Yuriforever

You are capable of harm

You have some level of power and agency

Ergo it is your responsibility to communicate your needs and boundaries

If you lie to someone about something being okay when it isn't, that is on you

Something being a trauma response doesn't exempt it from harming your relationships and the other people in them

Enabling your trauma responses will not make them go away, and it is your responsibility to work on yourself for your own wellbeing as well as the people around you

Being A Victim cannot be a pillar of your identity forever, and being victimized does not make you incapable of harming other people (see above)

You are not a mouse in a jean jacket you are an eel with a gun / adult human being who can use your words even if it's Scary

Hypervigilance is a heightened awareness of your surroundings. It's a common symptom of PTSD, as well as a few other conditions.

If you experience hypervigilance, then you might feel like you're always on edge, easily startled, oversensitive to danger, or unable to relax and feel safe. You might notice that your body reaches for a fight-or-flight response much more quickly than other people or takes longer to calm down. Some people describe hypervigilance as being stuck in a fight-or-flight response even when their surroundings are safe and familiar.

Examples

One of the more commonly given examples of hypervigilance is discomfort with sitting with your back to a room, turning off the lights, or otherwise being physically vulnerable even when you rationally know that there's no danger. Hypervigilance isn't just about the physical environment, though- it can also affect your social environment and internal experiences.

You might find that you constantly monitor the thoughts and feelings of everyone around you, or that you can't emotionally tolerate conflict and disagreement. People might see you as unpredictable or sensitive because you react very strongly to small things. Criticism might feel like an attack even if you asked for the critique.

Small, passing comments might feel like they imply something that the person never actually said (E.G. someone says, "nice sweater," and you get stuck wondering if they mean that they hated the shirt you wore yesterday). You might feel that other people have to be kept happy at all times or else something terrible might happen. People pleasing, reassurance seeking, or controlling behavior might feel like your only options to stay safe socially.

On the other hand, you might feel unable to trust others, or you might push people away because the presence of someone else feels unsafe. You might constantly watch for signs that someone is going to hurt or leave you, then act on those signs even if the person hasn't actually done anything to you. It's also possible that you might decide not to care about anything or anyone so that nothing can hurt you.

Some people feel stuck constantly thinking of everything that could possibly go wrong and how they'd respond to it, and they might interpret small misfortunes as signs that everything is about to fall apart. Small body signals that most people ignore could be interpreted as signs of danger or illness. A person might try very hard to avoid all thoughts and feelings that cause discomfort even if doing so hurts them- even moreso if those things are related to a past trauma.

Hypervigilance can be exhausting. You're aware of so many things all the time, trying to juggle them all, and human bodies aren't made to do that 24/7. A lot of people wind up feeling tired, angry, depressed, or upset because they can't relax. It can make it hard to sleep or focus.

Our Experience

Personally, hypervigilance feels like ambient terror or uncomfortable physical alertness that doesn't have a clear cause or resolution. It's just there, constantly, like our brain taped down its alarm button. I usually describe it as "you know when you lean back in a chair and almost fall over, and you get that bolt of fear? That, but it doesn't stop."

It also shows up as difficulty trusting people and situations. In the past, I often got stuck in loops of trying to "fix" people because letting them be responsible for themselves felt unsafe, which did a lot of damage to everyone involved. Other people here were stuck pushing friends away, hurting themselves to try to calm down, or choosing not to have any friends in the first place. It didn't make the fear go away, but we didn't know what else we could do.

Hypervigilance doesn't have to be a permanent state of being, and it can be unlearned by learning coping skills that allow you to feel your emotions without being overwhelmed, then gently exposing yourself to discomfort or (perceived) risk and learning to tolerate it better.

Alt text duplicated below the cut.

There's a popular post about how a person who drowned in 6ft of water is just as dead as someome who drowned in 200ft of water. This is true.

But also you can drown in as little as half a cup of water.

And I think this comes from a deep misunderstanding of how DID forms, what counts as "bad enough" trauma to form a system. I myself have had to unwind whether what I've said I've gone through is real, due to how conflated the idea of trauma is in some people's heads.

A child is not as developed as an adult or a teen. What a child views as "too much" for them to cope with or "no support system" to talk to may be completely different to what an adult thinks. The adult may even think that the child is logically incorrect about these things—but that does not change the response the child has.

drown in as little as half

a cup of water.

this is not true, however, about demographics you are socially and systemically incentivized to whip. demographics who have been routinely scapegoated by media and government. the reason an accusation against a trans woman is widely believed and taken seriously is not because people spontaneously start caring about survivors if the accused is a trans woman. the reason is literally just bigotry

Sabbath the demon