Firing the Night Watchman: Healing the Anxiety That Isn't Mine.

I didn't know they weren't my own thoughts until recently.

For as long as I can remember, I have hated the dark. I have struggled to sleep. Even as an adult, living in a safe house in a safe neighborhood, part of me is always listening for footsteps.

When the anxiety gets too loud, my body takes over. I twirl my hair. Sometimes I pull it. It’s a trance-like state—my nervous system desperately trying to find a way to self-soothe because it feels an invisible threat.

For years, I thought I was just anxious. I thought I was broken.

Then I looked backward.

The Survival Kit

My mother grew up during the Cultural Revolution in China. It was a time when neighbors turned in neighbors, and people—like my grandfather—were taken away in the night.

For my mother, and her mother before her, hyper-vigilance wasn't an anxiety disorder; it was a survival strategy. If you weren't alert, you weren't safe. Their bodies learned that sleep was dangerous and quiet was terrifying.

Science calls this epigenetics. I call it grandma’s survival kit. She packed that vigilance into my DNA to protect me.

Firing the Watchman

The problem is, I am not living in 1970s China. I am a CEO. I am a wife. I am living a safe life.

But my nervous system didn't get the memo. I have been living with an internal "Watchman"—a part of my brain that refuses to clock out, convinced that if I fully relax, something bad will happen.

The hair pulling, the insomnia, the jumpiness—it’s just the Watchman doing his job a little too well.

The New Safety Protocol

I realized I couldn't "think" my way out of this fear. I had to show my body it was safe.

I’ve started doing something new at night. Before I sleep, I close my eyes and imagine my room is a diamond vault. Nothing gets in. And outside that vault, I place a Guardian—a massive, immovable Stone Gargoyle that doesn't sleep.

I tell my nervous system: "The Gargoyle is on duty. You can stand down."

It sounds silly. But for an HSP whose brain thinks in vivid imagery, it works. It’s a signal to my ancestors that they can rest now, too.

We are the generation that gets to turn off the alarm. We are safe.