this particular course.
[and a few months afterwards: I entered into an intimate partnership through an event to terminate that year’s German course – where a few groups would come together – usually the first and the third years. By the time we left for the bus this young man was swooning over me].
And it is hard not to believe the staff are not lying when they say it is totally silent.
One effect of my hypervigilance is about radio and TV programmes – and indeed any non-contextual audio. That can and does provoke a startle response and recoiling.
Betrayal trauma! There is a good piece from psychiatrist George Blair-West which I only encountered in 2023.
[after twenty years and more of working – on my own and with others].
And in 2001 I learnt a lot about the power of trauma and movement in a separate group.
It was observing a pre-teen survivor of child abuse and neglect [she had been adopted from China; and I was chatting with her mother about the ways people with attachment issues use talk to connect and disconnect from key relational content and form].
Her movements were – very – deviant and constrained/constricted.
[and there was something similar in T. Hayden’s GHOST GIRL].
Being in online communities – trauma-focused and trauma-informed – has had effects on how I see mine and other people’s hypervigilance…
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Thanks a lot for sharing all this. I’ll definitely look into that psychiatrist you encountered in 2023. I never fully realized how ssignificant my attachment issues are until I met a fellow resident at the intensive support home. She was labeled with severe attachment problems and could only be supported by staff who were extensively oriented to her and that orientation couldn’t take place until the staff had spent considerable time (at one point over a year) working at the home. Yet what taught me about my own attachment issues was not this resident’s inability to accept new staff but her apparent ease interacting with total strangers. What I mean is, for her probably and for me certainly, interacting with a total stranger looked superficially easier than interacting with a staff who’d had minimal orienting. This I realize is part of disorganized/fearful avoidant attachment, but it is commonly misused to disregard my need for orienting.
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