Somewhere Between Hypervigilance and Physiology
Data, Body, and the Story of Safety
Hi, Hello, Friends! 🤓
Over the last 9 months my life has been very centered around healing. I am recognizing that often my body speaks before my mind did.
I have a really incredible medical team right now that not only supports me, but openly talk with me and talk through how trauma healing also supports body healing. They don’t approach my healing from one perspective. They see how important a full-system approach is.
I live with Cardiac Sarcoidsis, Graves both which impact my heart but now I understand more how much CPTSD does as well.
When soemthing shifts inside me, a racing pulse, a sudden drop, a flutter in my chest, passing out, it could be my cardiac conditions or it could be a trauma response.
Some days it is trauma.
Some days it is my cardiac conditions.
Some days it is both feeding off each other clouding my bodies ability to tell which system started the alarm.
🫀 When the Heart Speaks Before the Mind
For trauma survivors, the body and mind are in constant feedback. Sometimes the heart leads, the body feels unsafe, and the brain then scrambles to explain it.
Sometimes the heart leads (body feels unsafe → brain interprets fear).
Sometimes the brain leads (thought or memory triggers → heart follows).
This is where I am living most days..somewhere between hypervigilance and physiology, trying to interpret what my body is saying without abandoning it.
What is so fascinating is after the encouragement from the heart clinic, I started tracking my heart rate very detailed.
Recently, my heart rate dipped to 51 BPM in the middle of the day. Not during rest. Not after exercise. It was my body shutting down, the dorsal vagal “brake” hitting after a sypathetic spike.
When I looked backed at my journal that day I realized this moment wasn’t failure, this is feedback.
🌪️ The Story My Heart Has Been Trying to Tell
This is where it is going to get really freaking neat. I spent time and went back over the last year of my heart data and my journaling.
I had many moments of feeling so much nerdiness over the data staring back at me and also a wreckoning of seeing my body’s data.
I noticed a pattern that told the same story my therapy sessions have: survival, withdrawal, and regulation.
November 2024 — Living within the storm
Range: 43–162 bpm
My body was inside the storm. Those extreme highs and lows mirrored the constant push-pull of a trauma bond, adrenaline peaks during conflict, then collapse when it was over. Compounded with the start of my cervical cancer medical battle.
My system didn’t know safety; it only knew survival.
April 2025 — Just out of the eye of the storm
Range: 46–147 bpm
The swings narrowed slightly but were still wide. Even with distance, my body was still chasing hope and bracing for loss. Each text, each silence, pulled my nervous system through the same loop, activation, crash, recovery.
October 2025 — After the storm, Detachment.
Range: 49–134 bpm
This graph looks almost calm. The highs are lower, the lows are higher. My body finally believes what I’ve been practicing.. safety. Regulation doesn’t mean perfection; it means my heart and body is spending less time oscillating between extremes just to feel alive.
🧠 The Polyvagal Story Beneath the Data
November 2024 — Sympathetic + Dorsal Vagal
Survival, hypervigilance, fear cycles
⚡ Extreme highs and lows (43–162 bpm)
April 2025 — Sympathetic with Dorsal Dips
Withdrawal, rumination, hope ↔ despair
↕️ Wide swings (46–147 bpm)
October 2025 — Ventral Vagal Returning
Regulation, reality, grounded safety
💗 Stable moderate range (49–134 bpm)
🌿 What Healing Actually Looks Like
Healing doesn’t mean that my heart will never spike or dip again.
Healing does NOT even always look or feel like peace.
Healing is hard fucking work.
Healing is learning to pause, breathe, hum, shake my hands and arms, tapping, dance, write, anything safe to remind my body that she is safe to stay present with me.
Even if she remembers otherwise.
My heart data is not just numbers. This is proof that regulation is not only possible, that regulation and healing are happening. My body can relearn safety, and my beautiful brain can stop fighting to survive.
Between numbers, nerves, and my journal, I can see my heart learning what safety feels like.
My body is showing me what my mind didn’t believe was possible.
Safety is not just an idea anymore. Safety is a rhythm. Safety is happening.
This is proof that you don’t have to show up perfectly on the road.
This is proof my body keeps trying, and that I can meet it now.
Healing isn’t linear, but it is visible, even if only to yourself.
If you live in a body that confuses danger with love, or rest with collapse, I see you.
The body learns slowly.
But it does learn.
I am in the healing process.
This is beautiful.
This is healing.
Orientation → Discovery → Integration → Embodiment.Healing, it turns out, is like learning to hear the quiet between heartbeats.
I am not my past.
I am the story.
I choose to keep writing.
💌 Thank you for meeting me here, friends!
A la Luna, 🌙
Lauren 🪻🍀
🌻 Hi, Hello, Friends 🤓
I have been working on a creative little project over at [freckledlore.com]
She is a work-in-progress just like I am. I hope to meet you there. 🤓