Hypervigilance And The Modern Expectation Of Constant Availability
The price of existing is going up.
The price of existing is going up and I’m not convinced keeping up is worth it.
This week, while working from the coffee place around the corner with the tall ceilings and skylight windows, I realized something and now I can’t unsee it.
We live in a world that expects constant availability.
Comments, replies, emails, messages etc…
Engaging back and forth electronically with everyone—all day, every day— has gone from an unfortunate cultural norm to an expectation (both in work and in life). Is anyone else completely frazzled by this?
Just me?
I’d been thinking about it while sitting at the two-top in the corner.
It’s wedged between two big windows that face the street, and it has a view of the whole coffee shop interior. I love that table. No one can come up behind you, or bump into you while shuffling past, and you don’t have to worry about intruding on anyone beside you, like when you’re the middle seat on a plane. That little wooden table in the corner makes it feel like you’ve got some privacy in an otherwise busy place. Which, to me, is totally worth it.
Sitting in my nook, I noticed the agitation of a guy at the table next to mine, immediately.
Let’s call him Guy.
He had his dog with him and they both seemed miserable. The dog was some kind of black lab mix—we’ll call him Dog. He was cute, but in that older, more tired kind of way that has some gray mixed in with the whiskers. Guy was probably late 40’s or early 50’s, clean-shaven, wearing a blue-green quarter zip. He had short salt-and-peppered hair that was coiffed up and over like it was running away from his furrowed brow and clenched jawline. Dog was sitting on the ground by his chair, but was clearly trying to get as far away as the taut leash would let him.
Guy looked stressed.
He was scowling at his computer, which continued to ping incessantly. I was trying not to stare, but it was hard. This had, unfortunately, been a perfectly normal occurrence to witness. They weren’t making a scene or causing problems or anything... their glum aura was just sort of bubbling its way into my corner.
Did Guy have Dog with him today unexpectedly? Or did he choose to? Guy wore a ring—perhaps Guy’s partner had to take the kids and maybe Guy got stuck with Dog?
Who knows.
Maybe they were just having an off morning.
With both hands wrapped around the mug in front of me, I felt a pang of foreboding. I used to think of myself as a dog person. I still do, but it’s different now. I grew up around plenty of dogs, and for years and years I couldn’t wait to get one. When I’d finally started working remotely full-time, I went for it and adopted from a local rescue.
At first, training a highly energetic and anxious puppy amplified my nervous system dysregulation to a level I hadn’t felt since I was a kid at my dad’s house. It’d wound me up so much that I could feel myself dissociating like I’d done back then, blocking out the noises by shutting down and trying not to scream. Suddenly, as an adult on the hook for the well-being of another living thing, I’d found myself wondering if dysregulation like that had been the cause of my dad’s frequent outbursts. Where he’d made it known quite plainly how he was feeling, I’d learned to do the opposite by putting on one hell of a poker face.
Or, at least, that’s what I’d thought.
After spacing out for a minute, I watched Guy’s frustrated face contort with every new ‘ping’ while Dog lay there trying not to cause problems.
I wondered which one was me, hating both options.
So there we were, Guy and Dog, me and my coffee; the tightness in my chest becoming more and more noticeable.
Hypervigilance is “a state of extreme, obsessive alertness and heightened sensory attunement, often driven by a nervous system stuck in “scan” mode for potential threats.”1 As someone who’s lived most of their life that way, I can assure you it takes an enormous amount of energy.
I first learned the term “hypervigilance” in high school after my step-sister picked it up in therapy. She’d helped me understand what it had to do with always feeling exhausted by comparing it with battery percentages, saying something to the effect of, “Some of us wake up in the morning fully charged and ready to go. As we move through the day, different things deplete different peoples’ batteries in different amounts.”
Whoa.
It sounded so straightforward when she’d said it like that. So, for one person, maybe brushing their teeth costs a single percentage point of their battery, but for someone else, maybe it costs ten percent. At the time, thinking of it that way felt like an “ah-ha” moment for me because I was constantly feeling weighed down by things that seemed easy for other people. That had been really validating—understanding that my nervous system was always running a heightened version of danger radar, on top of just being a kid.
Existing in busy places, where there’s lots to scan, costs me a lot of battery to this day. Going out to dinner at a restaurant isn’t just an eating-and-chatting activity for me—that type of stuff can cost me a full day’s battery, or more. Which is why the expectation of constant availability that comes from existing in such a digitally-focused society feels so increasingly taxing. What’s more, in an effort to keep up, we seem to have completely forgotten that different things deplete different peoples’ batteries at different rates.
Yet we’re all supposed to stay plugged in and responsive…
Staring directly into the depths of the mug in front of me, I thought about what my life could be like if I spent it trying to always be available and online. Would I be Guy, or would I be Dog in that scenario? I still wasn’t sure.
Eventually, I turned my attention toward reviewing the print-outs I’d brought with me, scribbling and scratching away at the pages splayed across the tabletop.
Breathing normally again by then, I realized I’d felt... better? Great, even. Slashing redundant phrasing and subtly correcting mismatched verb tenses with my pen, I’d felt focused and sharp. Like, I was doing something I was good at—casually but with precision and finesse. My laptop remained in my bag, and I’d kept fighting the urge to check my phone. I’d left it on Do Not Disturb, but the impulse to reach for it still gets me more than I’d like to admit. I’m trying to to be better about it, especially in my personal life. That’s also why I want to keep carving out time to exist without taxing my nervous system so much.
In a world that expects constant availability, it’s things like walking to and from a coffee shop that recharges my batteries. Time spent with pen and paper, and without a phone or computer, helps, too.
If you’re someone who’s hypervigilant, the price of existing has become unreasonable. Keeping up is a mirage you’ll never reach. Which means, the question to ask yourself is whether or not you want to? Seriously, is keeping up with the modern expectation of constant availability worth draining your battery?
Only you know the answer.
onward.
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Cleveland Clinic. (2023, November 16). Always on alert: Causes and examples of hypervigilance. Health Conditions/Mental Health.