The four alarms of hypervigilance.

Hypervigilance is one of those words that sounds clinical until you realize you've been living inside of it your entire life.

For those of us who grew up in dysfunctional families, hypervigilance isn't something we do.

It's something we are.

It's the operating system that got installed when we were too young to know that there was any way to move through the world, any other way

to move through the world. But it doesn't show up the same way every time. Emotional hypervigilance,

you walk into a room within seconds, you've already read every face, clocked every shift in tone,

registered who's tense and who's pretending not to be. You track other people's moods the way air

traffic control tracks planes. You can feel the energy of the room shift and you're already three

moves ahead, adjusting, accommodating, making yourself smaller or lighter or funnier. Other people

think you're intuitive, empathic, underneath it is absolute certainty that if you

stop paying attention, you will get hurt.

What it thinks it's doing?

If I can read the room perfectly, I can keep myself safe.

If I'm never off guard, I can't be hurt.

The shoe drop.

You get the promotion, and before the pride even lands, something in you whispers, this won't last.

The relationship is going well, and instead of enjoying it, you're bracing, scanning the horizon,

running simulations about how it's going to all fall apart.

Happiness doesn't feel like happiness.

It feels like the moment before something is taken from you.

Because in your childhood, that's exactly what it was.

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