Real vs Perceived Threat
Are you 100% safe, right now, at this moment?
This is a question I have asked many of my clients over the course of my career: Are you 100% safe, right now, at this moment? Most say, no.
When I ask why, the answers I receive vary from, “Well the whole building could combust for no reason,” to “Someone could barge in or I could get up and trip.” The party trick of it all, is that unless you are actively under a real threat (i.e. the building is currently combusting or you are in the process of a less than graceful trip over my coffee table) you ARE safe at this moment.
When someone has experienced stressful or traumatic life events, the body is essentially constantly looking for danger.
Because our bodies want to inherently find safety, we have a built-in alarm system. Unfortunately, the alarm goes off in the same way and often at the same intensity when we are under real threat or experiencing a perceived threat. The fancy word for our “perceived threat alarm system” is hyper-vigilance. This response is part of your autonomic nervous system, i.e. your involuntary stress responses.
Hyper-vigilance can look like:
Being hyper-aware of your surroundings
Noticing noises and smells others do not
Sitting with your back to a corner in a restaurant so you can see your exits
Being overly attuned to your partners behaviors and analyzing their every mood change
Having an exaggerated startle response
The list goes on and on. The responses are given the green light to continue when a false belief is formed during a stressful event. These beliefs drive our behavior.
Take a first date for example. Lets say a man named Tom is waiting for his date, Sarah, to show up at a restaurant. Now, let’s say Tom is on his first date after leaving a relationship where infidelity and distrust were present. This may make Tom feel unlovable, like he can’t trust anyone, or even that who he is as a person is not good enough. When Sarah is late, with no call or text indicating why, Tom begins checking the door anytime someone walks in, asking waiters if they have noticed someone looking for him, and feeling his anxiety begin to raise. Eventually, Tom realizes Sarah is not coming and texts her something like “What you did was rude. I thought you were nice and I was really excited but I guess I wasn’t worth the text to say you weren’t interested. You made me look like an idiot.” Sarah responds, “I am sorry, Tom, I wrote our dinner down for tomorrow night at this time accidentally. I was really looking forward to meeting with you because I have enjoyed how funny and kind you are, but I think maybe we should schedule another time now.” Although Tom could have asked to have a conversation about what happened or simply let Sarah go and moved forward knowing that Sarah’s actions reflected upon her, and not him, he reacted based on his negative beliefs towards himself. Sarah was a perceived threat to his emotional safety, and he let her know.
In the same scenario, Tom’s reactivity caused Sarah to set a boundary and ask to have more time before reconsidering a date. This could further Tom’s feelings of shame, lack of trust, and inadequacy. We can get stuck in these loops of trauma response and hyper-vigilance.
The important thing to remember is to give yourself a break.
Great ways to evaluate your responses are to notice when you feel uncomfortable and to map out what could be triggering to you. The downloadable worksheets below are useful to help you do just that. Learn how to label your triggers and begin to understand them.
Below are a few resources for trigger mapping and behavior challenging in relation to worry:
Negative beliefs and chronic hyper-vigilance do not form overnight. Therefore, it’s important to remember that they also do not heal themselves overnight. Understanding your triggers and giving yourself some grace to process them requires time and intention. If whatever you’ve been doing hasn’t been working, I would love to work with you to help you to uncover the inner peace you desire. That way, you can say with confidence at this moment: I am safe.
