Hyper-Vigilance at Work
Posted on June 06, 2019 by Fahad Alqahtani, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Being cautious is a sincere attempt of our brain to keep us safe. However, safety is an experience based concept that may limit our potential.
Kindly check if any of these remarks applies to you repeatedly at work:
1st: Your supervisor always lose temper, lose smile and become either silent or aggressive if you mentioned a specific employee’s name at any context.
2nd: Some projects in a specific location or certain volume are dedicated to specific number of staff without any reasonable justification.
3rd: You are not able to enter certain offices or attend meetings in certain meeting rooms without being able to justify your sense of discomfort.
Experiencing any of above is a sign of a Hyper-vigilance. This is a clear sign of being traumatized. As a result, re-enactment will be activated by Hyper-vigilance.
So, what can we expect if we kept our vigilance hyper every time we go to work?
Let’s starts with physical health problems:
Rapid weight gain mainly in the face, chest and abdomen contrasted with slender arms and legs.
Flushed and round face
High blood pressure
Osteoporosis
Skin changes (bruises and purple stretch marks)
Muscle weakness
Increased thirst and frequency of urination.
For mental health:
Mood swings, which show as anxiety, depression or irritability
Interference with your sleep,
Fatigue
Loss concentration, and the inability to focus.
Solutions More Effective Than Medications:
An approach that does not include medication (Called EMDR) which has to be most effective(59%)
Anti-depressant medications like Prozac (46%) and,
Talk therapy combined with giving victims a fake medicine (Sugar pill) which is known as placebo in medical literature. This way resulted in improvement for 44% of victims.
Other studies confirmed that using Prozac and related Drugs like Celexa, Paxil, and Zoloft will improve hyper-vigilant victims symptoms as long as they keep taking them while EMDR approach stops after eight weeks. 25% of EMDR clients were completely cured compared to only 10% of Prozac clients.
What is more promising is that 8 months later without any further intervention, more EMDR clients have been completely cured with a deviation depending weather trauma has happened during adulthood or childhood.
So, here are two approaches your organization can suggest for individuals:
1. Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing: The goal of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) is to use eye movement as mean to redirect you from traumatic memories of the past to current sensations of the present.
2. Mindfulness training: Mindfulness involves “living in the moment” and focusing your thoughts on immediate sensations rather than following extraneous and often erratic thoughts. This may include self-help techniques like meditation, guided imagery, or biofeedback.
