In the weeks and months immediately after my head-on car accident in 2018, the thing that bothered me the most was a feeling that I was crazy, losing my mind. I attributed all of my symptoms—which were myriad and more diverse than you can imagine—to the concussion I knew I had gotten. I'd been rear-ended two years before that which also resulted in a concussion, plus I'd had a few others in my life, and I knew that the damage is cumulative and can be long-lasting, especially now that I am older. In my mind, everything was blamed on my mild traumatic brain injury.
I was alternately baffled and concerned and confused because I'd never had symptoms like these with any other concussions. But since I didn't know what else to attribute my newfound lack of mental stability to, it landed there. I've talked about panic attacks here and here, and there were many other symptoms that made me think I was losing a grip, but today I want to explain a particular one, hypervigilance. It's important for you to know about this so you can recognize it in yourself or in a loved one. I'm all about putting more mental health information in the hands of every one of us.
About two weeks after my accident, after my first panic attack, I found myself being terrified of spiders. Some of my family members can relate. My mother isn't quite arachnophobic, but she is pretty jumpy when it comes to our eight-legged friends. My cousin Janet was once driving up the NJ Parkway in heavy traffic when she noticed a spider hanging inside her car window about six inches from her head. She describes her reaction as trying to climb into the passenger seat while driving 75 miles an hour. Fear of spiders seems to be a genetic trait on my mother's side, but I was never afflicted with it.
Once when we lived in the boonies of Tennessee, Elijah, maybe 9 years old at the time, woke me in the middle of the night by whispering, "Mama, there's a spider in the bathroom." I went to investigate with a fly swatter and it was not a spider—it was a brown tarantula of the man-eating variety. I may have broken my weapon of choice on it, but I did not back down. It was gross, but I wasn't afraid of it.
This new fear was different. I found myself scanning the floor, the walls, the edges of every room I walked through, looking for spiders. When I approached the dining room, I examined the brick fireplace carefully, knowing spiders loved bricks. I checked closets, cabinets, my car. I would pick things up quickly in case there was a spider hiding underneath. I shook my shoes upside down before putting them on. I checked both sides of the shower curtain. I wouldn't go near a spider unless Ben wasn't home, in which case I would get the strongest thing I could smash it with and go after it with the fury of Attila the Hun. It was not normal. I broke numerous fly swatters. Bent the metal ones like flimsy pipe cleaners. I was like a heat-seeking missile focused on eliminating every eight-legged creature in existence. And I always wound up sobbing after I had to face one.
I knew this was beyond weird—it was scary to feel this out of control, but it was absolutely beyond my ability to rein in. I was aware there was something wrong and I voiced that concern many, many times to Ben: "What is going on? Why am I like this? What on earth happened to my brain to make me act this way? What is wrong with me?"
If I had a dollar for every time in the next three years I asked "what is wrong with me?" I would be wealthy. I'd had concussions before and never felt crazy like this. I wondered if this was just one concussion too many and my brain had reached its limit. I had no idea what was going on and it was scary.
Two of my children who knew I was struggling recommended EMDR therapy, and since I was desperate, I started googling. Isn't that what we do? Why ask an expert when you have Google? I didn't have to read much before I decided I was willing to try anything. I found the psychologist in my area who had been doing EMDR the longest and made an appointment.
I didn't get much out of my four sessions with him, but months later I got his notes from our visits and learned for the first time that I had been diagnosed with PTSD, which he never mentioned to me. I wondered if he thought I couldn't handle that information. I also saw the word "hypervigilance." I didn't know what that was so again I consulted Dr. Google, who had this to say:
"Vigilance is a psychological trait that allows an individual to scan their environment for threats in an effort to maintain safety, but hypervigilance takes that positive quality to a negative extreme. Hypervigilance places you in a state of high alert that is stressful, anxiety-provoking, and exhausting to maintain." (ChoosingTherapy.com)
This was me in a nutshell (no pun intended). And it wasn't just spiders. Every car coming toward me, every leaf falling into my field of vision, a cyclist passing me in the park, Ben walking down the hall, even the coins that fell out of a pocket when I was hanging up a pair of pants—all were reasons to gasp, jump, startle, hit the brakes. Everything scared me. I literally never relaxed. I was jittery and on edge all the time. I cried at the drop of a hat.
I did not do this voluntarily. I wasn't actively looking for spiders. My brain was in control and I was just along for the terrifying ride. I told myself repeatedly that it's just a spider, or just a leaf, or just a [whatever]; it's not going to hurt me.
I might as well have been talking to the barn wall.
This is hypervigilance, and this is what I have learned about it in four years:
Your brain's priority is to keep you alive and safe. To keep you alive, it controls your heart beating and your lungs breathing—basic body functions that you don't have to think about for them to happen. To keep you safe it scans your environment for possible dangers so it can activate the fight/flight response if necessary. Vigilance is needed and good. Hypervigilance is your brain at its most alert. It assumes every thing is a threat, and the fight/flight response is activated over and over. Your adrenals are pumping out cortisol willy-nilly. It is physically and mentally exhausting.
Not long after the first, I saw a second therapist and had four sessions of EMDR with her. The hypervigilance with regard to spiders was only marginally better, but today, four years after the accident and three therapists later, I still brake when I'm driving and a car comes up to the road I am on. I trust no one to stop where they should. I feel like every car is going to pull out in front of me. Last week I was walking along the James River when a leaf floated down in front of me and you would have thought a monster jumped in my face. I'm sure anyone who saw it wondered what on earth startled me so badly.
For a long time I could not be a passenger at all. It was terrifying. Now I can ride in a car as long as I can sit behind the driver; it helps if I can't see what's coming, but even there I am anxious, always expecting the worst. I take a lot of deep, calming breaths. I practice riding with Ben from our house to the farm where there is almost no traffic at all, but I'm not sure I will ever be comfortable not being the driver.
Hypervigilance is just one result of trauma, which leaves you feeling like you are not safe. Spiders are no longer a problem (after about 18 months of weekly EMDR therapy), but falling leaves and cars coming toward me definitely are. Will this ever go away? Maybe, maybe not. I ask God to show me the good in all of this, and believe it or not, there is some good.
Every time I write about mental health, I get messages thanking me for talking about it, for educating people, for doing what I can to remove the stigma and shame of it. It's a conversation we need to have. I'm learning that trauma (in its many forms) is much more prevalent than we think—we just haven't been willing to speak openly about it. I'd like to help change that.