Signs that you are stuck in emotional hyper-vigilance

From expecting negative things to happen to taking responsibility for others’ emotions, here’s what being stuck in emotional hyper-vigilance looks like.

Many of us have grown up in homes that are extremely volatile and full of chaos. Hence, to get over the trauma of being brought up in dysfunctional homes, we try to walk on eggshells around others and try to keep up with their emotions. This makes us push our own emotions farther away and prioritise others over ourselves. Addressing this, Therapist Israa Nasir wrote, “Emotional hyper-vigilance usually develops as a coping skill to manage anxiety, trauma or if you grew up in a household that had emotionally volatile, critical or unpredictable parents. Emotional hypervigilance is the unconscious scanning of social interactions (hanging out with friends, sitting with a partner, etc) for a potentially upsetting situations (anger, rejection, disappointment and abandonment).”

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Israa further noted down a few signs that denote that we are stuck in emotional hyper-vigilance:

Responsible: We always feel responsible for how others are feeling. This makes us stay on high alert regarding our own actions – pushing away the way we feel, farther down the priority list.

Emotions: We keep an eye on the way others react to something related to us. This makes us overthink the way they might be feeling deep down inside. This activity can drain us mentally.

Bad to happen: We always expect the worst. Being brought up in homes with constant conflict, we are always on our toes and expecting something bad to happen.

Anxiety: When we start to feel intimate and close with people, we also start to get anxious. This brings back nightmares of facing detachments when we were as a child.

Focusing: We are always so invested on how others are feeling and behaving, that we miss out on prioritising things that may make us feel good. Hence, we are always having the feeling of dissatisfaction.

“This means you might spend too much time and energy observing, assessing and predicting other people's emotional states and reactions. This is a way to feel like you're in control of the situation, that the other person is happy being with you and that you are not 'in trouble', and don't need to protect yourself,” Israa further added.