Is Your Brain Overprotecting You?

19 ways an overprotective brain can hide in plain sight

Your brain protects you all day long without even asking your permission. You touch something hot, it pulls your hand away. You lose your balance, it corrects you. Something moves toward your face, and you blink.

So obviously, protection is one of your brain’s most important jobs, but it doesn’t have to be right in order to protect you. Sometimes it decides to respond to something that might be dangerous as though it were dangerous. And it even keeps protecting you after a threat has passed. If that happens often enough, protection can start changing the way you live. But it rarely feels like overprotection in the moment. It feels more like being careful.

So here’s a little experiment.

Read the statements below and keep count of every one that is usually true for you. FOR EACH ONE THAT SOUNDS LIKE YOU, GIVE YOURSELF ONE POINT.

I have a hard time relaxing when there’s something I could be doing to make sure everything’s okay.

I brace my body before doing something that has any chance of hurting me.???

I can spend a lot of time doing nothing, even when I don’t actually want to be doing nothing.

I keep checking my symptoms to see if they’re getting worse.

I feel like my body is always a little bit on alert.

I avoid certain movements or activities because I know I’ll pay for them afterwards.

If I cancel my plans, the most likely reason is that I’m not feeling good.

I pay close attention to other people’s moods so I know if something is wrong.

I sometimes feel exhausted just thinking about everything I need to do.

I’m compelled to research my symptoms because I want to make sure I’m not doing something that’s going to make things worse.

I often catch myself getting ready for something bad to come, either physically or emotionally, before it ever does.

If I have a bad experience with something, I don’t want to try it again.

I try to wait to feel better before doing things I want or need to do.

I’ve gotten used to telling myself, ‘It’s going to be too much to handle,’ and then letting that be the deciding factor in what I do.

I focus on how my body feels almost all of the time.

I have a hard time dealing with the unknown.

I’ve stopped doing things I used to love because they just aren’t worth it, knowing how I’m going to feel afterwards.

My symptoms are harder to ignore when I’m stressed or tired.

I spend a lot of time thinking about what could go wrong before anything actually does.

YOUR RESULTS

0 Checked - Not overprotective

You don’t seem to be organizing your life around avoiding pain, symptoms, discomfort, uncertainty, or things going wrong. That’s exactly what we were looking for. Maybe you should read The Overprotective Brain for your friend.

1–4 Checked - Some overprotective patterns

Nothing here is running your life, but you might have a few places where your brain has learned to be extra careful. For now, just notice where it tends to focus more on danger than on safety.

5–9 Checked - Your brain may be getting a little too overprotective

You tend to make more decisions based on what might hurt, feel bad, or go wrong. Some of those might be completely legitimate, but your brain doesn’t always wait to find out. The possibility of trouble is enough to get it protecting you as if trouble were already here.

10–14 Checked - Protection may be taking up more of your life than you realize

Your brain is working overtime trying to keep you safe. Which means you’re probably exhausted, anxious, maybe even clumsy. Avoiding things you used to do, worrying about things that haven’t happened, and spending way too much time checking how you feel means that your overprotective brain is making your life harder instead of safer.

15–19 Checked - Overprotection is running too much of your life

It looks like a large part of your life is organized around preventing pain, discomfort, uncertainty, or any other bad experience. And while some of that protection might be necessary, some of it has probably continued past its usefulness and become more intense than the actual threat. You are decidedly living in overprotective brain territory.

SO WHAT DO YOU DO ABOUT IT?

Your pain or other symptoms are real. But they don’t necessarily mean your body is damaged or that you’re a lost cause. Your brain may have just gotten very good at protecting you after months or even years of practice.

But your brain can learn a new way of protecting you. That’s why we wrote The Overprotective Brain.

When you understand why your brain keeps producing protection after the original threat has passed, how pain and other protective responses like anxiety get amplified, and how to give your brain better evidence, you can help it turn the prison back into a fortress.

Want to learn how to turn down the overprotection?
Get The Overprotective Brain at Amazon.com.