Jump Scares and Hypervigilance: Always on Edge in a Traumatizing Life
A Startling Life
The jump scares were the tapestry of her life. They weren’t every day occurrences, but they didn’t need to be daily to be effective in creating a solid state of hypervigilance. It began the first moment of her life when her mother almost died during childbirth. Even from the earliest moment, her young self knew to be frightened for her safety and survival. After all, if Mom died, so would she, right? Already she was learning to look over her shoulder for signs of danger and then she just began looking for those signs in everything. Sure enough, where she focused her attention (even on a subconscious level), the energy and evidence appeared. The interesting thing was that her natural state was a calm, happy, and positive one, but you’d never know it by the amount of anxiety she struggled with from that day on.
When the Other Shoe Drops: Developing the Belief That Good Things Don’t Last
She would go about her life in a happy way. She would sing and dance, laugh with abandon. She would talk non-stop (partly to cover up a very uncomfortable silence in and around her, and partly because that was her inherent nature—to connect). She would play with her dolls, create entire communities for her barbies with random suitcases and boxes she found in her home, and she minded her own business until it was impossible to maintain. Usually, her mom would need some kind of attention or help. She needed someone she could lean on emotionally to help her with her low self-esteem, self-doubt, fear, and insecurities. She needed help managing her bad marriage and she needed a friend. So, our youngster would volunteer because she loved her mom and didn’t want her to die or leave. So, she did what any child does when they see their parent in pain. She became codependent with her mom and she co-regulated her mother with her own stable nervous system. Inevitably, life would present danger, though, and at these times, our little lady couldn’t help but be affected.
Her mom would rage or drive drunk or run around on her dad and our little one would feel terrified. She was helpless at those times to help or stop or to save her mom from herself. That stable nervous system couldn’t remain stable in those moments and the fight-or-flight response would kick in, which appeared like anxiety, dread, and fear. Her eyes would dart around as if she were looking for a bear to burst into her home and eat her right up. But there was no bear. There were only people like family members she should have been able to trust harming her or, at least, not protecting her. They would even go so far as to blame her for the chaos they were creating. As a matter of fact, she was actually the one person who was deeply loyal and helpful to the family system and, yet, because of her anxiety, fear, and hypervigilance, she was also considered the “weak” one; the emotionally unstable one.
But, the real question is: How could anyone have a calm nervous system or be emotionally stable when their intoxicated parent was running her car into buildings; hiring drug-addicted babysitters who pretended the brakes didn’t work on their car to terrify her children; allowing teen babysitters to molest her children; and inviting random strange men into her home to live with the family? I argue that no child would feel safe, stable, or calm under this kind of duress.
Still the same, our little one here was such an easy target for the label of scapegoat. She was kind, gentle, and soft. She was “weak” according to their misunderstandings, and it was so much easier to shame and blame her for all of their inner pain than to take accountability for allowing her to be abused and harmed by their own hands and the hands of strangers. Humans have a survival instinct—even as children—and, because she wasn’t safe and she had to survive, she did what she needed to do to try and save her mother. She hoped that by somehow reasoning with her mother and helping her mother love herself more, she would be saved. If her mother was calm and reasonable, she surely wouldn’t allow this kind of chaos and abuse to threaten her own children anymore. Right?
It was a really intelligent way of thinking, especially for a very young child. However, it did not work. But our little lady continued fantasizing that by fixing someone else, she could finally feel at peace. And this particular false belief (as well as many others) followed her around for decades. She believed to her very core that she could control other people and that the more love and understanding and care she gave people, the more they would love her and treat her well. She wanted to please and appease and fawn perfectly so that abusive people would change. And it was a really beautiful concept. But that was all it was—a concept. A theory. In real time, she learned the hard way that abusers abuse and they will not stop until they heal (IF they heal at all). She also eventually learned that the nicer you are to them, the more they see you as weak and that they will exploit and abuse you even more for it. Abusers are not happy that you are a good person—they are jealous of it and they resent you for it.
So, as time went by, our little protagonist realized in the deepest levels of her being that she could never truly feel calm because as soon as she did, another chaotic event would happen. She was always caught completely off guard as soon as she was happy and relaxed again. So, she became hypervigilant as a way to stay safe. Worry was her way to try to prevent danger. And what she didn’t know was that worry never prevents danger and can, in fact, help to create more of it. So, in essence, she began to believe that as soon as she felt safe, it was taken from her. “Nothing good stays” became her inner dialogue.
What We Believe We Become
Until she healed it, the “Nothing good stays” belief ruled her life from underneath the surface of her consciousness for much of her life. Her relationships with her friends, boyfriends, love partners, money, family, her career—everything she touched turned to dust. As soon as she was relaxed and happy, something massively frightening came into her life like a wrecking ball to create chaos and take away her peace. And the things that happened were so extreme that it was hard to fathom that this was her actual real life. It was like she was in a house of mirrors. Her true state of peace, wholesomeness, gentleness, and joy was contrasted sharply by things so drastic as to make her feel like she had been tossed straight into the darkest of alleys with the worst aspects of humanity.
It was as if she was suddenly amongst people with deadly intentions, hard drug use, and sex workers. This was not the real story, but it was much like feeling like a bear would suddenly crash into her house—she FELT like she was in the harshest parts of life when she was simply living a pretty normal life overall. It made no sense to her that someone like her would be surrounded by people who she trusted and who she thought had her best interests at heart and who could do such unimaginably horrific things to her and to themselves and others. It was like living in slow motion. It was surreal. It seemed like a nightmare or a horror movie. But it wasn’t that. It was her actual life.
As you might imagine, it created so much havoc in her life. She didn’t even know how one minute she was happy and calm and the next she was practically fighting for her life. And emotionally she was.The people in her life were not well. They were abusive and could not stand for her to be happy, calm, or confident. They created chaos so that she would feel insecure and anxious. This made them feel safer and better because they lacked control of their own inner selves. Her dysregulation helped them feel more regulated and it took the pressure off of them by making her the bad guy of their projections. Her life felt like a terror attack. And terror attacks don’t happen predictably. They happen inconsistently to keep you on your toes. So, she lived on her tippy toes—always. Ouch!
She was continually being called back to put out her mother’s fires, even as she grew into adulthood and had her own life and family. Her personal relationships were characterized by people who had the same qualities as her mom. They would create the most extreme havoc and she would be thrown off her game—time and again. And, after all the rescuing she did for her mother all throughout her life, her mother up and died right on our little lady’s 38th birthday. The thanks she got for all the rescuing she did for that woman!
The Fallout of Living In a Hypervigilant State
As many people who have anxious nervous systems can attest to, the habits to ease her pain and inner chaos ensued. Luckily for her, she fled her patterns and relationships that caused her so much pain and dysregulation before any serious distractions, habits, or addictions took hold of her. But her health suffered. Poor eating habits, lack of motivation, weight struggles, body dysmorphia, hormone imbalances, and an autoimmune disorder all happened as a result of the chronic stress from the trauma and abuse she had suffered from all her life. Additionally, her relationships with friends and family, her confidence, her inner security and, yes, her emotional stability were affected by this long-standing fear of having something terrifying happen again and again and again. As soon as something good happened, she could count on something bad coming along to destroy her happiness. Hypervigilance causes a chronic feeling of stress and this leads to poor health outcomes and hardship in relationships with everyone in your life. It’s a true downward spiral. And, the good news is that is can be healed and you can become free of it.
Strong Not Weak
To know this woman is to know that she is one of the strongest people you will ever meet. Her resilience is immense. To meet her today, you would never think that she had any trauma let alone that some of the worst times of her life were spent in terror for her life and the lives of her loved ones. They called her weak and emotionally fragile and unstable when she was the one building and re-building the shaky house of cards each and every day so that they could live comfortably in their world of denial, delusion, and toxic dysfunction. Maybe she was a master manipulator. After all, people who have to fight to survive often are masters at this game. So, in a sense, she was a manipulator. But not in the evil and malicious ways we think of sadistic control freaks. No, she did this to survive in a world where to be safe meant losing yourself for someone else’s life, sanity, health, and comfort.
In the end, no one makes it out of here alive and so why fight to save others over yourself? It’s an important question and I don’t believe we are here to save anyone else. We can support them and love them but they can find ways to save themselves. Otherwise, you simply lose your life—essence, health, energy—to others. And then why even be living at all? Our little strong lady in this story pleased and sacrificed in order to stay safe and alive and the young, primitive minds of children always find ways to survive. It’s basic instinct. The problem is that these patterns follow us forever unless we decide to heal them. And they are all heal-able. This is what I help you do. I help you get out of these patterns that are ruining your life, your health, your peace, and your happiness and offer you a new choice instead.
Perhaps part of why our main character here was so useful to others was for her own survival benefit, but this does not indicate a weak person. In fact, her behaviors and ability to save herself and those around her, as well as to make it out alive many decades later is, by definition, the meaning of strength. And she lived to tell this story because of her strength and because she was brave enough to heal. And healing takes courage because it asks you to be vulnerable, transparent, and truthful about your shame and your past and all the hard things you went through. And she shares this to help others find their own voice, their own choice, and their own healing as well.
Do you see yourself in this story at all? If so, let me help!
