Hypervigilance Quotes

To be too conscious is an illness. A real thorough going illness.

I love driving, but sometimes, I'm not too good at it because I spend too much time looking in the rearview mirror if I know I'm being followed. You don't respond like, 'Oh, there's paparazzi.' It's more like, 'There's a man, and he's going to attack me.' That's how your body responds.

I was a mother who worked ridiculously hard to keep catastrophe at bay. I didn't allow my kids to eat hamburgers for fear of E. coli. I didn't allow them to play with rope, string, balloons - anything that might strangle them. They had to bite grapes in half, avoid lollipops, eat only when I could watch them.

The neurotic listens to weather reports about Small Craft Warnings, and he thinks: They're talking about me.

I'm constantly taking my own blood pressure.

Paranoia is knowing all the facts.

After I was assaulted in Egypt, I learned fear. I've just never been so scared in my life. I've never been so close to death.

For the average person, taken to their sick bed, it takes a serious bout of pneumonia or a full body cast to completely forget the life they had prior to falling off the rollercoaster. I, however, will do this over a paper cut on my thumb, obsessing of said cut and being generally consumed by it.

Paranoia has a sharper taste if the danger is real.

To him who is in fear everything rustles.

My attention span is all over the place, and I overthink things. I'm an insomniac.

Denial is not always a bad thing. Without it, you couldn't function. For instance, if you were hyperaware and hypervigilant regarding all the dangers in the world - from driving your car to crossing the street to eating food that might have contaminants in it to taking medications that have many side effects, etc. - you would become frozen.

That's the thing about being a victim; you start to think it'll happen to you on a regular basis. It's living with the reality of your own vulnerability, and it sucks.

When someone is always looking over their shoulder, they're more likely to trip.

I get nervous for everything - literally everything.

I really hate being self-conscious—and being conscious of being self-conscious

I live in a state of hypersensitivity, and I've always had this feeling that something bad is going to happen to myself, or my wife and children. This manifests itself in different fears and visions.

To the person who is afraid, everything rustles.

After spending most of her life scanning the horizon for slights and threats, genuine and imagined, she knew the real threat to her happiness came not from the dot in the distance, but from looking for it. Expecting it. Waiting for it. And in some cases, creating it. Her father had jokingly accused her of living in the wreckage of her future. Until one day she'd looked deep into his eyes and saw he wasn't joking. He was warning her.

Paranoids are the only ones who notice things anymore.

In orbit, you're keyed up and aware of everything going on, every little noise, anything that may have special meaning because of where you are.

I have a problem sometimes with being too hyper.

But even before I was in the military, I was extremely jumpy when asleep.

I am a person who feels guilty for crimes I have not committed, or have not committed in years. The police search the train station for a serial rapist and I cover my face with a newspaper, wondering if maybe I did it in my sleep. The last thing I stole was an eight-track tape, but to this day I'm unable to enter a store without feeling like a shoplifter. It's all the anxiety with none of the free stuff.

To the man who is afraid everything rustles.