Avery Edwards

About

My belief about this work is that the aim is a nervous state proportionate to your actual circumstances, not the absence of vigilance altogether. Some alertness is useful and appropriate, and treatment that promises to remove it entirely is promising the wrong thing. Proportion is the target. Hypervigilance is simply a setting calibrated for conditions that no longer apply, and the work is recalibration rather than removal. We aim to get the setting matched to your present life, which for most people means a lot lower but not zero. That distinction matters, because aiming at zero guarantees disappointment. I came back to clinical work after a stretch in administration, and that period taught me to prefer targets that can actually be reached. Proportion is reachable. If you have been told to relax completely, that was never the right goal, and it is worth replacing with one you can hit.