Caroline Charles

About

Here is what tends to help most when it is said early: you are not imagining the difference between yourself and other people. Clients often ask whether everybody feels like this and simply copes better with it. They do not, and the comparison has been costing you a lot. The difference is real and it is measurable. Hypervigilance means running a continuous background process that most people are not running. That is why identical circumstances leave you a lot more worn out than the person sitting next to you. We are not making you tougher. We are turning off a process that has been running unnecessarily for years. Before working alone I spent years in group settings, where this particular comparison came up in almost every room. Nobody believed it until someone else said it first. If you have been assuming everybody feels this way, they do not.