How Hypervigilance Can Help You Relax
It sounds contradictory, but hypervigilance can help you relax.
When you go through a health crisis, like cancer, you become hypervigilant. In the beginning, you focus on how it happened, how it’s growing and affecting your body, how the treatment is working, what your prognosis is.
This hypervigilance can serve you – you notice and address every symptom and side effect, but it can also drain and debilitate you if you don’t manage it.
Although my bout with breast cancer officially ended two years ago (after chemotherapy, a double mastectomy, and radiation), I continue on my health journey to prevent recurrence. And I remain hypervigilant.
I pay attention to and take care of my body. I gather information about diet and environmental factors. I stay connected to my care team, and I have support groups where I share what I’m learning and hear from others. When something concerns me, I am on it, reaching out, asking questions, getting checked out.
And this hypervigilance serves me. I’m confident I will act as soon as I am aware of something concerning. I trust myself to take care of myself.
But I don’t have to LIVE in hypervigilance. I can put it on autopilot, let it run in the background, and trust that when something out of the norm comes up, my hypervigilance will alert me. And when I am alerted, I will do whatever needs to be done, whatever I have power over, to address the concern.
With that alert system running in the background, I can relax. And so can you.
Here’s the bottom line:
- Stay vigilant, always.
- Remain attuned to your body and environment.
- When something comes up, take action.
- Take the actions that are in your control.
- In the meantime, let go, and LIVE.
And here’s a tip about taking the action that is in your control:
- Worry does not belong in this category!
- Worry is not hypervigilance.
- Worry does not help.
- Worry is choosing suffering rather than living in the present.
So again, remain hypervigilant, but trust yourself. Be alert but not anxious. Don’t worry about what might or might not happen. Stay present and live for now, while knowing your alert system will serve you as long as you take care of yourself and trust yourself.
Are you ready to use hypervigilance to relax?
Photo by Shelby Miller on Unsplash
