Hypervigilant

Why You’re So Alert, Anxious and Afraid and –How to Reclaim Your Life

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Are you always on edge?

Do you monitor other people’s moods for signs they’re angry or upset with you? Worry you’re somehow ‘in trouble’ or have disappointed someone? Overthink interactions, people-please to keep the peace, or brace for something to go wrong?

You may be caught in a pattern of chronic emotional tiptoeing – adjusting what you say, do and feel to avoid conflict, criticism or rejection.

This is hypervigilance: a state of heightened alertness in which we scan for threats to our physical or emotional safety. We may believe this anxiety is simply ‘who we are’. But being perpetually on guard isn’t a personality trait. It can be a trauma response developed in unstable or unpredictable environments, where walking on eggshells became a way to feel safe.

In Hypervigilant, clinical psychologist Dr. Kim Sage – herself a highly vigilant person – draws on research, years of clinical experience and her own life on high alert to reveal why our brains become wired for danger – and how we can begin to feel safe again.

With practical tools to tackle overthinking, people-pleasing, perfectionism and fawning, Hypervigilant will help you recognise the patterns keeping you trapped, regulate your nervous system and break free from anxiety and fear.

With Hypervigilant, Dr Kim Sage addresses one of the most pernicious and far-ranging aspects of childhood trauma: hypervigilance. It is high time for an entire book devoted to a topic that underscores so much of our adult suffering—our vigilance to other people’s emotions in sacrifice of our own true nature. This important diagnosis and invaluable path to healing will truly help so many.
Dr Shefali Tsabary, New York Times bestselling author of The Conscious Parent

Where has this book been all my life? Hypervigilant is the book so many of us chronic over-thinkers and people-pleasers have needed. With deep clinical insight, Dr Kim Sage shows how the exhausting patterns we blame ourselves for often began as a child’s intelligent way of staying safe. This is a warm, genuinely useful book that gives so many people an attainable open path to healing.
Scott Barry Kaufman, PhD, author of Transcend and Rise Above

Brains can be quick to mistake discomfort for danger, even if you had an amazing childhood. Throw the uncertainty of life and the reality of trauma into the mix, and it’s no wonder so many of us feel stuck in loops of rumination and anxiety. Dr Kim Sage offers us a way forward with Hypervigilant. Grounded in both clinical and personal experience, this compassionate guide helps demystify why our brains stay on high alert and offers practical tools to help us move from surviving to thriving.
Britt Frank, LSCSW, SEP, author of The Science of Stuck and Align Your Mind

Dr Kim Sage’s Hypervigilant is the first book from a clinical psychologist to help us understand – and begin to heal from – hypervigilance as a way to protect ourselves when we feel blamed, abandoned or rejected. Blending data-driven research and personal stories in a compelling and empathetic way, Hypervigilant will help many recognise these patterns and finally find greater freedom in their most important relationships, including the relationship they have with themselves.
Dr Tracy Dalgleish, author of You, Your Husband, and His Mother and I Didn’t Sign Up for This