You are listening to the Overthinkers Guide to Joy, episode 86. This is the one
where we're going to talk about hypervigilance and waiting for the other shoe to
drop. Let's dive in. This is a podcast for overthinkers, overdoers and overachievers
who are tired of feeling overanxious and just want to feel better. I'm your host,
certified life coach, Jackie de Crinis.
Hi there, and Welcome back. Hope everybody's doing well this week. If you are
listening to this in real time, we are in the thick of the holiday season. And
while I know that can both be exciting, it can also be a little bit stressful. But
today's episode is actually not holiday themed. It's just a conversation for my
overthinkers about a lifelong habit. Some of us tend to have trouble shedding.
And this is not just true for many of my clients, but it's also something I have
worked on for many years myself. And that is the habit of hypervigilance.
Now hypervigilance can show up in a whole host of ways. For me, it probably
manifests in ways like list making, dotting every eye, crossing every T,
answering every email and text that I get almost right away, constantly tidying up
and keeping things in order. That's sort of like my garden variety hypervigilance.
But for others, it might mean making a spreadsheet. Now, I'm not directly calling
out my husband, although if you know, you know. He doesn't listen to my podcast
anyway, so I'm not worried. But spreadsheets can be one way to express your
hypervigilance, and then there are those who are hypervigilant emotionally.
That is, they might be very aware of everyone's emotions around them. It might be
internalizing or worrying about what you say or about how your boss is acting or
your co -workers or your romantic partner, even your kids, your parents, your
neighbors, your friends, even the random stranger in the grocery store. Look,
hypervigilance is not always a negative. Sometimes it's a superpower. In the
workplace, it usually means you're the person that everyone can count on to get shit
done. And this is particularly good if you're dealing in finance or HR or leading a
team or even somebody's assistant, because we tend to rely on hypervigilant people to
make sure that things happen and no one drops the ball. But when you're the hyper
-vigilant one in a relationship or the hyper -vigilant one in a family, you're often
the one who remembers everybody's birthdays, organizes the gifts and the parties for
holidays, sends out the thank you notes, and makes sure that everybody is happy.
But the problem when hyper -vigilance is left unbridled, it can be utterly exhausting.
So the ugly side of hypervigilance looks like chronic worrying or ruminating or
overthinking or not being able to fall asleep at night or maybe waking up in the
middle of the night because of a constant to -do list or waking up in the middle
of the night and replaying conversations in your head and wondering if you did or
didn't do something, or maybe you said, or shouldn't have said, something that was
not well received. But where does this habit come from? Hypervigilance might have
been developed as a coping mechanism in your childhood because you thought it kept
you safe. The thinking is, nothing can hurt me if I'm prepared for everything and
never let my guard down. Now, I've talked about this in terms of having an
authority figure or caregiver who may be died or left or was neglectful or possibly
struggled with substance abuse. And if any one of those things was in your childhood
experience, you may have been left to protect yourself or others in your family,
emotionally, physically, or financially. So it stems from a fear that no one can be
really trusted because your experience when you were little and during your formative
years was that trusting people who then disappointed you, hurt you, or there were
uncertain negative consequences due to you letting your guard down. So what happens
when we take this childhood coping mechanism, this survival mechanism, and we bring
it into our adulthood? Well, again, It might have worked when we're little because
it turned us into independent or shall I say hyper -independent people And that's not
necessarily a bad thing. Well, certainly independence is not a bad thing Hyper
-independence, you know is one of those borderlines. When is it too much? So what
happens is we just keep going with that habit because at one time it worked for us
and Because we so desperately want to avoid being hurt again. We tend to create
walls or barriers or limitations in our willingness to either be loved or perhaps it
creates a co -dependence because we're afraid to get hurt or abandoned again. It's
not a linear outcome, but it all comes from the same place, which is fear. Fear of
losing control, fear of being hurt or disappointed or rejected. So as a hyper
-vigilant individual myself, I know all about preparing for every possible scenario.
And similar to what I've talked about before in this podcast, this can lead to
perfectionistic tendencies. But what's the real damage by letting our hyper -vigilants
run the show? Well, the biggest issue is how it robs us from being present.
Because when we're hyper -vigilant, we're either trying to avoid the repeat of the
past, that is, we're living in past trauma or feeling of trauma, or we're
anticipating or catastrophizing about what could happen in the future. So if you're
always thinking about what happened, or always thinking about what could happen, guess
what we're not doing? We're not living in the present. present. So this
hypervigilance is actually robbing us of joy, mindfulness,
and being present. And this really shows up when overthinkers ruminate about every
conversation they've had, like the ones where you lay in bed at night and you
think, "Why hasn't my friend called me back? Did I hurt their feelings? Did I say
something wrong? Or why hasn't that person asked me out again since our first date?
Or why is my boss been acting strangely? I wonder if I screwed something up. I
wonder if I'm gonna get fired. And then we catastrophize. We think I won't have any
friends. I won't find a romantic partner or the right romantic partner. I might lose
my job and then my income and then my home, et cetera, et cetera. We go down the
proverbial rabbit hole. So the question is, How do we get out of the negative
thought loops or rabbit hole once we're in it? Well, as someone who spends a lot
of time coaching on this subject and who has been a victim of her own
hypervigilance overthinking and negative thought loops, I'm suggesting that you simply
catch yourself when this starts to happen. I'm suggesting that you recognize the
pattern as soon as it starts to begin and then get curious. What triggered it?
And why did it get triggered? What in the past might have felt like this is the
same thing again? In other words, where is the insecurity? Where is the pattern
coming from? And before you react or before you indulge yourself in that worst -case
scenario, or before you let yourself go into that midnight spiral, ask yourself,
is this the same thing? And do I really need to indulge this thought or worry?
And if the answer is no, then simply stop. Simply imagine yourself holding up a
stop sign to this thought pattern. Now here's the tricky thing. Sometimes it's not
just fatigue or hunger or late nights or you know the phone not ringing or not
getting a return text that triggers this spiral. Sometimes this actually happens in
cases of success. And what it's called is success intolerance. And this is where
you're experiencing one or a series of positive things. Things are actually going
well. You're actually enjoying yourself. And you find yourself mentally self -sabotaging
your success, your accolades, or your joy. And you do that by assuming that good
things don't last and that you need to get ready for the other shoe to drop. So
when you see this happening once again, imagine a stop sign being held up and
literally stop your thoughts. One of my favorite mantras when I feel this happening
to me is to say not now. This is particularly effective if my mind starts racing
when I first fall asleep or wake up in the middle of the night. I figure whatever
little negative thought loop that my brain wants to take me down, I just simply say
not now, we're not dealing with this right now. And chances are if I fall back to
sleep, it's not a problem when I wake up in the morning. So the rabbit hole of
hypervigilance, or waiting for the other shoe to drop, is just a bad habit.
It's an indulgence that you have cemented into your way of thinking, but there is
an alternative. You can be on to yourself and simply not allow entrance into that
rabbit hole. In other words, if you shift the energy back to the present,
particularly if something good is happening, and you relish in that goodness, and it
doesn't have to be a big event like a wedding or a surprise birthday party or a
promotion, it can be something small like sunshine on your face or the smell of
rain coming or a hot cup of coffee or just a walk in nature or a great
conversation with a friend on the phone. It can be a compliment from a stranger or
looking in the mirror and finding something positive about what you see. In other
words, you're focusing on what is good and what is present.
And if the present isn't good at the moment, you're caught in traffic or someone is
upset with you, can you recall something that was good earlier in the day or
earlier in the week? And can you kind of slide back into that energy? In other
words, not let the energy vampires suck out the good in your day or week.
Hold on to the positive thoughts, hold on to the things that were going right.
Now, a lot of times when people start working with me as a coach, they will see
positive changes immediately. They might get an unexpected raise or a promotion or an
interview for a new job if they're looking, or they might start meeting new people
or losing weight if that was their intention. But the hyper -vigilant ones get scared
of that change. They get scared by the success they start having because they fear
that it's just a fluke and that the other shoe is bound to drop. But that's just
a thought. That's just faulty wiring that we've allowed ourselves to believe because
there was a time in our life where when something good happened, sometimes something
bad followed, particularly in the case where there was an reliable caregiver or
authority figure. Sometimes that caregiver or authority figure might have been punitive
when a child got more attention or was happier than they were. So it taught the
child to fear success or that they had to pay for their success in some other way.
And if this is your thought pattern from childhood, if hypervigilance was your coping
mechanism, It's incumbent upon you as an adult to recognize that's an old story,
one that no longer serves you. It was a coping mechanism that may or may not have
served you at one time, but is no longer needed for your survival. So when it
shows up in your adult life, ask yourself, is this still necessary? Or can I trust
that I deserve good things to happen? Can I give myself permission to celebrate my
successes. And just because something good happens, doesn't mean that something bad
has to make up for it. And look, if something were to occur that would be unwanted
or unpleasant, trust yourself that you have the experience and the maturity now to
deal with it if and when it comes. You don't need to sabotage the present good
moment with trying to get ahead of every possible negative scenario that could
follow. So it's basically like telling yourself it's okay to accept the joy,
the accolade, the award, the raise, the flattery, the romance, the love, whatever it
is that makes you feel good. But something about that feeling good may or may not
be pushing you out of your comfort zone. But you need to tell yourself, I trust
there's more of this. The magic component of accepting joy or accolades or love or
attention or awareness or growth is feeling gratitude for it. Not throwing it away,
not underplaying it, not dismissing it, but really sitting in it like I had a
successful moment or day or hour or week or whatever and actually start looking for
the wins. They might be really, really small because they don't always have to be
big ones like finding a great parking space on a busy street, picking up a quarter
on the sidewalk, discovering that you had a forgotten Starbucks gift certificate in
your wallet. It's how you perceive things that make it a win or make you feel like
a winner and not fixating on what can go wrong can save you so much time and
energy and focusing on what's going right can magnetically create more positive energy
coming your way. That means more wins. So again, remembering that hypervigilance robs
you of the present. It robs you of your enjoyment and you end up wasting so much
time thinking about all the things that could or might go wrong. It's actually not
preparing you for anything. It's just stealing your joy. So, if you're a person who
has spent their life being hyper -vigilant, perfectionistic, people -pleasing,
overthinking all the reasons hopefully you're listening to this podcast in the first
place, I just want you to catch yourself and get in touch with where is the origin
of that feeling and then ask yourself, how is this serving you right now? And then
the third part is can you trust yourself that if something were to go wrong in the
future in an hour from now or tomorrow or next week or next year, you will be
equipped to handle it then and actually more equipped because you sat in the
positive gratitude on a daily basis with this new practice. So you will be less
burnt out, less exhausted, less paranoid because you spent more time in gratitude
than you have in chronic worry. Now, if you're willing to create awareness around
this old habit of hypervigilance or the habit of waiting for the other shoe to
drop, and you can get curious about where it comes from, ask yourself how it serves
me now, and simply choose to not indulge it, not go down the rabbit hole, or hold
up that stop sign, or find that mantra, not now, maybe later, When you do that and
sit in the gratitude for all the things that are going right or have gone right
before this moment, you might find yourself with a lot less anxiety, a lot better
sleep, and a lot more free time to do and enjoy the things you love.
All right, friends, that is what I have for you this week. I hope you go and have
an awesome week, and I look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you for
listening to this episode of The Overthinker's Guide to Joy. If you're enjoying these
episodes, please subscribe or follow this podcast so you can always be in the know
when the next episode drops. If you would like to learn more about working with me
as a coach, you can connect with me through my website at jackiedecrinis.com
