Got Hypervigilance?

“I feel like this sense of high-alert alarm is always in the background. I don’t know what life is like without it.” Said one of the participant of our Cyclebreakers community on a group training.
“How can we solve this?”

It got me thinking.

This background alarm becomes so prevalent that we become accustomed to it and can’t remember living any other way. It’s like having the smoke alarm suddenly come on when you’re a 5 year old
and it NEVER SHUTS OFF….

How would that feel?
Annoying?
Exhausting?
Maddening?
Choking the enjoyment out of life?

This is the impact of adverse events in childhood.

Often these events happen before we’re even born.
An example from one of our students:
Before she was born, her mother had a miscarriage and lost a son as
she was giving birth.
3 years later when she was developing in the womb, her mother’s
stress and worry and hypervigilance was “downloaded” onto her.

This hypervigilance unconsciously creates a sense of “duty/obligation” to quell this alarm inside of her — by hypervigilantly looking after the emotional needs of both parents.

“Maybe if I can take care of mom and dad’s emotions, I can feel safe again.”
(The seeds of Co-Dependency are now planted so deep nothing else could ever be possible).

This pattern continues into her intimate relationships and informs the
partner she chooses — someone who facilitates the same familiar
pattern where she abandons her own needs to look after someone who can’t see her, and abandons her and their two children
emotionally.

This hypervigilance and abandonment feeling is all she’s ever known.
Not only is it manifested in her family dynamics and relationships — it
then shows up in her body as Chronic Anxiety and eventually a
digestive tumor.

After trying the traditional route of counselors, psychologists, and
medical doctors not finding answers, she attended our Breathwork
and Badassery experience.

In that event, this entire dance I shared above unfolds for her… her
mother’s grief she carried, the way she continued this pattern with her parents, her ex-husband, her health….

During the Breathwork portion of the event, through a flood of
insights, coupled with emotions that poured through, and out of her
like a volcano coupled with an earthquake that been building tension
for centuries, she began to heal, and continues her journey of
recreating safety within herself.

Weeks later, I get a DM from her saying “Hey Nima, I’m kind of
concerned here.”

“About what?” I ask.

“Now that I’ve been doing this work for the past few weeks in the
community, that sense of hypervigilance, chaos, anxiety and
overwhelm are not there anymore. Now I have no clue what to do. It
almost feels strange. Uncomfortable really.”

Uncomfortable indeed. When we are used to a faint alarm playing in
the background, we develop a relationship with it and begin to feel
“unsafe” when it’s no longer there, kind of like having a crutch for a
broken leg you no longer feel safe without, even though the leg is
healed.

This is a part of healing our collective trauma we don’t know how to
live without.

This relationship with that hypervigilance is the very reason many folks
resist doing the work. On one hand we want healing — desperately.
On the other, we’re scared because we have known nothing else.

THIS IS THE TRICKY DANCE BEHIND THE TRAUMA BOND.

This is why we can’t heal them through the mind / talk therapy alone.

She was lucky (or should I say committed) — she was able to get past
her resistance and take that step, even though healing was
uncomfortably different.

Many folks don’t — so they never get a taste of what life is like without
that sense of high-alert background alarm.

If you’ve been spending countless hours reading books, watching
youtube videos, attending therapy, taking courses that are cognitive
based, hoping that will get rid of that alarm in the background, I’m
here to share with you why it hasn’t been working:

Because to access that alarm, one must get out of the mind and the
endless stories we love to vent to ANYONE who will listen, and we
MUST GET INTO THE BODY.

The venting of the story, while feels great for a minute to be validated, DOESN’T ADDRESS the alarm in the body.

The story and the overthinking is the ego’s attempt to AVOID IT.

Like the example above — many of us develop this alarm before we
have the language to describe it. So we can’t really access it through
talking.

To heal it we must stop the talking and overthinking… And must go
deeper and feel it — and release it from the body.

Again and again.

Without accessing it at a somatic level — we are doomed to repeat
patterns of unconscious reactivity to this hypervigilance.

You’re reading this for a reason.
This community is about changing the conversation from the head to
the heart so that you can experience life and relationships with SAFETY instead of hypervigilance.

For that reason, every month I open up our Breathwork and Badassery
And Overview Experience events from our Cyclebreaker programs to
the public to actually experience the difference — where we get access
to where the hypervigilance began — and address it AT THE VERY
ROOT.

Even if you don’t have memories from childhood on a conscious level… It’s still there at an unconscious level, and there’s a way to get
to it.
And it’s inspiring as hell to witness an entire community show up and
make incremental progress towards breaking cycles that didn’t start
with us.

Not for the purpose of blaming ourselves.
Not for the purpose of blaming victims.
Not to blame our parents.
Not to blame our “narcissistic ex’s”.

But to throw the word “blame” out the window and take responsibility
for our own healing.

It didn’t start with us, but it can end with us.

If you LOVE THE SHIT out of that hypervigilance, the anxiety, and the
way it impacts your entire life and creates insecure attachments in relationships… please keep scrolling.

But If you’re ready to learn how to let go of that sense of “background
alarm” and find safety WITHIN yourself and learn how to guide
yourself into connecting with those younger parts….

Join us at our upcoming Breathwork Event April 23rd 12–4pm PST 3–7pm EST (early sunday morning in Oz).

When you lean into the resistance and commit right away — you
ALREADY set in motion incremental progress towards healing as
you’re making a declaration to yourself of your importance and
worthiness.

When we do, doors begin to open as we lean into our fears.
When we don’t — the old familiar patterns of hypervigilance take over,
and we stay stuck hoping things will “one day” change.

If you’re ready for a true breakthrough, take all your fears and excuses
and write them all down on a piece of paper.
Then, throw that piece of paper in the garbage and follow the link and join us next Saturday.