If you’re finding it hard to focus or pay attention at the moment, there’s a concept in psychology that might help you to realize it’s not some flaw in you: hypervigilance.

Imagine you are attacked by a bear. You stop thinking about your mortgage, your holiday, what you’ll eat that night, anything but watching the bear & trying to figure out how to get away from the bear.

Afterwards, you may start obsessively scanning the horizon for bears, & find it hard to get back to normal focus. That’s not a flaw in you.

We are living in the middle of a bear attack. If you’re feeling hypervigilant, don’t reproach yourself. It’s natural that we all have frayed attention spans right now.

One of the people who taught me most about this is the amazing @DrBurkeHarris, the Surgeon-General of California. She’s done incredible work on the relationship between trauma & vigilance - read her book The Deepest Well