Hyper-Vigilance - Time To Burst The 'Safety' Bubble

A recent study suggests pregnant women become “hyper-vigilant” towards the end of their pregnancy in order to keep their unborn baby as safe as can be.

The research from Anglia Ruskin University looked at peripersonal space – the individual sense space around a person – and tested how a woman reacts during her pregnancy. 

Scientists used audio-tactile testing to investigate how the part of the brain that is aware of personal space was affected as the pregnancy developed. They found that, while it was unchanged during the first two trimesters, the boundaries were expanded during the third trimester as the woman’s body stretched to accommodate her growing baby.

It is a fascinating revelation and it’s easy to understand why this would be the case; it makes absolute sense. The woman is on the watch for any danger to her developing baby; all her senses are on high alert; she is careful, wary and on the lookout for any threat. She has reverted to her animal instinct, using the part of her primitive brain – the amygdala – that deals with emotions and is responsible for alerting her to danger. 

So, for an expectant mother, being hyper-vigilant makes sense. There is a very clear point to it. 

But what about hyper-vigilance in other circumstances, when the need may not be there?

Hyper-vigilance was good for our ancestors who had to be ever-aware of their surroundings and what was going on that might be a threat to their survival. The amygdala was crucial to their survival skills. It gave them the instant fight, flight or freeze reaction that could mean the difference between life and death. 

It is useful still, as 96 Harley Psychotherapy’s founder Dr Robin Lawrence explained: “You're walking down the road reading your smart phone and in a world of your own. You’re not thinking about what’s going on around you and are about to cross the road, when, for some explicable reason you stop. And just as you come to a sudden halt at the edge of the kerb, a big red bus goes by. 

“If you’d stepped out, you’d have been badly hurt at the very least. As it is, you’re standing still with shock, your mouth’s dry, your heart’s racing and you’re not sure what’s happened. 

“But you’re all right. You’re alive. And that’s because of some deep-down warning system within – your amygdala – was was doing its job well and looking after your survival.”

So far so good, but now we come to the more difficult part. 

We no longer operate within the same world as our ancestors and, all being well, our survival skills should have expanded to incorporate a greater need for reasoning and understanding that we need to use in our modern world.

For this, we need the pre-frontal cortex, the part of our brain that works out the best reasoned and calm way to respond to a present situation.  

The pre-frontal cortex gets messages through the hippocampus – another key part of the brain connected with our emotions – the part of our brain that stores past memories and information and guides us towards our response. 

Interestingly, studies suggest people with anxiety problems – of which hyper-vigilance is one – have a smaller pre-frontal cortex than those living within a “normal” range of anxiety levels. 

The good news is that it develops with use so the more a person uses their reasoning and “in the present” thought process, the easier the process will become and the less reliance the individual will have on the amygdala and its impulsive response. 

Hyper-vigilance is believed to be connected with trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder. It is a reaction to something that was perceived to have been terrifying, out of control and perhaps even threatening to a person’s life. For example,  imagine a soldier who’s been under fire in battle and remains forever stuck in that heightened sense of awareness, unable to move from that terrified state into a place of reasonable normality. 

It may indeed have been the case at a particular time for an individual or it may have been a childhood recall – accurate or not – when one’s very survival did literally depend on another person. 

So, if a person is hyper-vigilant as almost a “default” position, their response to life may in fact be detrimental to them, the opposite of what they are trying to achieve. If they are permanently on the lookout for trouble, they will be forever reacting emotionally, impulsively or inappropriately because they have not worked out what is the right way to react for the situation that is happening in the present, at this moment.

Hyper-vigilance carried into adult life is not a good idea. It has the potential for reverting us to a child-like state where we are a being full of emotion but have lost the reasoning skills that help us develop into fully-fledged thoughtful and capable adults. 

So, while we admire nature’s ability to allow an expectant mother to use the temporary hyper-vigilance qualities she is gifted to protect her baby, we need to remember that, on a permanent basis, it is no way to live. 

By Lulu Sinclair

Image of pregnant woman by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay

Image of a highly alert meerkat by Manfred Richter from Pixabay  

Inflammatory stuff

You know what it's like - some days everything just seems to go awry. The boiler starts leaking, your child gets sick and has to be picked up from school, and when you step out to get into the car you realise you've had a flat tyre.

These are the sorts of daily stressors that can seriously impede our serenity, and how we react to them over time may significantly impact on our long-term physical health, a recent study finds.

The investigators, reporting their results in Health Psychology, took a group of 872 adults from the US National Study of Daily Experiences and asked them to report daily stressors and emotional 'affect' over the course of eight consecutive days. Blood samples were taken on those days and assayed for inflammatory markers interleukin 6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP).

The results showed that people who experienced greater suppression of positive affect on stressful days had elevated inflammatory biomarkers, especially IL-6. Heightened negative affect and reactivity was also associated with higher CRP, among women in particular.

According to the authors, this is the first study to link biomarkers of inflammation with emotional reactivity to stressors of everyday life. It highlights the important, yet sometimes overlooked, contribution of a positive mindset to keeping biological stress reactions under control.

That's all well and good but, as anyone who suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and/or anyone who treats it will tell you, keeping emotions right-sized can be difficult when the triggering stressor has the 'flavour' of a stressor from the past, especially one from a troubled childhood. Indeed the size of the reaction is often a tell-tale sign that the real-time stressor is not being treated simply for what it is, but rather, is being 'projected onto', possibly as a means of addressing the original trauma.

The key with stressful events in daily life, then, is to use them to effect greater self-knowledge and greater awareness of the past - and to harness this over time to intervene on reflexive over-reactions. In this way, daily stressors can even become a sort of friend; a means of integrating past traumas and cultivating the ability to 'keep calm and carry on'.

It seems highly likely that intense reactions to everyday stressors over time might conceivably affect our biochemistry and it's not too great a leap to imagine the harmful long-term health effects.

But the good news is that when the light is shone on such reactions and they can be chipped away at over time, the emotional fruits can be transformational.


Written by Jacqui Hogan

The trauma of war

It seems that, despite all hopes to the contrary, we are ever more embroiled in war. And while physical casualties are often thoroughly reported, what commonly goes unreported are the emotional and mental effects which also carry the potential to devastate lives.

In recent years, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has received a lot of attention because of its relationship to survivors of dysfunctional families of origin. But, in fact, the condition was originally identified among survivors of war.

The term 'Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder' first appeared in the literature in 1980. When the DSM-III (third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) was revised in the mid-1980s, the experiences of soldiers returning from the Vietnam War led to a more in-depth investigation of the concept and resulted in its inclusion in the manual.

Earlier descriptive accounts of stress-related disorders are emphatically linked to the history of war. The horrors of trench warfare during World War I and consequent psychological sequelae preceded the concept of 'shell shock' - which is, effectively, PTSD.

Fast-forward to the present day, and research among return soldiers from Afghanistan and Iraq suggests that up to 20% are likely to manifest symptoms of PTSD after they return from combat. Estimates of depression range between 3 and 25%.

We should not be surprised. Combat stressors, which include seeing dead bodies, being shot at, being attacked or ambushed, experiencing rocket or mortar fire, watching a friend being killed or seriously wounded, or oneself being seriously injured, cannot help but cause distress. Arguably, the very nature of the combat experience, no matter how well trained or prepared a soldier is, can do little but lead to a profound shift in the mental, emotional and overall psychological, landscape of the individual.

The National Center for PTSD, a division of the US Department of Veterans Affairs, notes that risk factors for developing the condition include longer deployment, more intense exposure to combat stressors, more severe physical injury, lower rank, lower level of education, female gender and not being married.

Against this backdrop, Dr Robin Lawrence, owner and founder of 96 Harley Psychotherapy and Consultant Psychiatrist and Psychotherapist of many decades' standing, is heading to the Ukraine in May to deliver training to staff at the Irpin Hospital. The programme will focus on the diagnosis and management of PTSD. With war in the Ukraine now a reality, this is important work. Dr Lawrence is pleased to be able to lend his support to the rehabilitation of soldiers in the region.

If you would like to find out more about PTSD or to speak to Dr Lawrence about his upcoming mission, please contact us here. And if you have experience of combat-related PTSD, we'd also love to hear from you.

Written by Jacqui Hogan