Why am I always on my guard? -Episode 3

Being able, at last, to rest

There is a kind of tiredness we rarely speak about, because it resembles no other.

It is not like the exhaustion that follows a day that was too long, a physical effort or a sleepless night; it is quieter, slower, more insidious.

It is the tiredness of never being completely at rest, of holding a constant, permanent vigilance.

It is like never being entirely present, because a part of oneself is elsewhere, watching, comparing, anticipating, checking.

And the worst of it is that this machinery has been running for so long that one can end up no longer even noticing it.

It becomes a way of being in the world, like a background noise so old that it is no longer heard.

Except that the system goes on working. Again, and again. Again and always, even when nothing is happening and everything is fine.

Even when the day is over.

Perhaps that is what makes hypervigilance so exhausting: the alarm does not need to blare in order to consume energy.

It is enough for it to stay switched on, waiting, available, ready to go off.

And through living this way, the consequences accumulate over the long term, like a chronic ailment whose origin has been forgotten.

• A difficulty in really switching off.

  
  

• A quicker irritability.

• A sense of being constantly « full ».

• The need to withdraw simply in order to stop having to process anything at all.

Or that strange impression of being tired when, outwardly, one has done nothing in particular.

So how does one ask an alarm that has learned to remain permanently available… to finally stop working?

The most spontaneous and logical answer would be: « We have to calm it down. »

And that is partly true, but only partly.

Because there is a fundamental difference between turning an alarm down…

…and changing the rule that tells it when it should go off.

Tipping the scales the other way

When you take the batteries out of an over-sensitive smoke detector for ten minutes, silence returns.

But the detector has learned nothing, and the moment you put the batteries back, its calibration is exactly the same.

To understand what really has to change, we need to return to the mechanisms of fear learning.

For a long time, it was thought that a fear could be « switched off », erased, rather as if with a kind of rubber. When one learned: « This announces danger », then discovered often enough that the danger no longer came, it was assumed that the old association was gradually erased and that the fear disappeared.

But experimental work on extinction points to something more subtle.

In 2002, the psychologist Mark Bouton was already summarising a considerable body of research showing that extinction does not generally destroy the original learning. A new learning comes instead to « coexist with the old one ». The stimulus becomes, in a sense, ambiguous: it can still evoke the old association, but it now carries a second meaning, dependent in particular on context.

This explains a phenomenon many people know very well: one can have understood something, even have experienced it differently for months, and yet, one day, in a certain context, the old reaction returns.

That return does not necessarily mean that all the work done has vanished.

It may simply mean that « the old learning is still there too ».

Contemporary research on therapeutic exposure draws largely on this idea.

Michelle Craske, Michael Treanor, Christopher Conway, Tomislav Zbozinek and Bram Vervliet proposed in 2014 that exposure be thought of not only as a method meant to reduce fear, but above all as a way of fostering a « new inhibitory learning », able to compete with the old prediction of threat.

One can picture it as a set of scales:

On the first pan sits the old learning: « This situation announces danger. » It is heavy, because it has been reinforced by past experiences.

On the other pan, one begins to place new experiences: « This time, nothing serious happened. » Then another, and another.

The old learning does not disappear, but each new experience adds weight to the second pan.

And in time, the scales may end up tipping the other way — not because the old fear has been erased, but because a new learning has become solid enough to take up more room.

And this changes a great deal, because the aim is no longer necessarily: « I must stop feeling any alarm. », but becomes: « I can learn something new about what is actually happening. »

In other words, change perhaps does not consist in erasing the old map.

It consists in building a new one…

…solid enough that one is no longer obliged to use the old one every time.

Three questions for stepping back

We have seen that when the alarm goes off, everything happens very fast.

Perception, interpretation and anticipation merge into a single impression: there is something.

Slowing this sequence down is probably the first thing to do. Because slowing down also means stepping back, and being able to observe rather than to undergo.

And to that end: three questions, to separate what has become mixed.

• « What did I actually perceive? »

Not what I thought about it: what was genuinely observable — a slightly lower tone, a three-hour delay before a reply, a gaze that turns away, a sentence shorter than usual.

It is a harder exercise than it seems, partly because interpretation almost always arrives before we have had time to look, and partly because it often engages the emotions.

• « What did I conclude from it? »

Here, the essential thing is to name what has been added: « He is upset ». « She is avoiding me ». « Something is going wrong ».

The simple act of putting the conclusion into words, aloud or in writing, makes it appear for what it is: a hypothesis. Not a fact.

• « What is this conclusion trying to protect me from? »

It is the most important question, and the least often asked, because an alarm never goes off without a reason. It was built to avoid something precise: being caught unprepared, finding out too late, being left alone with a situation one did not see coming.

Asking this question is not about looking for a psychological explanation. It is about recognising that a protective intention is still there, active, doing its work.

And one does not disarm a protection by treating it as a malfunction.

When watching turns towards oneself

There is a form of vigilance we speak about far less, and which is just as exhausting.

And this one is perhaps harder to spot.

Because through watching what is happening around oneself, one can begin to watch oneself.

Remember the child who grew up in an environment where certain reactions were hard to predict. Remember how they learned to observe the face, the voice, the gestures, the silences…

But to avoid conflict, rejection or anger, observing the other is not always enough.

There is something else to learn as well: « controlling what one shows of oneself ».

Do not speak too loudly, do not answer like that, do not show that you are upset, watch your mood, do not provoke, do not make a mistake, be good, be useful, make yourself invisible…

And little by little, the watching changes direction: « What is going on with the other person? » at the start, gradually becomes: « What must I do so that nothing happens? », and finally: « Am I doing something wrong? »

The gaze that watched the world has turned around.

And the person has become one of the objects they watch.

As if someone were observing us from outside

This mechanism has a particularly interesting counterpart in research on social anxiety.

The model developed by David Clark and Adrian Wells in 1995 proposes that when a person fears the judgement or a negative reaction from others, their attention can shift towards themselves.

They begin to monitor: their face, their voice, their gestures, their sensations, what they have just said, the impression they think they are giving.

Jane Spurr and Lusia Stopa devoted a scientific review to this phenomenon in 2002, known as « self-focused attention. »

And one of the most fascinating aspects is that some people end up building a mental representation of themselves « as if they were looking at themselves from the outside ».

As if, while they were living through the situation, a second version of themselves were observing them continuously.

Not exactly a double, nor an « avatar » in the neuroscientific sense of the term, but the image is strikingly close.

An inner observer that asks: « How am I coming across? », « Did I say something I shouldn't have? », « Did the other person notice that I am uncomfortable? », « Is my face showing something? », « Should I speak? Stay quiet? Smile? Explain? »

And while we are watching the other…

…we are watching ourselves.

Two cameras permanently switched on

One could picture the system as two cameras.

The first films the outside, looking for variations in the other person.

The second films the inside, and checks whether the system's overall behaviour matches the outside.

And the two cameras talk to each other: a slightly different expression in the other person triggers more self-monitoring.

This monitoring increases the worry, and the worry alters the body, the voice or the behaviour.

These alterations in turn become new information to monitor.

Then one looks at the other person again, to find out whether they noticed them.

And the loop starts over.

The models of social anxiety put forward notably by Rapee and Heimberg describe precisely this interaction between vigilance directed at outward signals and attention paid simultaneously to oneself.

Once again, it would be excessive to claim that this model explains every form of hypervigilance.

But it offers us a particularly interesting picture of what can happen:

Outward watching and inward watching…

…can end up reinforcing one another.

From watching to the inner critic

This inner monitoring can evolve further, because a watchman does not always settle for observing; it can begin to evaluate, then to correct, then to sanction.

« You shouldn't have said that. »

« Why did you react like that? »

« You should have realised. »

« You talked too much again. »

« You weren't careful enough. »

« If it goes badly, it will be your fault. »

« You are useless! »

So what began as a system designed to anticipate the environment can gradually become a system of inner control.

And perhaps it is here that the inner critic draws part of its power.

Research does not allow us to state simply that outward hypervigilance leads to an inner critic; the development of self-criticism is far more complex.

But several studies show that early relational experiences and attachment are linked to the way a person then learns to treat themselves.

A meta-analysis published in 2023 thus finds an association between « insecure » attachment and self-criticism, particularly marked for anxious attachment.

In the models developed notably by Paul Gilbert, the relationships we have with ourselves can in part be built out of the relationships we have lived with others.

In other words: an outer relationship can gradually become an inner one.

Someone once had to spot another person's displeasure.

Later, they sometimes no longer even need anyone to be displeased.

They take care of it themselves.

The body itself can then become suspect

And this movement inwards does not necessarily stop at behaviour; the watching can descend one more floor.

Towards the body.

Research then speaks of « interoception »: the perception of signals coming from inside the body.

In 1997, Norman Schmidt, Derek Lerew and John Trakowski were already using the term « body vigilance » to describe the conscious attention paid to bodily disturbances and sensations, studied in particular in panic disorder.

Later research has confirmed that, across several anxiety disorders, what matters is not only the capacity to feel the body, but also the attention given to its sensations and, above all, the way they are interpreted.

A meta-analysis published in 2024 covering 71 studies notably finds an association between anxiety and greater, and more negative, attention paid to bodily signals.

And so the watching can gradually travel the whole way:

→ « I watch what is happening around me. »

→ « I watch what I do. »

→ « I watch what I think. »

→ « I watch what my body is feeling. »

The system wanted to spot danger.

It sometimes ends up looking for danger…

…everywhere it can look.

What inner work can add

Understanding all this is generally not enough.

Because the rule was not learned through reasoning. It was built through experience, repeated hundreds of times, in a body that did not yet have the words to formulate it.

This is why several therapeutic approaches work less on ideas than on what comes before them.

Cognitive and behavioural therapies focus on separating observation from interpretation, and on building those experiences that place weight on the second pan of the scales. Mindfulness practices teach us to let a sensation exist without immediately assigning it a meaning. Compassion-focused approaches, developed notably by Paul Gilbert, work on the relationship one has with oneself rather than on the content of thoughts.

Humanistic Hypnosis offers a particular path within this landscape.

It does not seek to reduce consciousness, but to widen it. To place oneself in a state where one can observe one's own functioning while it unfolds — and meet what drives it, rather than undergo it.

This work is symbolic, and that is precisely what makes it possible.

For a rule learned very early is not a piece of reasoning that could be corrected by another piece of reasoning. It is a set of images, sensations and inner movements that have never been put into words. Symbolic work makes it possible to address it in its own language.

This is particularly true of that part of us which watches, evaluates and corrects — the one we have called the inner critic.

Rather than trying to silence it, one can go and meet it. Ask it what keeps it in place. Discover what it is still protecting, and since when.

And give it back its true role.

For this watchman was never meant to judge. It was built to protect. And that is how it can recover its original function: no longer a permanent controller, but a part that keeps watch — available when needed, quiet the rest of the time.

It is then less a matter of making something disappear…

…than of reclaiming one's own inner world.

(Re) synchronising the two worlds

We started from a child listening to the sound of a key in a lock.

A child who had decided nothing, but who had simply learned that noticing before the others could protect them — and it worked.

We then saw how that rule had outlived the context that made it necessary. How the system went on predicting, generalising, watching in the blur for what the blur no longer contained. How the alarm had come to wait for a proof of safety that no one could give.

Then we saw that this watching did not stay turned outwards. That it turned around, descended, and sometimes ended up looking for danger right down to a heartbeat.

And perhaps all of this comes down to a gap.

• On one side, an inner world still on alert.

• On the other, an outer world which has sometimes changed a very long time ago.

So the point is perhaps not to feel less, nor to notice less.

It is to resynchronise these two worlds.

To allow whatever in us is still standing guard to learn, at last, that the house has changed.

• The child had learned: « I must watch in order to know whether something is going to happen. »

• The adult can discover: « I can look without searching for danger. »

• Then, one day, perhaps, they will be able to say to themselves: « I can’t know what is going to happen… » …and stay present all the same.

Because safety is probably not the certainty that nothing will happen.

It is the possibility of living…

…without having to check constantly that nothing is going to happen.