Hyper-Vigilance

Vigilance is an inherent character in most human beings. We are all pay close attention to people and things we care about the most. This is one of the ways we ensure that everything around us is alright. However, there is an advanced form of vigilance that we will talk about today.

We will take it to a different extreme, and discuss this attention seeking, facet of life.

Human beings have evolved tremendously over the past few centuries. We developed opposable thumbs. Required organs turned to vestigial organs like the appendix and wisdom teeth. Due to this constant evolution, we have been able to survive the numerous generation ending events.

One thing that we have taken from our ancestors (we being the modern civilisation) is being attentive of our environment. This used to be of the utmost importance at the time not only for the man to be safe and get the right nutrition, but to downright ensure survival.

Unlike today, no matter how loose we consider them to be, the hunter gatherer was not governed by laws and nor were there the plethora of security controls we have access to in today’s day and age. Our ancestors had to constantly be on their toes to return to their caves successfully.

Even today, we have a degree of physical vigilance in us. We flinch when we sense a threat of someone hitting us. We blink and turn our eyes when something gets very close to it. And we immediately look for the source once we determine there is smoke around us.

All of these are survival mechanisms that ensure our continued sustenance in our current forms. However, I want to go a layer deeper into this mechanism to highlight a phenomenon which is very rampant in today’s day and age.

We just talked about a few examples of how our vigilance kicks in. The process of this is pretty similar to any other that you might be aware of. There is an input (the threat of a hit, something close to the eye, detecting smoke), a process (our brain interpreting it as a threat) and a response (flinch, blink, run).

The brain interpreting something as a threat is the true engine of our survival mechanism, and it has been fed with information for millions of years for it to be developed the way it is. But as we discussed earlier, the world is a much safer place today than it was at the time of our hunter gatherer ancestors.

Consequently, the threats have changed, but the engine has remained the same, and if it were to change, it would take at least another 100 years or so, if not more. Therefore, the vigilance mechanism is now triggered at different threats. Interestingly, most of these threats are more mental than physical.

The reason I am saying this is interesting is that something we have discussed at length in our articles named “Pause“, “Senses” and “Response vs Reaction“. The TL;DR of these is that our brains are very much responsible for generating stimuli for themselves, and also have the capability to stop before responding.

Since we can generate our own stimuli, they also have the potential to be interpreted as threats to ourselves, and consequently trigger a threat response thanks to our vigilance mechanism. What is important to note is that the stimuli might only be interpreted as a threat, they might actually not be.

This is where the birth of “hyper-vigilance” takes place. A relatively new phenomenon, hyper-vigilance is a state where our brain is constantly in an excited state, which gives rise to other conditions like anxiety, perspiration and rapid breathing. Not a comfortable place to be in, if you ask me.

A hyper-vigilant person is constantly on the lookout for signs to confirm their vigilance is warranted.

No, the question arises, how to we stop this from happening to us? If you ask me, the answer lies within ourselves. What works for you to get to the answer is a better question to ask. Is it meditation? Is it therapy? Is it talking to a friend? Is it exercising? The choice is yours.

If you stuck around this far, thank you for your time. If you enjoyed this, share this with one friend of yours whom you think will benefit from reading this. Thanks for reading, and I will see you in the next one. 🙂