Transcript

Am I Hypervigilant? Signs Of Hypervigilance & How To Get Better

From What Your Therapist Thinks · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 1 h 10 min · 11,864 words · 196 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "Am I Hypervigilant? Signs Of Hypervigilance & How To Get Better", an episode of What Your Therapist Thinks published September 10, 2025 (1 h 10 min, about 11,864 words). It mentions 19 people, works and ideas, including Felicia, Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), Black-and-white thinking, Agoraphobia, Social anxiety.

What this episode is about

The content explores hypervigilance and its psychological implications, emphasizing how innate human tendencies contribute to anxiety and black-and-white thinking. It features insights from mental health professionals who discuss the benefits of virtual therapy in providing greater access to care for individuals, particularly millennials facing unique contemporary challenges.

Key takeaways

  • Black-and-white thinking: the villain of nuanced healing, blurring truths into stark shades of existential anxiety.
  • Virtual therapy: connecting rural minds with urban empathy, breaking privacy barriers without breaking personal space.
  • Hypervigilance: 24/7 bodyguard mode, great for bear chases, less so for microwaves at midnight.
  • Licensed here, based anywhere: therapists are geographically flexible, but state borders are still virtual gatekeepers.
  • From vigilance to hypervigilance: when survival instincts morph into home-staying, mind-paralyzing specters.

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 10:00: Felicia, Black-and-white thinking, Christy Plantinga, Eastern Oregon
  2. – 20:00: Felicia
  3. – 30:00: Clippy, Felicia, Social anxiety
  4. – 40:00: Black-and-white thinking, co-regulation, Felicia, Google Scholar
  5. – 50:00: Felicia
  6. – 1:00:00: Felicia
  7. – 1:10:00: Chory Counseling

Notable quotes from "Am I Hypervigilant? Signs Of Hypervigilance & How To Get Better"

  • One of your hosts. I am a therapy connoisseur and mental health writer and with me I have Felicia Keller Bole.
    about Felicia · at
  • That's great. That really creates a lot more opportunities for people. That's something I love about virtual therapy.
    about Virtual therapy · at
  • You gave from your own life because this is the one that I see so often with my own clients is a lot of social anxiety.
    about Social anxiety · at
  • In Microsoft Word like yeah like we need like we just it needs updated training clippy rest in peace hey that part's there we're going to update its job description and it'll change.
    about Clippy · at
  • Therapy and like what's actually happening in a therapeutic connection, part of that is co-regulation. And so for folks who don't know what that is, co-regulation, it's…
    about co-regulation · at
  • Anyone can go on to Google Scholar right now and look up like what predicts positive outcomes in therapy. And every single time that these studies have been repeated, it is exactly what Felicia has.
    about Google Scholar · at
  • Me when I'm hearing both of you talk is I come from a background of more religious trauma. So my sweet therapist has talked to me a lot about black and white thinking. Okay. So…
    about Religious trauma · at
  • Chory Counseling. It's all there. All of the handles you can find me. And really, I tell people, if you want to be a therapy client of mine, the only catch is you have to be located.
    about Chory Counseling · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Felicia — Person · 11 mentions · first at
  • Christy Plantinga — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Welcome to the WhatY Your Therapist Thinks podcast. I'm Christy Plantinga, one of your hosts. I am a therapy connoisseur and mental health writer and with me I have Felicia Keller Bole.
  • Felicia Keller Bole — Person · 1 mention · first at
    One of your hosts. I am a therapy connoisseur and mental health writer and with me I have Felicia Keller Bole.
  • Haley Thomas — Person · 1 mention · first at
    Into these mental health topics with you. Finally, we have our esteemed celebrity guest, Haley Thomas. Drum roll.

Companies & orgs

Products & tech

Concepts & topics

Places & events

  • Eastern Oregon — Place · 1 mention · first at
    Ago when I went fully online was I started hearing from people in like rural eastern Oregon who were going, Hey, I really want to see a therapist, but I don't want to run into…

Full transcript with timestamps

Honestly, that's what our brains are wired to do. I think it's important for us to understand that as much healing as we do, that's part of our species makeup. How does black and white thinking play into this? I have like the biggest smile on my face cuz I have so much fun talking with clients about this. This is literally just like free therapy for me. By the way,

if this person were talking to me in therapy, I would be talking with them about like Welcome to the WhatY Your Therapist Thinks podcast. I'm Christy Plantinga, one of your hosts. I am a therapy connoisseur and mental health writer and with me I have Felicia Keller Bole. Hello everyone. I'm Felicia. I'm a licensed psychotherapist based in California and really excited to dive into these mental health topics with you. Finally, we have our esteemed celebrity guest, Haley Thomas. Drum roll.

Yes, I am Haley Thomas. I am a licensed psycher therapist. I specialize in anxiety specifically for millennials because, you know, all the reasons living through unprecedented times is kind of our thing.

And I am based in Colorado, but I am licensed to practice in both Colorado and Oregon. What does that mean, Haley? For people who don't know, for people who hear, "Okay, you're based in Colorado, but you're licensed in these two states. What does that mean for therapy seekers?" I run a 100% virtual practice. So, all sessions take place on a HIPPA compliant video conferencing platform and because of state licensing laws, you as the client have to be based in either Colorado or Oregon to receive therapy services from me.

That's great. That really creates a lot more opportunities for people. That's something I love about virtual therapy. In places where maybe there aren't as many therapists or there aren't as many therapists who align with your values, you have the ability to see a therapist online. You have a lot more options and you can find someone who really fits what you're looking for.

Totally. And even before we started recording, we were talking about like more rural areas. And that's actually one of the things that happened 5 years ago when I went fully online was I started hearing from people in like rural eastern Oregon who were going, "Hey, I really want to see a therapist, but I don't want to run into you at church or at my kids school. I want to have more privacy." So, that is one of those other things that I don't see talked about as much even in 2025.

Some of those perks um include increased privacy and less overlap between your personal life and your therapist.

That is a great point. What are we getting into today? Why' we bring Haley here?

Today we're talking about hyper vigilance, which obviously has lots of connections with anxiety and trauma. So before we get into some more clarifying questions just on what hypervigilance really is, what it looks like, feels like, stuff like that, maybe we can quick go around and just briefly explain, you know, personal connection to the topic, clinical connection from our our therapists here of course um to hypervigilance.

Oh yeah. I mean personal and professional connection for sure. Um, I am not shy about sharing that I am someone who at various points throughout my life have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and complex PTSD as well. So, when I think about hypervigilance, I always like to go back to kind of the most succinct definition I can think of, which is, you know, if you're being chased by a bear, you want to be able to hightail it on out of there. You want to be able to get to safety. You want to be able to get help. And when you get to safety, one of the ways that you get to process that is by sharing with people, right? Oh my gosh, this thing happened. People come over, they comfort you, they console you, they go, "Oh my gosh, I'm so glad you're okay now." And maybe like you have a bad dream or two like over the next week. But you're not afraid to go back outside the next day. You are

living your life and as time goes on, it just becomes a story that you tell sometimes.

But with hypervigilance, when it's constant, that's a problem. Right? If I have an animal encounter, which living in Colorado, animal encounters are not hard to come by. But if I have a scary animal encounter and now I don't want to leave my house, now I don't want to talk to people cuz what if they judge me? What if I hear a sound and I think that that scary animal is in my house? Well, now that hypervigilance isn't helping me. It's actually creating a brand new problem that is going to threaten to cut me off

from community, from connection, and also from my own sense of self. Like, I really value being someone who trusts my own nervous system to help me regulate even when I do encounter something scary.

That's how I would explain it. I'm curious to hear how Felicia talks about this too.

Yeah. Okay. Let's see. I mean hypervigilance is like this sense of being like stuck on, right? The what what separates hypervigilance from just like vigilance is that it it doesn't have an off switch, right? So I definitely think there were times in my life where that was more the case. It's just constantly scanning for danger and it's just not useful at a certain point like you were saying Haley like at a certain point it is getting in the way of us living our lives. But a big thing that people fear that I certainly have feared is okay well if I'm not this way then how will I keep myself safe? And I know like I'm not alone in that. Like some of the questions we're going to be bringing up later on in the show are basically exactly that. Like, how can I tell the difference between real threat and perceived threat? How can I tell the difference? It's like when you're so disoriented or when you've been

threatened repeatedly, when bad things have happened repeatedly, it's really hard to not live a life where you're just expecting that to happen again, right? So, getting out of that cycle can be so hard for folks.

So, I think part of what's important about this is is maybe validating the the harm that was caused. I think it's really hard to let go of hypervigilance if you're still if you still haven't been witnessed in the fact that what happened

was actually really harmful. I think that's like a precursor to healing from that.

That's so interesting. I think getting into just acknowledging the root cause cuz I think a lot of times when people are experiencing a symptom, they just kind of want it cleared up, you know, and a lot of times, of course, like you want to know why is this happening? And we'll get into some potential causes here in a sec. For me, you know, more is in the like peopleleasing empath world really scanning body language in people's faces and, you know, in the past overanalyzing communication. always this fear of like is someone upset with me and did I cause that? So that's how mind more shows up. I think I'm very much less, you know, of like the sounds and you know that my god that sounds so awful and if anyone

is listening experiences that my heart really goes out to because that just sounds so difficult. Um so I think mine would show up more socially. Um,

but yeah, I'm excited to just hear from two therapy experts. If you could provide a succinct definition of hypervigilance if someone could just kind of hear that and be like, "Yep, that that sounds like me or maybe that doesn't sound like me." So, it's a two-parter. We've got this near constant scanning and then we've got sort of like false positives, right?

That combination of like your testing material has been damaged. It sat in the sun too long. like it's not accurate anymore, but you're trying to use it constantly.

Yeah. What does it feel like? What are the signs of hyper vigilance that someone can maybe recognize in themselves?

Christy, I want to use the example that you gave from your own life because this is the one that I see so often with my own clients is a lot of social anxiety. So, think about meeting a new friend. All right, everyone's like favorite thing to do, especially in their 30s and 40s, making new friends gets a little uh more nuanced. So, it's super normal, right? Before meeting a new person, let's say you've maybe connected with someone, you've gotten to the point where you've invited them out for a coffee to connect more. It's super normal to be like, "Oh my gosh, I want to make sure I get there on time. I want to make sure that like I don't know that they think I'm cool. Like I want them to like me." With hyper vigilance though, it might be a little more thoughts around, well, why did this person say yes? If they're saying yes, is it because they want something from me or is it because they

actually want to get to know me? or are they going to try to ask me things that I'm not ready to talk about so that they can use it against me later? And maybe this actually isn't the best coffee shop to meet up at because the parking situation is really really bad and maybe we should actually just cancel or maybe we should just meet up online because

right you get the picture and you can even hear I'm talking faster and as my voice is changing as I'm giving those examples. So, it's less about, oh, yeah, I'm a little nervous to like, you know, have some one-on-one time with this newer person and thinking about every single way that things could go wrong

and all of the different ways that you could be under threat, too. All of a sudden, it goes from I'm connecting with a new friend to I am potentially meeting with someone who's going to become my enemy. It's like

you don't know this person yet. And so the brain is scanning for threats and trying to keep you safe, but

in a context that's maybe not the most appropriate. Yeah, I think that my understanding of it too is just like it all kind of comes down to safety and this is a way that your mind and body have learned to protect themselves from, you know, maybe some of the worst threats that you were faced at the time, but that tool doesn't work or it's broken or it's been left out of the sun too long like Felicia was saying.

What do you think uh Felicia in terms of what does it feel like look like? Well, maybe this will be an answer to that question is like what I really heard in what you were describing Haley was like two things which was planning and control. Hyper vigilance can can feel like obsessive thinking it can manifest as an attempt to control every little thing. Like if I'm concerned, if I'm hypervigilant in relationships and I'm really worried about people liking me, then I'm going to really try to control how that interaction goes, right?

Whether it's through like changing aspects of myself to get the response I think I need to get or attempting to control the other person or like trying to read their thoughts. That's a thing that can happen with hypervigilance, right? Is like sometimes that can manifest as thinking you know more about people than you actually know. making a lot of assumptions. I think one of the most painful things about hypervigilance actually is that it can it can become the self-fulfilling prophecy,

right? You are afraid that you're going to be hurt and so you show up in the world and in these interactions in a way that's really guarded and I'm pulling away. So, I'm not really vulnerable. I'm not really connecting. It can look like guarded. So, I'm aggressive. I'm expecting people to disappoint me. I'm expecting people to hurt me. So, I'm going to kind of act out towards them. And I'm thinking of people I know in my life who have experienced a lot of trauma and who are hypervigilant and they just keep on experiencing these problems in relationships and like part of it is that they show up in this hypervigilant way that is aggressive or it's really dismissive and then they get the responses that they're afraid to get most. Right? That is so painful and the whole time they're like it's proving their point again and again. So it keeps on reinforcing the hypervigilance rather than getting out of it.

Yeah. And one more that I was just thinking of Felicia as you were talking about this hyper vigilance can also show up as a lack of curiosity. Because when we're curious, we're really open,

right, to our experience being one possible explanation to the other person's experience adding more to the picture. But when we're not curious, when we're making negative assumptions all the time, that can be another clue. Like, all right, I'm always on. I'm making a lot of negative assumptions. I'm not that curious. I've kind of got my mind made up about what this situation is and how this person's thinking and feeling, but I haven't actually asked them anything.

So, we're building out this checklist, I think. Yeah. I love that you mentioned that. That lack of curiosity. That is such a feature. I already know this. It comes back to that control thing, right? I know what's going on here. I figured it out. I'm obviously right. This person hates me, right? or they're terrible or I'm going to get hurt. And so it stops you from showing up or like you said about meeting up with that new friend. It's like let me just try to control everything about it instead of showing up and just being like, oh, I wonder how this interaction will go.

Like no, I've got to like control how we meet and when we get there and what they're going to think of me.

So it sounds like there's almost a rigidity involved sometimes. Yeah. Which also makes sense because I'm thinking about like if someone's listening to us talk about this, right? I want to be so clear like

this is not judgment about being really rigid. This is not judgment about making assumptions.

All of this comes from having experienced actual threats, actual negative experiences. So, if someone is threatening to blackmail you, right?

You don't have time in that moment to be really curious and go, "Oh, I wonder what I wonder what happened for them this morning that they're trying to blackmail me or threaten to leave me a one-star review on Google." Like,

yeah, you're activated. Of course, you're activated. M so this gets us back into that space of reminding folks of like these responses come from a place where it makes sense

but then the hypervigilance gets transferred into situations where it makes less sense and that's where a lot of the problems come in with it.

Yeah. and the pain just from being in it. And I suspect that a lingering question, and this is actually a great transition to get into our our first question that we sourced from Reddit, is when do I give it up? Because I think for a lot of people in certain situations, you need hypervigilance to survive. or in other scenarios I think of, you know, friends that I've had, they're just not ready to give it up and they would rather personally suffer themselves than risk what could happen if they just let their guard down for a little bit, you know. So

yeah, I think you know obviously the goal for anyone would just be yeah not to suffer with it anymore because it is truly suffering. But I think there is kind of a point where it's like when is it like safe to to give it up? Um yeah and just a lot of empathy like you were saying for you're this way for a reason and it's not your fault. There's there's life beyond it hopefully. So, I actually love this question because there's curiosity embedded within it.

Like, okay, I'm just gonna ask it then. Let's get into it. This is in the CPTTSD subreddit, which I think a lot of these almost all of the questions I was seeing about hypervigilance were coming up, which is complex post-traumatic stress disorder. So, the question is, how do you protect yourself without being hypervigilant? I have only ever known to protect myself by being hypervigilant. So much so that I don't know when it's safe to relax. The fact that people go out in the world and just feel safe is mind-boggling. So my question is maybe for those who have recovered from survival mode and hypervigilance or those who are secure, how do you know to be aware and when you can let loose? Where is the line between being normally aware and being naive/ clueless to what's going on? I don't exactly know when I need to be aware and protect myself and when I can let loose and be calm. I only know to be all or

nothing. You don't want to be unaware to what's going on around you, but you also don't want to be overly aware. What's the middle ground?

I think the first thing that I would want to tell this person is that it's so unfair that they've had experiences that have led them to have to ask this question. And this gets us, you know, a little reference point to what Felicia was talking about of like acknowledging where this came from

because this probably wasn't a one-time thing. This was probably a series of events over years that this person is now asking like, "How do I live?"

So that's the first thing. It's really unfair to have to ask this question. And it's one I've had to ask, too. So, I like get it.

And the curiosity that's embedded in here, this person is thinking about experiences that are different from their own. So, they're thinking about what's it like to be someone who feels safer in the world than I do.

They're starting to imagine things, which I think is a really nice sign that they might actually be a bit more ready to explore some things than they are even giving themselves credit for. If this person were talking to me in therapy, I would be talking with them about like dosing safe experiences.

The OP asked this, when is it safe to give it up or one of but that question came up and I think I think

it's when you're safe. You know what I mean? It's like you can't give it up when you're not safe, right? So I think like part of what's so damaging about this is that like you were saying Haley, like this probably went on for years and years. this person was like repeatedly unsafe. And that that can mean a lot of different things. Like it could have been physical in unsafety. It could have been emotional, psychological in unsafety. When we say this, we're not just talking about like someone who's under physical threat repeatedly. It could happen many, many different ways.

And it can even happen in very subtle ways. You know, we might be unsafe in ways that aren't so obvious to other people, but our bodies are registering them as unsafe. So, I think you're right. Like first things first is like how do you feel safe? I remember working with a client many many years ago who had severe trauma like so much complex post-traumatic disorder and they had dissociative uh disorders as well. And I remember being in session with them with their grandchild sitting on their lap because they would always bring like their toddler grandkid to our sessions.

And I remember sitting with them and just asking if there was any part of their experience that felt pleasant in their body. And they were like, "No, it's all terrible." And I said, "Can you feel your granddaughter sitting on your lap right now? And how does that feel to you? What's it like being in contact with her?" And it was like, "Oh, right. That feels safe." And so sometimes for people who have been like incredibly traumatized, like what is safe is very hard to find. It's very very hard to locate a safe,

pleasurable or sometimes even neutral experience. So depending on the severity, it's like we've got to be very, I think, gentle with folks. And again, everybody's at a different starting place. Like this person had severe, prolonged, repeated, super violent trauma. So we we didn't have a lot to work with,

but you have at people at different ranges. And so I think we're looking for ways to build that safety. And because I'm a sematic therapist, I'm always thinking about like in the body. But when you're doing sematic therapy, it also has to be trauma informed. So telling somebody who's experienced a lot of physical trauma to be like just breathe, you know, just like feel your breath in your body is sometimes really going to backfire. So I was like, okay,

can you feel the tips of your fingers? Can you notice holding her hand? It's like, okay, that I can tolerate and that actually feels good. And I love that you mentioned the sematic piece, Felicia, because I'm the same way. I'm a brain spotting therapist, which is this super sematically oriented modality. And I noticed this in this question is there's a lot of like eitherors, like I'm either feeling totally safer and feeling totally under threat.

And so I like to explore that gray area. And how I would language it too is, you know, when are times where you notice a lot of sensation

versus when are times where you notice less sensation in your body? Or is there an area of your body that feels a little less freaked out?

Like a little bit less, like 2% less. And there's also something to be said too about like really honoring the hypervigilance as well. And this is where like the part of me that does like a lot of parks work in therapy would want to ask this person like, "Hey, could you make a list of like the things that your hyper vigilance is really skilled at? The things that it does really really well that really work for you. And then what are some things that the hyper vigilance is less skilled at or like maybe you don't like so much or that you appreciate a little bit less?

Cuz that gives us so much rich information about what that part of that person is actually worried about and then we can start to get into like what's realistic for this person to do.

Oh yeah. just like the agency in that question, you know, how I think one of the things that can feel really scary for folks when it comes to hypervigilance is like, well, then I've got to get rid of it. And again, it's that question of like, how do I keep myself safe? And so, I love in that question that you would ask your clients, Haley, like, what is working about this? What isn't working? Like, how is this getting in the way? And then it's like, oh, if this is working in this particular way and I want to keep that, like now I know what that is and I can move towards beginning to release the things that are really getting in the way while knowing I don't have to get rid of everything, right? And that's maybe where we start to find the appropriate vigilance or appropriate safety seeeking behaviors and begin to extract those and divide those from what is actually hypervigilance and just

getting in my way and making my life harder. 100%. 100%. My clients are used to talking about it as like updating the job description of their parts.

I love that. I'm like I'm like I don't know if this part of yourself realizes that it's working with a job description from like 2005 and it's been 20 years and like the technologies updated

in Microsoft Word like yeah like we need like we just it needs updated training clippy

rest in peace hey that part's there we're going to update its job description and it'll change

just like you've changed and your experiences have changed and it's actually okay

cuz then we can start talking about like dosing safety and I have like the biggest smile on my face cuz I have so much fun talking with clients about this

and I find that people often get really surprised by how non-threatening some of their initial options are for dosing safety because they're things that that hypervigilance has kept them from even considering.

So they start to get give us an example. What is it like in the room? What are the things you guys are coming up with and then they come back and tell you about it.

Yeah. especially in the last five years and the pandemic had a huge role to play in this and it still does. But a lot of people who developed like fullblown agorophobia. Like if we think about social anxiety as being really afraid of like interacting with other people or being out in public spaces where an interaction might happen. With agorophobia, that narrows us down even more to where we are afraid to leave our homes or kind of our safe little bubble that we have for fear of interacting like with the world around you at all because it is so unknown. It is so uncertain and the default assumption is that something scary or unsafe is going to happen.

And I'm thinking of a client who recognized that they were becoming agorophobic. They were only leaving their house

maybe a couple times a week and only to go to known places like the grocery store. They weren't going anywhere new. They were taking the same route every time. They got really tired of it, but they also didn't know where to start. And I asked them if they had any like memories of times where they felt like it was okay or less scary to connect with the world. And to no one's surprise, this person had a lot of really positive memories of being in nature. So we worked with that and started thinking about yes the world is big and it's full of a lot of people but it's also full of a lot of plants and animals and those are relationships and connections too.

So instead of telling this person like well why don't you try going for a walk around the block this week?

Go to a concert. Yeah. Go to a concert. Go to an outdoor venue. I asked them if you know when they got up in the morning, would they be interested in maybe opening up their window and seeing what or like listening to what they could hear coming through the window.

They started noticing a lot of birds that they hadn't noticed before. And we happen to live in an era where we've got Merlin, which is like the bird song identification app from Cornell University. So they got really Now,

they started going like, "Oh my gosh, like there's this thing I can use to record and it'll tell me what birds are making those noises and those songs,"

which then turned into, "Well, maybe I want to see some of those birds, right?" Okay. How would it feel to spend five minutes just standing outside of your front door

or sitting in your backyard for a couple minutes and you spot some of those birds

and it goes like on and on and on to where this is now someone who feels really comfortable walking around their neighborhood. They like to go for long car drives by themselves. And it all started with finding something in their environment that they felt was less threatening.

This is an example that has been a really common theme with the majority of my clients, even those who aren't dealing with agorophobia, but anxiety and hypervigilance in general of just finding like, okay, maybe it's not going for a walk. Maybe I'm going to go see if I can like spot which flowers are in bloom.

That's giving your brain a task and something to focus on. We're just basking. We're just over here basking and like the beauty.

I mean, I think I think you're making a really strong case here for why therapy can be so effective for this. You know, when I think about the process of therapy and like what's actually happening in a therapeutic connection, um, part of that is co-regulation. And so for folks who don't know what that is, co-regulation, it's basically the the concept that like we're all affected by each other. We all have our own independent nervous systems, but our nervous systems like interact, right? And when you are freaked out, having a hard time, and you can be in the presence of somebody who can attune to where you're at, but also maybe be calm.

It can help regulate your system. it can help bring it into a state that's going to be more comfortable. And so I'm hearing about these clients getting to share with you the the ways in which they're impacted and the hard things they're experiencing and then you're coming in witnessing them and then really gently like offering well can we can we find something that's maybe doesn't feel safe even if that feels really hard. Can we find something that feels less scary and just just open up to that just a little bit? And you're there, you know,

in the I think of us like little prairie dogs sometimes, right? We're like always kind of like popping our heads up and we're like, "Are we

is there something? Does anyone see anything? Are we okay?" And you're just also Yeah. You're just also there being like,

"Yeah, we're good. We're good." And they're like, "Okay, maybe it could come out a little bit more." Right. like you're there to to help be that other nervous system in the room or even online, which is so cool that this also works online, right? Like there's a way that our nervous systems can attune like via video, via the internet, via voice. It's like we're so good at perceiving so many things, right? That that information still comes through.

It really does. And it's also the beauty of like video as well and those audio components cuz I think about people I've worked with who are lower vision, right? Maybe they're not fully blind, but reduced visual capacity where being able to hear or even being able to perceive some motion on screen, but that's really like low and slow has been really regulating. And it's part of why, Felicia, I love that you brought up co-regulation because I explain to my clients that like some of what you are paying for when you see a therapist is to actually borrow from your therapist's nervous system.

That's some of what you're paying for. And it feels awesome. Yeah, it feels Christy can attest.

It feels so relaxed, right? It's also this special gift of being calm and relaxed

without being dismissive because like I don't know about either of you, but I have experienced

a person in my life who was calm. I'm putting like air quotes here, but it was like, well, it's not a problem for me, so I don't know why it's such a big deal for you. And like

that is so different. I'm glad you pointed that out. In fact, I love that you're saying that, Haley, because I think sometimes people are a little bit confused about what is therapy, like what is happening in therapy? What am I paying for? What is the mechanism of change? And I feel like in this conversation in particular, one of the things we're really really pointing at, one of the things that's so effective when it comes to therapy outcomes is the relationship between the therapist and the client, right? and like the sort of benefit of therapy is obviously the things you're talking about.

Brainstorming, okay, what can we do differently? I'm getting to know you really well. I'm getting to know how you operate. We're coming up with things. You're getting to come back the next week and and we get to talk about what happened when you went and tried this out. But then there's also that that really important fit between the therapist and the client of like, do we vibe? You know what I mean? Do we vibe? And that's not going to be with every therapist and client pairing. like that's not a given. And if you don't have that with a therapist, it doesn't it also doesn't necessarily mean that they're a bad therapist. It just means that they may not be the right fit for you. But part of what we're talking about here is like,

are you matched with a therapist who can really be there in with you and your experience and help hold what you're experiencing effectively? And and I'm hearing that that's a big piece of what you're doing with your clients, Haley.

Right. And the shorthand for this for people to take away is that like I'm laughing because I'm thinking of like a million different memes right now. But in therapy, the vibes between you and your therapist do in fact need to be immaculate. They really do. And this is like not gatekept knowledge either. Anyone can go on to Google Scholar right now and look up like what predicts positive outcomes in therapy. And every single time that these studies have been repeated, it is exactly what Felicia has said. How you feel toward your therapist is the number one predictor

of having successful positive outcomes in therapy. It's not the modality. It is the relationship that is going to be that top predictor.

And that includes having a therapist who you can give feedback to. A therapist who will apologize to you if they say something or do something that you don't like. Someone who can model going through a conflict with you maybe in a way that you've never even experienced before. That's some of what you're getting in therapy as well. And that can be so helpful

for people experiencing hyper vigilance. Ding ding ding of someone like I have clients who I tell them like, I'm going to tell you this

over and over again until you get sick of hearing this, but you do not owe anything to me. You do not owe me your trust. I am brand new to you. And I say this so often to people because sometimes we get six months into therapy and they're like, "Actually, there's something I haven't been telling you."

And I can see them kind of like brace to hear how I'm going to react to that. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, thank you for letting me know. I'm also really glad that you listened to yourself and that you waited until it felt like the right time. I'm really glad that you kind of observed me and hopefully have gotten to see that I'm really consistent with how I show up.

So, we good. We're good. And we can even dose this one out. Like, how is it for you

to see me be curious about what it's been like for you to wait to tell me this?

Do you want to share anything about this today? or do you want me to just know that there's something we haven't gotten to yet that we can maybe follow up on next week? Like I'm constantly giving people options because that's also something that people who are hypervigilant have not tended to have in the past. They tend to have not been given options.

So having someone who can do that is like holy [ __ ] What do you mean? What do you mean those options for myself? actually

I think is something else that I I think about and there is one that I would love to hear from both of you. Just one little line

in this that really kind of strikes me before we move on to our next example because a lot of what is coming up for me when I'm hearing both of you talk is I come from a background of more religious trauma. So my sweet therapist has talked to me a lot about black and white thinking. Okay. So the line where she says, "Where's the line between being normally aware and being naive clueless to what's going on?" So like when I think of like the naive/clueless side of things, I used to have this friend. We only traveled in an airport together once, but he had like a backpack as his carry-on and literally two plastic grocery bags with holes in it just like dangling from his backpack with stuff in it. I'm just like, it's one of those things where I think of like the naive clues like anyone could just take something out of there or like you hit one corner with your little chaotic backpack and all of your [ __ ] is

just all over the floor now, you know? So I think of like this sort of thing where if I let you know the hyper vigilance it's like it's my zipped up backpack and I don't lose anything and no one's going to steal anything for me and that's how that is or

and you're wearing your backpack on the front of your body and hugging it. Yeah. Front of your body and you get like all the clips on it like that kind of thing cuz you're like well that's that's this or you're the chaotic friend with grocery bags flapping around off of your backpack. So my thought is like how does like black and white thinking play into this?

I just love that image. I love it too. That's so funny. I mean I grew up um I was a very devout, very good Catholic, okay, for a long time. A lot of people don't realize that about me given that programming of like it's either this or that and there's a line and you step over it and then you are so screwed unless you go through a very specific series of steps

and try not to develop OCD. I dare you so hard. It's right there. It's flirting with you. But look away. If I had this person in front of me asking, "Where's the line?" I would so so lovingly like look at them and go, "What if there's not a line? What if it's not that neat and tidy? And what if it's maybe okay

to consider that the line might not exist?" M we want there to be a line because if there's a line then we can figure out

how to be safe, right? Like if there's a line, beautiful. Give me rules. Give me certainty.

It's like a repetition of the hypervigilance all over again. I'll just be hyper vigilance about where that line is. I'll know where that line is at all times and I'll make sure I'm on the right side of the line and then we're good. Nothing bad will ever happen.

Right. And so to kind of go off this idea from earlier of dosing safety, I now introduce you to this beautiful concept of safety and making mistakes

because this is another thing I work with so many people on and I got right absolutely not. I will

pass on that activity. Thanks. But this is a thing that like we would work on in therapy is figuring out, okay, you already know how to be aware. That part, that box is like super checked off.

A+ great job. What has not been checked off is like one permission to make mistakes,

permission to treat yourself kindly and gently when you make a mistake and also recognizing what kinds of mistakes are dangerous like they threaten your safety, your livelihood, your like right those basics like think Maslo's hierarchy of needs like food, water, shelter, shelter Shelty loves a dog. Um, but like protecting your animals, right? Okay.

But thinking about those things versus like what are mistakes that are uncomfortable?

Like nothing bad is going to happen. Like right feel like to make that mistake.

Super silly mistake. Let's say you're baking some cookies. You think you're adding a cup of sugar, but you added a cup of salt. That's a mistake. Right? You might not find out about it till the cookies come out of the oven and they maybe they look a little funny and you take a bite and you go, "Oh, something happened here." Is that going to threaten your safety? No. One bite of a salty cookie. Okay, you're going to be fine.

I'm just imagining the person being like, "But I made these cookies. Now I have to eat all the Now I have to eat them. That's too bad."

Like what is the next thought? Is it a kind thought that follows? Is it a punishing thought that follows? Is it a catastrophic thought that follows?

That's where being with your own emotions. And by that I mean, okay, I'm going to keep up the cookie example. Welcome to how my brain works. Um, it's food all the time. Food, food, food.

Now I want a cookie. But you get to go, oh my gosh, this sucks. I really wanted cookies and I made a mistake and I get to be disappointed because I was really looking forward to this. I'm really bummed. I'm just going to be with that for a moment while I figure out what I want to do. Like, do I want to remake these? Do I have the energy to make another batch? Do I want to just like run to the store really quick and maybe buy a pre-made mix that I can just pop in the oven? What do I want to do? But you get to go through that series of steps. And I think this is the other thing that's so hard with hypervigilance is people are often really asking like, "How do I never feel bad?"

Mhm. And unfortunately, there's not a way to stop that from happening. And you're not bad or wrong when it occurs. Yes. which I think is the thing that we are fearing on the bottom of that is like well if I were just

the correct type of human who is living right and again also hey former former Christian here so we all have that in common

then I would just not experience pain I wouldn't feel bad this is evidence the pain I'm experiencing right now is evidence that I've done something wrong or that someone else has done something wrong and like that conclusion usion is something that will keep us just constantly running from that discomfort. So, I hear what you're saying here, Haley, is like beginning to build a tolerance

for that emotional discomfort without going to the conclusion that I am innately bad or wrong

or like someone else is innately bad or wrong because then it's like the world is just so dangerous and so threatening all the time if that's the case. Yeah,

this is literally just like free therapy for me, by the way. You're welcome. Not crying right now.

Twoists who are like, "You're doing okay sweetie." Yeah, you really are. You are. Cuz you know, Felicia, I'm thinking about this too with what we were talking about earlier of like the negative assumptions and thinking that we're wrong or bad. Sometimes making a mistake is how we identify where we have some unmet needs.

So like if I put the wrong ingredient in my cookie batter, maybe that happened because I didn't sleep really well the night before cuz I was really stressed. And so maybe the thing that I do after tossing my salty cookies is seeing can I maybe get in bed, you know, 10 minutes earlier than I did the night before. Can I meet myself in that way? And this is where curiosity also comes back into the mix

because it's okay to ask like why did something happen? It's perfectly reasonable to want to know why. What's less reasonable is to think that we're always going to get an answer to it. We're not always going to, especially when other people are involved. But for ourselves, like sometimes we have an off day, sometimes we're tired, sometimes we're stressed, sometimes we need to just slow down. And slowing down is one of those things that's also really hard to do when hypervigilance is your norm.

So, it's a skill that we build is recognizing where can I slow down? Mhm. Where are those places where I don't I don't have to feel like there's a fire.

Yeah. And that is like the perfect transition to our next question also from the CPTTSD thread cuz this is very much about someone who's like ready to stop like they're ready to to break this behavior. So dealing with hypervigilance in a relationship with a safe partner. I've been with my partner for almost a year and he is very sweet, calm, understanding, etc. I have been hypervigilant our whole relationship, monitoring his mood, very sensitive to tone shifts, I can't relax, can't get comfortable, always looking for signs of danger, lots of physical anxiety, and crying due to perceived change in behavior, etc. I'm not sure if I have CPTTSD, but this is a response to growing up in a verbally abusive household with a parent who had unpredictable explosive mood swings and anger due to BPD/ addiction or borderline personality disorder, among other things. I was also physically threatened by them a number of times.

Any tips for being hypervigilant in this way? I know logically that he is a safe person, but I can't seem to control these reactions. I'm discouraged that I'm still like this after a year and I'm worried I'll never be able to have a healthy relationship. I'm in therapy.

I love that part. Just like all of this, it's just like, "Hey everyone, before you start telling me to go to therapy, I am in therapy."

When I'm doing my due diligence, which also is a part of hypervigilance, just like but I'm I'm I'm figure it out, you know?

Oh my gosh, I have a million thoughts. so many thoughts because I remember oh my god that was the post I put on Reddit 10 years ago

you found my throwaway account but really I've been with my partner for 10 years things were really really sweet you know the first year then when we moved in together all of my trauma [ __ ] reactivated in a way where I was like hello Here we go. Welcome to the Thunderdome. And here's the thing that this person needs to know. The fact that they're even in a relationship after experiencing so much harm within the context of relationships is major. like that's really worth celebrating that they were open enough to the idea of developing a partnership that they have this person in their life. And the good old like quote that's like things that are broken in relationships need to be healed in relationships.

Yeah. And it doesn't necessarily mean that we need to heal in the relationships where we got really harmed. It just means that in order for this kind of next step to happen, we have to have new experiences.

So this person might be someone who wants to make a list, put that hypervigilance to work in a way that is a little more productive and like make a list of all the ways that their partner shows them that they're a safe person. What are the things that this person does that's different from their caregivers when they were growing up and have something that they can actually reference? Because it sounds like this person really is aware that their partner is so different from their family,

but like their nervous system, their body hasn't quite caught up to that yet. And of course, they're talking about a lifetime of lived experience with this family versus one year of a new relationship where this person is like, "You had a bad day. Oh my gosh, tell me about it. Do you want a hug? Like, I'm here. I love you." Like, that can be freaky as hell when you have your default setting be, "Oh, you had a bad day. Like, suck it up." or whatever the probably much worse version was that they experienced.

Yeah, I love I love all of that advice. What really struck me is all of the ways that they're monitoring their person and then probably coming up with meanings around that. So, I think one of the best ways for me to like get out of hypervigilance is to just ask questions. It's basically to notice when I am inferring something about another person and just ask build that muscle of like, oh, right. I I tend to just assume these things and then act as if they're true, but let me just go ask that person, which can feel so vulnerable, but for me, that's been one of the very practical ways to get out of this cycle.

Another thing, if you're in a really committed relationship with somebody who's safe, this is something that I would teach when I was working with couples and normalize, is that we all have wounds. Like, no one gets through life without some sort of pain, some sort of insecurity, some sort of wound. We all have tender spots. You're not bad or wrong for having a tender spot. Your partner has one, too. You probably have a few. In my opinion, when you're in a healthy relationship, part of the role you're taking on in each other's lives is you're caring about those tender parts in each other.

And so, I would always teach the couples I work with to ask for reassurance. And like the way that I would say it, the way that I would kind of coach people to say it is, you know, honey, I'm having that I'm having that thing happen, you know, the thing that happens for me where I think da da da da da or I feel da da da or that's happening right now. And I just want to ask you to remind me that that's not what's going on here or that's not true or that you actually think da da da da da. Right? And if I were working with these people as a couple, I would really make it clear that like this got set up before the two of you ever met. So like

this is not like an insult or an attack on the other person. This isn't even really about you that much. It's that this person has this sensitivity. They have this wound. They were in a home where there was addiction, where there was verbal violence, where there were threats of physical violence repeatedly. That's where they grew up. They had years of that experience. And so there's a very tender spot. And that happened way before they ever encountered their partner. So I think you know if you're there OP if you're there with this partner where you can do that where you have that level of intimacy I would really start to like open that up and ask for it just and that can be really sweet and so reassuring to have your loved one to have your partner say like to see you in that wound and say like I'm here and that makes so much sense and of course I don't feel that way about you or of course I love you. I

don't think you're a bad person. No sweetie I'm not mad at you. You're right. I I was kind of short when I came in today. I'm really tired and Oh, okay. You're just really tired. Oh, I thought that you were mad at me because I did this thing in the morning and Right. It's like, oh, no, that's not what's going on.

Yeah. And Felicia, some of what you're talking about too is this thing that a lot of people learn is like double meanings or inferred meanings of like so many of us who have experienced a lot of trauma do not realize that some people actually just mean what they've said.

There's no double meaning. There's no hidden agenda. that they're just honest. And that also takes time to learn. It takes time to trust. And it's normal for it to take time to trust that. This is really similar actually to our first question, but to the OP, I would actually point out that they might be doing a bit better with breaking their own response pattern than they realize because they are recognizing that this is actually happening. They're feeling disappointed that they are having these reactions

and that disappointment is actually a really interesting sign to notice. because they could just be in it. If they were still in like full-blown survival mode, they would just be reacting left and right,

right? We would not be reading this post. We'd be reading a post that's like, "My partner is terrible. I can't trust them." They're like, "D But that's not what this post was."

That's not what this post was. And so, this is the reminder that I would give them, too. And that this person's therapist may already be giving them as well. And it's okay to need to hear it from more sources. Healing takes time and it is okay to be frustrated and pissed off by how long it can take. That said, it's also important to acknowledge just how much has changed.

Like a lot has already changed. Like you're in therapy. you have a kick-ass partner who loves you and who like you want to see as accurately as possible, which I think is really sweet. Like this person is going,

I don't want to see my partner as a threat. I don't want my partner to feel like he needs to hide or that they need to hide. Like if they're having a bad day, like they should be able to just have a bad day.

Yeah. I think what is great about a healthy relationship again even if this relationship isn't like a forever relationship it is still an opportunity to explore a lot of this stuff because I think for anyone who has had developed something like hypervigilance from a person an institution a group of people whatever there's always this nagging and often very painful answer that you'll never get or you to just kind of guess and it's like why are you doing this to me, you know, and like a lot of people just like don't get that answer or the answer that they receive is almost as painful as like the abuse that even happened. So I think in a relationship being vulnerable and being like are you mad at me kind of opens up this like why are you doing this? And I think that that is so scary. So to OP and anyone else who's been in relationships like that, it's like that's a scary thing to just, you

know, ask for that honesty. It takes so much bravery. Felicia was saying it's just like, hey, can you kind of like clear this up for me cuz I think it's fine, but also part of me is like [ __ ] terrified.

The story in my mind right now is, and that's something I would have people say. It's like you did this and then in my mind this was what I came up with. Is that true or not? And like

maybe some parts of that are going to be true, you know, maybe some parts of it aren't. But I think like

getting out of that habit of like I know everything that's going on and I can figure it out is like

hyper vigilance. It's the hyper vigilance. Yeah. Yeah. And this is another spot too where like I love even just putting things in the language of like parts

cuz like and I'll pull from my own life something I have said to my partner sometimes is I'm like there's like this little screenplay going on in my head

and whoever is directing that thing kind of got a bias toward negativity and here's here's how this is getting written in my head and I I need to workshop it with you a little bit cuz I don't know if that's the most accurate.

Sometimes getting that like little bit of distance and even like talking about it that way can lend itself

to humor and some like levity as well where it's like wow like this person is saying it out loud you're like

oh that's okay. Yeah that's a little that's a little bizarre. It's like this is a little funky. I'm like giving Stephen King a run for his money and just naming that. This part of me is very talented, very creative, but like let's pull it back a little bit. Let's back check.

Let's go. My brain is turnurning out that fake news. So good at it. So good at it.

I mean, and honestly, that's what our brains are wired to do. I think I let's make sure we say that in this episode before we go which is like trauma aside like completely set aside we are biologically wired to make what's not working what feels uncomfortable what we perceive as dangerous whether it actually is or isn't more important in terms of how we spend our attention how we spend our brain power because that's part of our species survival strategy and in many ways it works it works a little too well right cuz if we're if we're right like 1% of the time and that 1% of the time we stay alive because we were right, that's worth it evolutionarily. And so today, you know, millions of years of evolution later, we still got that hard wiring. And so it's important for us to understand that as much healing as we do, like that's just part of our that's part of our species makeup. We have to recognize or it's

helpful to recognize that we're gonna have to spend a little bit more effort uh intentionally noticing what's working and what's good because that's not that's not how we're wired.

So true. It's just like this thing that keeps coming back to me about just how it can keep you safe and when to put it down. Like when I was driving my family to the mountains this this week, there was a car that just like pulled it was it was like a little old lady, but she pulled in front of us. We were like

two to three seconds away from just like t-boning this person and I like I break and I was like, "It's good." And they're like, "Wow, that was so amazing you did that." And I was like, "I have anxiety. I catch this [ __ ] all the time." You know, like I will always

I literally felt the vibes as we were approaching this part of the road. I knew something was off.

Yeah. I was like, it is just like a mechanism that Yeah. the human brains have. And I do think, you know, someone who is hypervigilant is less likely to maybe do something like get, you know, pickpocketed or get in a car crash or that kind of stuff. But yeah, I think it's just tough when I think about, you know, friends I have or family members where they feel like their hypervigilance is the thing that's like keeping their baby alive or their hypervigilance is the thing that's keeping them out of bankruptcy. I'm like from these like traumas that they've had and then they bring is it practical almost and safe to kind of put that down knowing hyper is like a word that is like too much you know but I don't know I'm just thinking about all those those people out there who are just like I'm not sure if it's a good time to put put this away yet you know.

Yeah. And I think to that I would maybe kind of pose a different question because if we could truly just put our hyper vigilance down, we would do it. This is one of those more like black or white thinking like I've either got it in my hands and I'm using it or I've set it down and I've walked away. And for whatever reason, this is part of how a lot of us work. Sometimes we don't notice when we've started to create distance between ourselves and our hypervigilance. So some kind of reflection questions that I sometimes give to my clients and that I will share here is you know what are the things that you're doing now that you didn't think would be possible for you 6 months ago or 2 years ago like kind of pick your time frame. Most people who I ask that question of have things that they will recognize that they didn't even realize that they were doing where they're like, "Oh, like actually I've started going to this like

online writer meetup and I used to be someone who didn't want to interact with groups of people at all, but

going to this online thing feels a lot safer to me than in person." M and so we can kind of futurecast that of like what are some things that you

would like to be doing 6 months from now. What are some ways you would like to be experiencing your relationship with your partner, with your coworker, with your parent that you're not experiencing right now? Is this is a safer way to tap into some of that curiosity. It's also a way to practice saying what you would like,

which we don't often get to be in that mode when our like hyper vigilance is on 24/7. We're not thinking really about like, well, it would be really nice and preferable to be experiencing X, Y, or Z thing. We're just like, I just need to not die right now or have a panic attack.

Yeah. But letting yourself kind of check that out, and just planting some of those seeds, like pulling from the past, doing some reflection, catching some things that maybe are going well that you haven't given yourself credit for, and then also going into the future, kind of starting to build some capacity for hope as well, you know. So, we've talked about this topic pretty thoroughly here. Like, at the end of the day, you know, people want to know what their therapist really thinks about this, like actually is thinking about this. So, like what advice do you have that you just really want to make sure people know? The most like uncovered, you know, like behind the therapist mask, like what's the thing that you just want people to know about this? So, Haley, that question. I do not mean this in like a dismissive way, but I've got like the Chris Jenner meme in my head of like, you are doing great, sweetie.

Like, you are. You really are because you're asking these questions. Part of you is curious. And if you're wanting to know like what what does a therapist think about all of this? I think that you're not giving yourself enough credit for how far you've already come. I think you need to practice recognizing that you have been given some really shitty life experiences and some part of you decided that wasn't going to be the only part of your story. Some part of you has decided to get online, get on Reddit, ask other people, hear about other people's experiences. Some of you have decided to already start going to therapy. Some of you have decided to start relationships.

So that hyper vigilance hasn't stopped these things from happening. And that's really good that it hasn't stopped it. That's really interesting that it hasn't stopped it because it means that your hyper vigilance isn't interfering with everything. in the way that you maybe think it has been. You're already on the path to having your hypervigilance not be 247 and constant. And then the last part that I would say because I think this is part of the process that gets overlooked a lot. You get to be pissed off. Okay. Some of my favorite therapy sessions are when clients come with all of their trauma and they go, "You know what, Haley? [ __ ] this." Like, I'm so pissed that someone did X, Y, or Z thing to me and now I have to clean this all up.

Like, what is that? And to that I say, well, it's a load of [ __ ] but we can pick it up together. And that's some of the beauty of therapy is that you're not alone with it.

I'm never judging my clients when they tell me all of the things that their hypervigilance has prompted them to do that they feel embarrassed about or ashamed about. I just go, "Of course you did it that way. Of course that's what the best option seemed like at the time. And I hear you want to do something different now. So let's check that out." It gets to be like that matter of fact. So Haley, you know, speaking of people not being alone in this, how can people find you?

Oh, people can find me on Yield Internet. I have been chronically online for too for too long, but they can go to my website, which is chorycounseling.com. I'm on Instagram at Chikorycounseling. I'm also yapping over on threads at Chikory Counseling.

Chory Counseling. It's all there. All of the handles you can find me. And really, I tell people, you know, if you want to be a therapy client of mine, the only catch is you have to be located.

Oregon or Colorado. Either Oregon or Colorado. Those are the two. If you want to work with Haley,

if you want therapy, that's how you get it. But if you just want like an example of a therapist who like one has lived through a lot of like the exact situations that people are are going on Reddit with.

Hi, it's me. But two, if you just want an example of a therapist who doesn't hide behind like this really overly clinical mask, it's also me. Um,

what you see is what you get. I aim to be as consistent as possible. Like how you hear me talking like with YouTube today is how I talk with my therapy clients.

Um, which I think is just nice and more human. Like I'm I do not talk like this all the time in my zen land cuz I'm not in zen land all the time. And I think that's really human and really healthy.

Yeah. So if you've enjoyed listening to Haley, you can find her at chorycounseling.com. Is that right?

Yes. Follow her on Instagram and get like a nice dose. Get a dose of Haley in your life. Get a dose of Haley.

Thank you so much for being here, Haley. We've enjoyed having you here. Thank you.

Questions about this episode

What is "Am I Hypervigilant? Signs Of Hypervigilance & How To Get Better" about?

The content explores hypervigilance and its psychological implications, emphasizing how innate human tendencies contribute to anxiety and black-and-white thinking. It features insights from mental health professionals who discuss the benefits of virtual therapy in providing greater access to care for individuals, particularly millennials facing unique contemporary challenges.

What is mentioned in this What Your Therapist Thinks episode?

19 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Felicia, Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), Black-and-white thinking, Agoraphobia, Social anxiety, co-regulation. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Am I Hypervigilant? Signs Of Hypervigilance & How To Get Better"?

The episode runs 1 h 10 min; the transcript is about 11,864 words in 196 timestamped sections.

More from What Your Therapist Thinks

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated December 19, 2025.