Your Hypervigilence Doesn’t Mean Everyone Else Is Anlysing You

And Even If Peolpe Notice A Flaw, It’s OK

The other day I posted a photo reel of my recent holiday in Greece onto Instagram. I really liked the first picture I took of myself, but upon closer inspection I noticed I had a bit of expresso martini on my upper lip (see above!).

“For F’s sake I thought to myself”, I really liked that picture and it was the only one I wanted to post. I knew the moment I noticed it that I was about to fixate and that’s exactly what I did:

• I wondered what others would think if they zoomed in, how they’d judge or critique me.

• I looked through other photographs, but found things wrong with them, too.

• I tried obsessively to take new photographs, but maybe you could see the obsessive desire to get another picture, so it ruined those.

Back and forth I went but eventually I came to this conclusion:

Just because I am hypervigalant and go through everything with a fine tooth comb, doesn’t mean everyone else does.

And even if someone notices, who cares?

Hypervigilence: Not Everyone Cares (and barely anyone does).

When you’re anxiously-inclined or suffer with post-traumatic stress that impacts your ability to self-express without over-analysing yourself, you’re inclined to worry what others think.

In our mind we see everything and I mean EVERYTHING for their finer details:

We zoom in on pictures and find things we dislike, we analyse past conversations for things we said that weren’t right, we aim high in work from fear of underperforming, and we hold ourselves to moral perfectionism (to name a few things).

That paragraph in of itself is a can of worms (or several) for another day, the problem of today’s article is that we then assume that everyone else is analysing us the way we are.

Oh, how sorely mistaken we are.

They are not.

Perfectionism and Realistic Standards

When we expect others to be as critical of us as we are, we become perfectionists, made worse by algorithms and social media feeds that model and promote faultless images.

It’s an unhealthy way to live because it’s unrealistic and stress-inducing.

You know what I felt when I posted that picture? Relief and ironically, self-confidence.

It feels good to do what you want to do, from the big decisions like changing a job, to the small things like posting on social media.

It feels even better to not be the one to stop yourself.

This may seem an inconsequential act to some but for those of us with hypervigelence ingrained into our brain, it’s not.

I took note of this act, and it felt good to know I did what I wanted, despite my worries.

Worries are only perception, after all and when we act against them, we actually teach outselves it’s OK and safe to be who we are and do what we want to do.

So this is your motivation to go and do what you want to do today, however small it may be. Hopefully you can feel as good as I did, as a result.