Hypervigilance: A recipe for socially acceptable addiction
“We can become so used to living in that state that it’s all we know how to be. We can become just as addicted to that survival energy as alcohol or medication or food. It becomes our identity. ”
- Ericka Thomas
Transcript
178 Hypervigilance: A recipe for socially acceptable addiction
Hypervigilance is a common stress and trauma response where it feels like you’re always on high alert. Even when you’re exhausted you can’t fall asleep, you have racing thoughts, ruminating, exaggerated startle responses maybe, irritable, emotionally dysregulated, reactive. Because it leads to insomnia and other sleep disorders it can be very detrimental to every system in the body. It’s also one of those things that opens the door to self medicating because when we can’t self regulate our nervous system we often turn to external chemical regulation. Our work IN today is how hypervigilance as a stress response can lead to socially acceptable addiction and natural ways we can self regulate for ourselves and our students.
Everything we do changes our state. Just getting out of bed changes our state and then the body has to adjust. We're self regulating all the time. Ideally we could change the way we feel inside the body without the help of any external sources, be they chemical or otherwise. But living in a state of chronic hypervigilance for too long can make taking the edge off with a drink, self medicating with drugs, or even eating our feelings an irresistible, socially acceptable temptation. That chronic state of hypervigilance can be a recipe for addiction that is fueled by a false belief that perfect safety is always our ultimate goal when really we only want to change how we feel in the moment.
Not all external self regulation is bad. Eating a balanced diet is a form of external self regulation after all. So is taking tylenol for the occasional headache. But both food and painkillers can become addictive. I think we’d all agree that any external regulation that becomes addictive can’t be considered safe. Which is why having self regulation tools like the breath, tapping, TRE, yoga, meditations and others are so important.
I used to believe that addictions of any kind were a weakness. I was practically raised up in DARE “just say no” and all that. That was before drugs and alcohol touched my own family. There’s nothing that shatters perfectionist motherhood faster than that. Today, I don’t know a single person or family who doesn’t have a story to tell. Is that because it’s so much more common these days? Or is it because we are doing a better job of breaking the stigma around addiction and mental health? It doesn’t really matter. What does matter is that we owe it to our families, friends and students to educate ourselves about the pathways that lead to addiction. One of those pathways is hypervigilance in response to chronic stress and trauma.
Hypervigilance is defined as the feeling of being constantly on guard for the purpose of detecting potential danger, even when the risk of danger is low. This is the stereotypical image of PTSD in a vet returning from combat. There was a time when I believed that that was where ptsd began and ended. PTSD in veterans and first responders is high because hypervigilance is part of their training. For many they live in that state for years, maybe their entire career. They are the ones that run toward the gunfire, into the burning house, they are the ones who can’t back down. It isn’t any wonder that so many coming back into civilian life struggle to turn off that vigilance. That was not part of their training.
Hypervigilance is an activated state of the sympathetic nervous system for survival. It can save your life in the moment. But living in it longterm can lead to serious chronic physiologic responses.It can show up in many ways in the real world like feeling highly sensitive to physical sensations like pain, stress, anxiety, anger, grief and loss, as well as wanting to avoid any socially challenging situations or relationships.
No one starts out to become an addict. No, it starts simply by wanting to change the way you feel on the inside. And without healthy tools, the only option is to look for something outside the body even when none of those options, drugs, alcohol, sex, high risk behavior up to and including food, actually change the internal environment for very long. In fact what we know about addiction, the pain-pleasure balance and the dopamine response is that all these external chemicals that we take to feel better can actually make us feel worse because in the body's attempt to return to “normal” Normal starts to feel less normal. If you want to learn more about some of those mechanisms of addiction I highly recommend reading Dopamine Nation By Dr Anna Lembke. I’ll link to that book in the show notes.
Hypervigilance is normal. We need that level of activation in certain circumstances but when the situation doesn’t call for it it can become maladaptive. That’s when people start to turn to external regulation like medication, prescription or self medication. It might seem like the only thing that helps because on the polyvagal chart hypervigilance can keep you riding the line between the highest levels of sympathetic response and tripping into a freeze state of shut down and that’s a dangerous place to live.
We can become so used to living in that state that it’s all we know how to be. We can become just as addicted to that survival energy as alcohol or medication or food. It becomes our identity.
A lot of things can cause hypervigilance. It’s not always a past event although it can be. Often it’s a chronic illness or long term pain or injury in the body. Internal hypervigilance can be just as disruptive. And can make you feel just as crazy especially when doctors can’t find a cause for the physiologic changes that show up as diseases of lifestyle.
Coming out of it without help and without external chemical regulation takes time because it requires replacing the expected outcome causing the hypervigilance with a new unexpected less painful outcome. And change is hard. Not only does something about ourselves have to change but we have to consciously notice it and nurture that change which is hard to do when in that highly activated state. Rational thought and fight or flight don’t play well together. This is why therapists, counselors, and trauma informed wellness professionals are so helpful.
Working through the body in partnership with other top down therapies in addiction recovery can be lifesaving. Building awareness of the physical sensations and habituated emotional responses in the body that led to the hypervigilance and self medication and then replacing them with new meanings can help shift the nervous system into a new calmer state.
Addiction is not simple. Socially acceptable addictions are even more complicated. Alcohol, caffeine, and sugar for example. All of those feed hypervigilance, anxiety and depression. Working on the dopamine pathways. We can use them all to change our internal state in the short term but in the long term they can keep the nervous system on high alert.
When we’re stuck in that hypervigilance cycle we need tools that we can use that replace the habitual emotional energy patterns that go along with it first.
Awareness of the Activation
First recognizing the energy of hypervigilance for what it is.
Harnessing that energy
Meeting it and then shifting it to the opposite. Exercise and movement is excellent for this.
Microdosing resilience tools
Practicing rolling resilience tools throughout the day. Not just once a week or even once a day, but in small doses throughout the day. Building a tool box is valuable.
Here’s a few things I have in my toolbox
Regular activity outside (not necessarily exercise)
Getting dirty Nature
Lifting heavy weights
Yoga practice
Breathing techniques (lion’s breath, physiologic sigh, waterfall breathing)
Somatics
Tapping
Fascia release with spike or nabosa ball
Foam roller
Mocktails
Artwork
Guided meditations
Trauma release
Gua sha massage
All of those things work for me. Many of them I have incorporated as a normal part of my day. Many of them we have discussed on this podcast before
I have been in a state of hypervigilance for extended periods of time in my past. It led to chronic pain and hormone disruptions. I desperately wanted it to stop but I was actually addicted to that driving force of energy. So it took me a long time to see that that wasn’t really who I was. That wasn’t really my personality. And once I was able to let that go everything inside and outside of my body got easier to live with. And that is what we want isn’t it? Some level of comfort in our own skin. To know that who we are is enough and we have intrinsic value beyond what we do. It’s a deeper level of acceptance. Getting there though can feel rough but it’s possible. And you are so worth it.
Thanks for listening today! If you're looking for ways to handle the effects of stress, physically, mentally and emotionally head over to savagegracecoaching.com/theworkin you’ll find all the show notes for this and other episodes plus lots of free resources. And if you’re in a place where you are ready for more and you live in the Dayton Ohio area I’m taking private clients for trauma informed yoga and trauma release exercise in person and online. So you can book a discovery call and we can have a real life conversation. And of course I’d be ever so grateful if you would take a moment to like and subscribe to this podcast wherever you’re listening.
Thanks again everyone and as always stop working out and start working IN.
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Hey there!
I’m your host Ericka Thomas. I'm a health coach and trauma informed yoga professional bringing real world resilience and healing to main street USA.
I offer trauma release + yoga + wellness education for groups and individuals…regular people like you.
Book a call to learn how I can help.