Trauma can negatively impact a person’s ability to cope and to discern between actual threats of danger versus re-experiencing the effects of the prior trauma, including symptoms of hypervigilance. The reality is that approximately 70% of people worldwide will experience a traumatic event in their lifetime. However, a smaller number of approximately 5.6% of these people will go on to develop symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)1. On average, 3.9% of people in the word’s population will experience a diagnosis of PTSD within their lifetime. Of these statistics, it is reported that up to 43% of children will experience a traumatic event in their childhood, with girls being more at risk than boys.
Hypervigilance is defined as a heightened state of arousal where a person scans their environment excessively on the lookout for perceived danger as a way of proactively protecting themselves. For many, this can generalize to scanning for changes in other people’s moods or facial expressions for the first sign of danger. For a child who has experienced chronic relational trauma, becoming hypervigilant can be based on survival. Some may learn to watch for subtleties in their caregiver’s mood changing, such as changes in vocal tone, eye gaze, or........