Are You Hypervigilant? (INFO AND TEST)

Hello guys, welcome back to my YouTube channel. Today I wanted to make a video about the concept of hypervigilance and hypervigilance as it relates to childhood trauma, not so much present-focused trauma. And what do I mean by that? If we were to look at the definition, if we were to jump on Google and get a definition of

hypervigilant

, we would generally get a definition that involves an individual who is scanning her environment in a heightened sensory state, looking for threats to safety. of themselves or others. And because of that state, they can be in a perpetual state of high anxiety, which unfortunately leads to exhaustion.

It's a really difficult place to be. And then in the paradigm of our mind, we usually think of someone who is

hypervigilant

, like someone who potentially just came out of a combat situation, someone who has recently been sexually or physically assaulted, and they are very much in this state. But that definition is like I want to broaden it, because it tends to focus on just a small percentage of one kind of mental health concept. and the reason I want to expand on it is that I find that a lot of people who grow up in the toxic family system are somewhat hypervigilant to begin with, and that hypervigilance is about confirming beliefs about ourselves and confirming beliefs about others, and it's something that is happening in the background.

And I have an analogy to clarify what I mean a little: I think when it comes to the inner child and growing up in a toxic family system, our hypervigilance is a lot like a function of our cell phone; Wi-Fi and the data function, I'm not really a technical person, but it's kind of a combination, combination: it's like a machine that's constantly looking to confirm data and send data, and with the WiFi. and on the data network, and on a cell phone, your job is to constantly be scanning to retrieve or share

info

rmation. I think our inner child is a lot like that, and we have that same function in us quite a bit, maybe 24/7.

But the difference is, a cell phone that shares text messages, email, video and all that, usually does it well. What I mean by this is that our texts are not mixed, and you can probably debate this with me, our emails make sense, the JPEG files are clear, and the videos we download, watch, and enjoy are not mixed, and we can give you sense. But the inner child often makes mistakes when scanning

info

rmation and retrieving it, even when giving it away. And what I mean by that, let's say for example, if we go home and our partner is in a bad place or is in a bad mood, the inner child is hypervigilant about whether we are adorable or whether we did something. wrong, and we tend to take that information that our partner is in a bad place, and we tend to make it about us.

When we get an email from a boss, we tend to have maybe an initial reaction, something like that, and that kind of confirms that there's hypervigilance going on in the background, and hypervigilance can be about always being in trouble. making mistakes, or that we're not safe in the world and we're about to lose our job, and work and email might just be like, 'Hey, you did a good job on that project!' So the other part about hypervigilance, going back to that original definition, is that we tend to overreact to things, and this is what I mean, to elaborate on it with a few more examples that I was thinking about throughout of the work I've done in individual work, in groups, and in pairs, thinking about the kinds of ways my clients, including myself, I'm also a trauma survivor, can be hypervigilant.

I have divided it into three categories. : we can be hypervigilant about ourselves. What it looks like is: do we cause feelings in others? Do we make mistakes? Are we feeling bad? And we can be greatly affected by being hypervigilant about how we are in the world. That's one way. The other way is to be very careful that other people don't like us. We are not adorable, they are angry with us and they are showing it to us. Or the third category is that we can be combinations of both. And I find that it tends to be like that, we tend to be a combination.

We generally tend to be a combination of both. But the reason those three categories might be helpful to you is to think about your own education in your own history of trauma. I mean, did you have a father who made things personal and made things about you, which means you can be very attentive to how people see you? If as a child, you had some meaning about yourself that caused other people's feelings, then you could be very attentive to yourself. Or again, where they can be combinations of both. So I prepared a

test

, another questionnaire and there are 20 questions that involve hypervigilance.

And you will see in the qualities of the questions about whether you are in some way hypervigilant about yourself, hypervigilant about others, and I want you to start thinking, why is there this hypervigilance? I always want people to think about their own history and not about their reactions and beliefs that don't happen simply because in the present, in a way, they are there for a reason. So, in my opinion, hypervigilance seeks to confirm beliefs about others or ourselves and also confirm beliefs about others, and that is what this

test

is all about. So I've organized it with a score from one to five about whether you never think about the statement or you actually focus quite a bit on the statement, I'll read the questions and here we go: So that was the test.

Guys, you can get it in full from my website and I'll include it in the description below in the video. As for the score, this score is really for you. It's just a Likert scale that goes from never to kind of always, and what we're doing is measuring the frequency. So what you can do is add up your score as if you added up all the numbers that you gave for each question and you can post it in the comments below. This is basically a questionnaire and should not be confused with whether you have a diagnosis or not.

Basically, the number is for you to start thinking about your own reactions to things. Does it come from childhood? And are you hypervigilant? And is there a pattern to the way you're hypervigilant? Are you hypervigilant about yourself? Are you very attentive to others? Are you a combination of the two and these questions? If something really caught your attention, the question is probably related to how you were raised as a child. So I hope it was useful for you. If you liked the video, please press Subscribe and then also press the notification button to watch more videos.

And I wish you the best. Thank you so much