The Geography of Motion: Understanding Addictions of Departure

The Hypervigilant Session

I'm wondering where the bullet will come from: a passing car, or a man in the shelter of the trees, or a sidewalk pedestrian who ambles across the lawn and takes aim through the front window. Perhaps there will be a spray of bullets, or a trio of thugs with baseball bats. Perhaps the fear itself will be sufficient, and no one will come.

I should be listening instead of entertaining imaginary catastrophes. He's talking about night sweats, his family in the east, the number he used to call to get his cocaine, the way the guards at the youth detention center used a fire hose to quell a fight in the cafeteria. He remembers being punched into a corner by the water, rolled by it onto the floor, made sodden and vulnerable and furious. He twitches, frets, and fidgets. It grows dark outside. I wonder why I did not draw the curtains before he arrived.

He does not seem to notice my anxiety, this man who shot his own brother. He speaks anxiously, in the manner of someone unaccustomed to exploring his inner life. He has lived on the surface of things, skating and drifting, allowing his bewilderment and anger to fester. His voice is tight, his speech is fast. He runs words together in small bursts, each one punctuated by a quick sniff and a moment of silence. Perhaps the sniffing is an artifact of his habit, or an allergy to the grasses out front. I don't know. I don't know whether he knows, or is aware of what he's doing. He has been running too long, always looking for the next refuge, wearing himself thin.

He has come as far as he can, to the west coast with its great sea of promises. But his pursuers have found him even here. They have beaten him, and imprisoned him naked in a small cage, and tossed hypodermic needles into him like darts into a dartboard. If they find him again they will kill him. Still he perseveres, seduced by the rush and its illusions of empowerment.

He prattles on, unaware of my hypervigilance, of my gaze shifting too frequently toward the street. I am aware that the risk to me is paltry. They are not likely to come for him here. It will happen on a crowded street, probably, with a brief and scuffling struggle. Or perhaps he will be able to cut yet another new deal. He's working on it. And I hope he succeeds in remaining alive. But I resent being put at risk by him—however small the immediate danger might be. I don't like his speediness, either, his impulsive lurching speech and the unconscious manner in which he bounces his right leg rhythmically. He's impulsive and reckless. He forgets, too easily, his responsibilities to his own dignity and frailty. He wears too much black. He's flippant, too convinced of his own specialness to play by anyone else's rules. And look where this has delivered him: into the habits of a fugitive, a runner without purpose, a hyena jeering at lions.

I don't like him. He's too much like me.

This session captures something essential about addictions of departure: the perpetual motion, the scanning for threat, the inability to settle, the way anxiety permeates every interaction. These patterns—stimulant use, compulsive activity, chronic restlessness, commitment avoidance—have developmental roots in the period when a young child is learning whether the world is safe enough to explore, whether their autonomous impulses will be supported or punished, whether they can trust their own movement through space.

Understanding Departure Addictions Through an Ecological Lens

To understand addictions of departure, we must think ecologically about how young children learn to navigate their world. Beginning around eight months and extending through approximately two and a half years—the Autonomy stage in Bodynamic developmental theory—the infant becomes a toddler who can move. They crawl, walk, climb, explore. Their curiosity drives them outward. They want to touch everything, go everywhere, try everything. This is the period when children learn whether their autonomous impulses are supported, whether the world is safe enough for exploration, whether they can trust their own judgment about where to go and what to do.

When this stage proceeds well—when caregivers provide a secure base from which to explore, when they support autonomous movement while maintaining appropriate boundaries, when they allow the child to venture out and return without punishment—the child's system learns that exploration is safe, that autonomous action leads to competence, that the world can be navigated successfully. The child develops what attachment theorists call "secure autonomy": confidence in their own impulses, capacity to assess risk, ability to seek and accept help when needed.

But when this stage is disrupted—through overcontrol, inconsistent boundaries, punishment for exploration, dangerous environments that require constant vigilance, or chaotic circumstances where the child must navigate adult problems—the developing system faces a different learning situation. The world is not safe for autonomous exploration. Movement invites danger. Trusting your own impulses leads to punishment or harm. The child must remain perpetually alert, scanning for threat, ready to adjust behavior instantly to avoid consequences.

This is where the orient response develops. In trauma literature, we typically discuss fight, flight, and freeze. But there's a fourth response: hypervigilant orienting. When environments are unpredictable or dangerous during the Autonomy stage, children develop chronic hyperorientation: perpetual scanning, constant assessment, inability to settle because you never know when threat will emerge or from where.

Here's the critical pathway I've observed across years of clinical work with stimulant users and others caught in patterns of departure:

Developmental Disruption: Autonomy → During the critical window from approximately eight months to two and a half years, the child learns whether autonomous exploration is safe. When this stage is disrupted through overcontrol, inconsistent boundaries, environmental danger, or punishment for independent action, the child learns that the world requires constant vigilance.

Trauma Response: Orient (Hypervigilance) → Unable to predict when or where threat will come from, the developing nervous system remains in perpetual alert state. The child scans constantly, assesses every situation for danger, can never fully relax. Movement becomes both compulsive (must keep moving to stay ahead of threat) and directionless (no destination is safe).

Mental Health Adaptation: Anxiety → Over time, this chronic hyperorientation extends into generalized anxiety. The person experiences constant worry, difficulty relaxing, sense that something bad is always about to happen, restlessness, hyperarousal, racing thoughts, inability to be still. The orient response becomes the default state.

Addiction: Stimulants and Compulsive Activity → Substances and behaviors that match and support the hyperaroused state become compelling. Stimulants don't create the anxiety; they make it feel purposeful, powerful, controlled. Movement addictions (workaholism, exercise addiction, geographic instability) provide external justification for the internal restlessness that never stops.

And here's the crucial insight: the addiction maintains the orient response. Stimulants keep the nervous system activated, confirming that vigilance is necessary. Compulsive movement prevents the settling that might allow the person to recognize they're safe. The addiction becomes part of a self-reinforcing system where hypervigilance justifies the stimulants, the stimulants maintain hypervigilance, and settling becomes increasingly impossible.

In dynamical systems terms, this is a highly activated attractor state. The developmental vulnerability, the chronic orient response, the anxiety adaptation, and the stimulant use all constrain each other in ways that keep the system in perpetual motion. The person isn't choosing to be restless; the entire system is organized around the impossibility of settling.

Developmental Origins: The Autonomy Stage and the Learning of Danger

Research on adverse childhood experiences reveals that disruptions during the second year of life—the Autonomy stage—create specific vulnerabilities for anxiety and hyperactivity patterns. This is the period when toddlers are learning fundamental lessons about whether the world is safe to explore, whether their impulses can be trusted, whether autonomous action leads to competence or catastrophe.

The Autonomy stage, from approximately eight months to two and a half years in Bodynamic developmental theory, is when the infant becomes mobile. Crawling emerges around eight to ten months, walking around twelve to fifteen months. Suddenly the child can move through space independently, can reach for objects across the room, can climb onto furniture, can open cabinets. Their world explodes with possibilities.

During this stage, the child is learning to:

• Navigate physical space independently
• Assess risk and danger
• Trust their own impulses about where to go and what to explore
• Balance autonomy with connection (exploring away from caregiver and returning)
• Understand cause and effect (if I do this, that happens)
• Develop body awareness and physical confidence
• Experience themselves as separate beings with their own agency

Critically, this learning depends on the caregiver's response to the child's autonomous exploration. When caregivers can:

• Allow exploration while maintaining safety
• Provide secure base (child ventures out knowing they can return)
• Set clear, consistent boundaries
• Support the child's autonomous impulses without taking over
• Tolerate the mess and chaos of toddler exploration
• Remain calm rather than anxious about the child's movements
• Help the child recover from falls and failures without shaming

...then the child's nervous system learns: the world is safe enough to explore, my impulses are trustworthy, movement leads to competence, I can try things and recover when they don't work out, autonomy and connection can coexist.

But when this stage is disrupted, when the environment does not support autonomous exploration, the child faces an impossible situation. Their developmental drive toward autonomy is powerful—it's biological, unavoidable. But the environment punishes or prevents autonomous action. The nervous system must solve this dilemma, and the solution is hypervigilance: never fully commit to any action, always scan for threat, move quickly and be ready to adjust, don't settle anywhere.

Consider the common developmental experiences during the Autonomy stage that create vulnerability for orient response and later departure addictions:

Overcontrol and Restriction: Parents who cannot tolerate the child's autonomous exploration, who say "no" constantly, who prevent the child from trying things independently, who hover anxiously and intervene too quickly. The child learns: my impulses are wrong, movement is dangerous, I cannot trust myself. But the drive to move remains, creating internal conflict that manifests as anxiety.

Inconsistent Boundaries: When rules change unpredictably, when what was allowed yesterday is punished today, when the child cannot predict what will be safe. The child learns: I must stay constantly alert because I cannot predict when my behavior will be acceptable. Hypervigilance becomes necessary.

Dangerous Environments: Homes with domestic violence, substance use, unstable housing, or other genuine environmental threats. The toddler wants to explore but the environment is actually dangerous. The child learns: movement invites real threat, I must scan constantly, nowhere is truly safe.

Punishment for Autonomous Action: Parents who respond to exploration with harsh discipline, shaming, or rejection. The child climbs on furniture and is spanked. The child makes a mess and is called bad. The child asserts preference and is told they're selfish. The child learns: my autonomy threatens my connection, I must suppress my impulses but the impulses don't stop, creating constant internal pressure.

Parental Anxiety: When caregivers are themselves anxious, hypervigilant, unable to tolerate their child's exploration without catastrophizing. The toddler climbs and the parent gasps in fear. The child reaches for something and the parent rushes over anxiously. The child internalizes the parent's anxiety, learning: the world is dangerous, exploration threatens survival, constant vigilance is necessary.

Role Reversal: When the toddler must be attuned to the parent's needs rather than the parent attuning to theirs. Parents with mental illness, substance use, or overwhelming stress who need the child to be "easy," to not make demands, to suppress autonomous impulses. The child learns: my autonomy burdens others, I must stay alert to others' needs and suppress my own.

Intrusive or Controlling Care: Parents who take over the child's autonomous activities, who cannot let the child do things themselves, who insist on their own way of doing everything. The child reaches for a toy and the parent hands it to them. The child tries to feed themselves and the parent takes over. The child learns: my autonomous action will be interrupted, I cannot complete what I start, leading to perpetual starting-without-finishing patterns.

Chaotic, Unpredictable Environments: Homes marked by instability—frequent moves, parent absences, chaotic schedules, lack of routine. The child cannot develop a map of their environment or predict what will happen. Constant reorientation is required. Hypervigilance becomes the default state.

Early Institutionalization or Multiple Caregivers: When toddlers experience multiple care settings or frequent caregiver changes during this critical period, they cannot develop secure base for exploration. Each new environment requires complete reorientation, preventing the development of confident autonomy.

These early experiences don't cause addiction directly. But they create a profound developmental vulnerability—a nervous system that organized around constant vigilance, that learned the world is too dangerous for relaxed exploration, that developed a stance of perpetual scanning and readiness to adjust. When stress arises later in life, particularly stress that activates feelings of vulnerability or loss of control, this early learning reasserts itself. The person becomes hypervigilant, restless, unable to settle. And when they discover substances that can make this state feel purposeful and powerful rather than chaotic and frightening, these substances become powerfully compelling.

The Developmental Pathway for Departure Patterns:

Stage 1: Developmental Disruption (Autonomy, 8 months to 2 years, 6 months)

• Overcontrol, inconsistent boundaries, dangerous environment, punishment for exploration, parental anxiety
• Child's autonomous exploration is thwarted, punished, or occurs in genuinely dangerous context
• Child learns: the world requires constant vigilance, autonomous action is dangerous, I cannot trust my impulses
• Developmental drive toward autonomy persists but environmental response prevents secure autonomy

Stage 2: Trauma Response (Orient/Hypervigilance)

• Nervous system remains in perpetual alert state
• Constant scanning for threat, assessment of every situation
• Inability to relax or settle
• Movement becomes both compulsive (to stay ahead of threat) and directionless (no destination is safe)
• Restlessness, fidgeting, difficulty sitting still

Stage 3: Mental Health Adaptation (Anxiety)

• Orient response extends into generalized anxiety disorder patterns
• Constant worry, sense of impending danger, hyperarousal
• Racing thoughts, difficulty concentrating because attention is divided
• Physical manifestations: rapid heart rate, muscle tension, restlessness
• Inability to be present because always scanning for threat

Stage 4: Addiction (Stimulants, Workaholism, Geographic Instability, Compulsive Activity)

• Substances that match the activated state become compelling (cocaine, methamphetamine, prescription stimulants)
• Behaviors that provide external justification for restlessness (workaholism, extreme sports, constant travel)
• Pattern now has multiple layers: developmental, neurological, psychological, behavioral, chemical
• System organized to maintain hypervigilance at all levels
• Addiction facilitates continuation of orient response by preventing settling

This pathway, informed by both Bodynamic developmental theory and research on adverse childhood experiences, helps explain why departure addictions are so difficult to interrupt. We're not just addressing substance use or behavioral compulsions. We're working with a pattern that has roots in the period when the nervous system was first learning whether the world is safe to move through—learning that happened during the critical months when autonomous exploration was emerging but could not proceed securely.

The difficulty of recovery becomes clear when we understand this developmental foundation. For someone whose system learned, beginning around eight months of age, that the world is dangerous and constant vigilance is necessary for survival, choosing to settle—to be still, to trust, to stop scanning—requires overriding fundamental protective learning. Hypervigilance isn't weakness; it was necessary. Anxiety isn't dysfunction; it was adaptation. Stimulant use isn't poor judgment; it's the only way the person has found to make the perpetual activation feel intentional rather than terrifying.

A Note on the Broader Framework: This developmental pattern—Autonomy disruption leading to orient response, anxiety, and addictions of departure—is the third of four parallel pathways explored in this series. Drawing from Bodynamic developmental theory, adverse childhood experiences research, and Ecological Dynamics, the framework maps four developmental stages to four trauma responses to four mental health adaptations to four addictive patterns:

• Existence and Belonging (2nd trimester to 3 months) → flight response → dissociation → addictions of escape
• Need Fulfillment (1 month to 18 months) → freeze response → depression → addictions of solace
• Autonomy (8 months to 2 years, 6 months) → orient response → anxiety → addictions of departure
• Will and Power → fight response → anger → addictions of defiance

Understanding these pathways helps us recognize the developmental specificity of different addictive presentations and respond with precision rather than generic interventions.

The Pattern of Perpetual Motion: Trench's Story

Trench is massive—close to seven feet tall and heavyset. He often moves gingerly, as though trying to be smaller, to disappear. But Trench will almost always be the largest man in any room, the tallest as well as the heaviest, the one to whom unwelcome attention will inevitably be drawn. This detail is crucial to understanding his pattern: from toddlerhood onward, Trench could not explore the world without drawing attention. His size made autonomous, unnoticed exploration impossible.

His history reveals the developmental foundation. Trench's mother struggled with severe anxiety following a traumatic event when Trench was ten months old—his father was arrested and imprisoned for violence. Suddenly, Trench's mother was a single parent, terrified, hypervigilant, unable to tolerate her son's normal toddler exploration without catastrophizing about all the ways he could be hurt.

When Trench began to crawl and pull himself up, his mother would gasp and rush over. When he climbed, she would pull him down frantically. When he reached for things, she would snatch them away, warning about dangers. Her anxiety was genuine—she was traumatized, alone, terrified—but the impact on Trench's developing autonomy was profound. He learned that movement activates others' fear, that his exploratory impulses frighten the person he depends on, that the world is full of dangers he cannot see but must somehow avoid.

Making this worse, Trench was unusually large even as a toddler. His size meant that normal toddler behavior—knocking things over, bumping into furniture, the general chaos of learning to navigate space—had bigger consequences. His mother's anxiety intensified. By the time Trench was eighteen months old, his mother was exhausted and increasingly angry. She would oscillate between anxious overprotection and harsh punishment. Trench couldn't predict which response his autonomous action would trigger.

The developmental impact was severe. Trench's system learned: the world is dangerous (confirmed by his mother's constant fear), my impulses cannot be trusted (sometimes punished, sometimes prevented), I must stay constantly alert to adjust my behavior, but I can never fully predict what's needed. His nervous system organized around hypervigilance. He scanned his mother's face constantly for cues. He learned to read micro-expressions, to detect mood shifts, to adjust behavior instantly.

Throughout childhood, this pattern deepened. His size continued to draw unwanted attention. Other children were afraid of him or challenged him. Adults expected more maturity because of his physical presence. He could never just be a child exploring normally. Every move was noticed, commented on, often misinterpreted. The hypervigilance that began in toddlerhood became his fundamental way of being.

By adolescence, Trench discovered stimulants—first prescribed Ritalin, later cocaine and methamphetamine. The drugs were a revelation. The constant, exhausting vigilance that had always felt like a burden suddenly felt like power. The racing thoughts became sharp focus. The restlessness became purposeful activity. The perpetual scanning for threat became feeling ahead of everyone else, seeing dangers others missed, being the smartest person in the room.

Stimulants didn't create Trench's hypervigilance or his intelligence. Both were there before the drugs. But the drugs made the pattern feel intentional, controlled, even superior. They transformed what had been an anxious, reactive state into something that felt like mastery.

Over years, Trench's life organized around stimulant use. He moved constantly—new cities, new apartments, new associates. He couldn't settle anywhere. Relationships were brief, intense, and ended when the other person wanted commitment. Work was sporadic—he would throw himself into projects with manic intensity, then abandon them suddenly. He accumulated debts, enemies, and criminal charges. But he kept moving, certain that if he just got to the next place, found the next opportunity, made the next deal, everything would finally work out.

His cocaine use kept him activated, vigilant, moving. It validated his nervous system's fundamental belief: constant alertness is necessary, settling is dangerous, you must keep scanning because threat is always imminent. The addiction maintained the entire pattern. As long as he was using stimulants, he never had to face the terror of being still, of trusting that a place might be safe enough to stop scanning.

Now, sitting in my office, Trench talks rapidly about his latest crisis. His speech is pressured, topics shift constantly, his leg bounces continuously. He's convinced that people are conspiring against him—his family doesn't understand him, his associates have betrayed him, the system is rigged. Every situation confirms his hypervigilance: see, danger is everywhere, I was right to never relax.

What Trench cannot see—what the pattern prevents him from seeing—is that his constant movement creates the instability he fears. His hypervigilance damages relationships, as people grow exhausted by his intensity and suspicion. His inability to settle makes commitment impossible, ensuring he remains isolated. His stimulant use keeps his nervous system activated, preventing any possibility of discovering that stillness might be survivable.

This is the departure addiction in its essence: motion that never arrives anywhere, scanning that never finds safety, activity that never creates stability. Trench isn't weak or broken; he's brilliantly adapted to an early environment that genuinely required hypervigilance. But the adaptation that saved him as a toddler now imprisons him, and the stimulants that once made the pattern feel powerful now just keep it running endlessly.

Environmental and Relational Context

Understanding Trench's pattern requires attention to the full ecological context maintaining these behaviors. Multiple factors reinforce his hypervigilance and compulsive movement:

Current Life Circumstances: Trench is actually being pursued by people who want to harm him. His current environment validates his hypervigilance—danger is real, not imagined. This makes intervention extraordinarily difficult because we can't simply tell him he's safe when he's not. His stimulant use feels necessary for staying alert enough to avoid genuine threats.

Social Context: Trench's primary relationships are with other stimulant users and criminals. These relationships reward hypervigilance, quick thinking, suspicion of others. There's no modeling of trust, settling, or secure connection. The social environment confirms his worldview.

Physical Environment: Trench has no stable home. He moves between apartments, friends' places, sometimes shelters. Each new environment requires complete reorientation, reactivating the pattern from toddlerhood of never having a secure base. Settling becomes literally impossible.

Occupational Context: Trench's "work" in the criminal economy requires exactly the skills his developmental trauma created: hyperawareness, quick assessment of threat, ability to act fast, willingness to take risks. His adaptation is rewarded in this context.

Physiological Context: Decades of stimulant use have altered Trench's nervous system. Even when not using, his baseline activation is elevated. His system has adapted to high stimulation as normal. Calm feels dangerous, intolerable.

Temporal Context: Trench's life has no rhythm or routine. Time is chaotic, unpredictable. This recreates the temporal instability of his early childhood, maintaining the sense that constant vigilance is required.

From an ecological dynamics perspective, these aren't separate factors contributing to Trench's addiction. They're part of an integrated system where every element reinforces the others. His current danger validates hypervigilance. Hypervigilance damages relationships, leading to instability. Instability creates more danger. Stimulants help manage activation that never stops. The entire system is organized to maintain perpetual motion.

The Affordances of Departure: What Stimulants Provide

To work effectively with departure addictions, we must understand what stimulants and compulsive activity provide. In ecological terms, we need to identify the affordances—the possibilities for action that stimulants offer to someone whose developmental history created chronic hypervigilance.

Stimulants and compulsive movement afford:

Alignment with Activation: When your nervous system is perpetually activated, stimulants don't feel like adding anxiety—they feel like finally having external justification for internal state. The drugs match what's already happening, making it feel purposeful rather than pathological.

Enhanced Hypervigilance: Stimulants improve attention, quick thinking, threat assessment—exactly the skills hypervigilant people already possess. The drugs make the adaptation feel like superpower rather than wound.

Control Over Restlessness: The internal restlessness that comes from chronic orient response feels chaotic and overwhelming. Stimulants create illusion of control—the movement feels directed rather than compulsive.

Energy for Perpetual Motion: Hypervigilant people are exhausted from constant scanning but cannot stop. Stimulants provide energy to maintain the pattern that the nervous system demands.

Protection from Settling: The terror of settling—of being still enough that you might feel the original vulnerability—is avoided. Stimulants ensure you never have to find out if stopping is safe.

Social Functionality: In a culture that valorizes productivity, activity, achievement, stimulant use can initially appear functional. The person isn't lazy or withdrawn; they're busy, productive, engaged. The addiction is harder to recognize.

Validation of Worldview: The hyper-focus and paranoid awareness that stimulants create confirm the person's belief that danger is everywhere and constant vigilance is necessary. The drugs validate the developmental learning.

Temporary Relief from Anxiety: While stimulants ultimately worsen anxiety, they initially provide relief by making the activation feel intentional. The chaos becomes order, temporarily.

Understanding these affordances helps us recognize that departure addictions aren't irrational. Within the person's developmental and ecological context, they make sense. The addiction solves real problems: unbearable activation, terror of stillness, exhaustion from constant vigilance, isolation from inability to trust. We cannot simply remove this solution without addressing the problems it addresses.

The Coyote: Trickster of Boundaries

A small population of coyotes live in the downtown core. They follow rail lines in from the suburbs and smaller towns east of the city. They haunt alleys late at night, skittering away from people, thriving invisibly. They are too smart to be caught. In the wild, coyotes will overturn and urinate on traps set for their capture. Here in the city they elude animal control workers and avoid the urban jangle. They eat well.

In many mythological traditions Coyote is not only an animal but a divine being, a traveler between worlds, a trickster who teaches by breaking the rules. He is led by appetite and impulse and playfulness. Often, coyote tales are defined by misadventure. In one such tale, Coyote grows inconsolable after his wife dies. He wanders aimless in his grief. But then an envoy comes, a ghost who informs Coyote that his wife is living as a spirit in the Land of Shadows.

The envoy leads Coyote into the barren lands and across five mountains. They emerge at a wide prairie. Coyote is instructed to wait. The ghost envoy vanishes. But at nightfall, Coyote begins to hear shuffling sounds. He smells a cooking fire and begins to glimpse the faint outline of a village. As the night deepens, the Land of Shadows comes alive. Coyote sees his friends who have died, he discovers the village to be a place of happiness and solace, he finds his wife at the fireside.

Coyote remains in the Land of Shadows for many nights. He feasts with his wife, his departed relatives, his lost friends. Every morning, as dawn spreads across the horizon, the Land of Shadows begins to fade. Coyote finds himself on the prairie, alone in the heat of the day. He grows parched, and is burned by the sun. Yet he waits, and night comes again.

Eventually, the envoy informs Coyote that he must return to the living lands. He may take his wife with him, but only if he refrains from touching her on each of the five nights required to cross the mountains. Only when they have returned to the living lands may he touch her. If he is successful in this task, Coyote and his wife may resume their lives as before, as though she had not died.

As this is a trickster story, we know that on the fifth night Coyote can resist no longer. For on each of the previous nights his wife has grown more visible, more tangible, more beautiful. And on the final night, when she is almost fully restored, he reaches for her. He can't resist. His appetite trumps his judgment.

The envoy comes to escort Coyote's wife back to the Land of Shadows. And the envoy berates Coyote for his impulsiveness, his recklessness, his accidental reshaping of the world's boundaries. For, as a result of Coyote's churlishness, the border between the living and the dead will now be closed. No further crossings will be possible. And so Coyote becomes responsible for the finality of death.

But mythological edicts are never final. In countless other tales, Coyote crosses back and forth between the living realm and the Land of Shadows, as do many other heroes and heroines and accidental travelers. The addicted are crossing every day, going in both directions, searching for the one lost thing, the treasure that is lost and sometimes found.

This story captures something essential about departure addictions. Coyote cannot wait. The impulse overwhelms judgment. The goal is in sight but reaching for it prematurely destroys everything. This is the hypervigilant stance: can't trust the process, must act now, waiting feels like death. And so the perpetual motion—reaching, grasping, moving—that prevents arrival.

The tragedy isn't that Coyote tried. The tragedy is that he couldn't trust that arrival was possible if he just waited. His nervous system—like the nervous system of the person with Autonomy stage disruption—couldn't tolerate the uncertainty, the stillness, the vulnerability of waiting. Better to move, to act, to control, even if it means losing everything.

Pathways to Stillness: Working with Departure Addictions

Given the developmental depth and systemic stability of departure addiction patterns, what can professionals actually do? How do we support people whose systems are organized around hypervigilance, who learned during toddlerhood that the world is too dangerous to trust?

Recognize the Orient Response: First, we must see departure addictions for what they are—not moral weakness or simple substance dependence, but manifestations of chronic hypervigilance rooted in early developmental disruption. The person is not choosing to be restless or impulsive; their nervous system is in perpetual threat-assessment mode. Recognition allows us to approach with understanding rather than judgment that confirms the person's belief that others cannot be trusted.

Understand the Developmental Foundation: Explore the person's history during the Autonomy stage (8 months to 2.5 years) specifically:

• What was the environment like during toddlerhood? Was it safe for exploration?
• How did caregivers respond to autonomous action? With support, anxiety, or punishment?
• Were boundaries consistent or unpredictable?
• Were there environmental threats (violence, instability, genuine danger)?
• Could the child develop secure base or was caregiving chaotic?
• What was the child's size and physical presence? Did this draw unwanted attention?
• How did caregivers balance supporting autonomy with maintaining safety?

Understanding that hypervigilance may have roots in the period when autonomous exploration was emerging helps us recognize we're addressing patterns established when the nervous system was first learning whether the world is safe to move through.

Work at Multiple Scales Simultaneously: Change requires intervention across systems:

Individual/Neurobiological:

• Approaches that help downregulate nervous system activation without demanding immediate calm
• Somatic practices that teach the body that stillness is survivable
• Medication for anxiety (though many stimulant users resist due to fear of being slowed)
• Titrated exposure to settling—very brief periods of non-activity, gradually extended
• Mindfulness practices adapted for hyperaroused systems (not traditional sitting meditation initially)

Relational:

• Provide consistency and predictability—be where you say you'll be, respond as expected
• Move at the person's pace; don't demand they slow down or settle prematurely
• Explicitly acknowledge reality of current threats when they exist
• Help distinguish between past danger and current safety when appropriate
• Build trust through reliability over time

Environmental:

• Create stable base if possible—housing, routine, predictable schedule
• Modify environment to reduce actual threats (help with safety planning when danger is real)
• Provide structure that supports rhythm without feeling like control
• Create spaces that afford both activity and rest

Occupational:

• Channel hypervigilance and quick thinking toward constructive purposes when ready
• Recognize that person may initially need high-activation work
• Support transition to sustainable activity levels over time

Community:

• Connect to communities where trust is possible
• Peer support from others who understand hypervigilance
• Relationships that don't require immediate intimacy

Meaning:

• Help person recognize their hypervigilance as adaptation, not character flaw
• Reframe scanning abilities as potential strengths in appropriate contexts
• Create meaning around recovery itself as act of courage

Address Real Current Threats: Unlike some addiction patterns, departure addictions often persist in contexts where danger is real. We cannot tell someone to relax when they're actually being pursued. Work must include:

• Safety planning and risk reduction
• Helping extricate from dangerous situations when possible
• Acknowledging reality: "Your vigilance makes sense given the real threats you face"
• Working toward safer circumstances while supporting current coping

Challenge Hypervigilance Gradually: Recovery requires movement from constant vigilance toward moments of relative trust. This must be carefully titrated:

• Start with very brief periods of deliberate relaxation (seconds, not minutes)
• Practice in contexts where safety can be verified
• Build tolerance for stillness incrementally
• Celebrate any moment when person chooses not to scan
• Provide external reality-checks ("I'm watching the door; you can relax")

Work with Stimulant Use Realistically: Complete abstinence may not be immediately possible or even advisable:

• Medication-assisted approaches (if available for stimulant addiction)
• Harm reduction: safer use, reducing amounts, spacing doses
• Recognize that stopping stimulants may initially increase anxiety to unbearable levels
• Address underlying hyperactivation alongside substance use
• Understand relapse as system returning to familiar state, not moral failure

Build Capacity for Trust: People with Autonomy disruption struggle profoundly with trust. Building this capacity requires:

• Hundreds or thousands of experiences where trust is validated
• Starting with very small trusts (trusting person will show up for appointment)
• Never betraying confidence or breaking commitments
• Being transparent about limitations
• Modeling vulnerability appropriately

Create Rhythm and Predictability: Chaotic environments maintain hypervigilance. Creating rhythm helps:

• Consistent meeting times
• Predictable structures
• Clear expectations
• Reliable routines
• Reducing environmental unpredictability where possible

Honor Individual Pathways: Remember degeneracy—multiple routes to reorganization exist:

• Some people need structure; others need freedom
• Some benefit from medication; others don't
• Some require environmental change before internal change is possible
• Stay curious about what works for this particular person
• Be humble about predictions

Work with Anxiety Directly: While recognizing anxiety as adaptation, it still requires attention:

• Anti-anxiety medication (carefully, given addiction vulnerability)
• Cognitive-behavioral approaches adapted for developmental trauma
• Exposure therapies (very gradually)
• Teaching nervous system regulation skills

Create Transitions, Not Sudden Stops: Recovery from departure addictions rarely happens through forced cessation:

• From stimulant-supported vigilance toward natural alertness
• From perpetual motion toward chosen activity
• From hypervigilance toward appropriate awareness
• From isolation toward trust, very gradually

The Two Tasks of Recovery

Two fundamental healing tasks lie before those recovering from addictions of departure. The first is to learn—often for the first time—that the world can be safe enough to settle into, that not every situation requires hypervigilance, that trust is sometimes warranted. This learning cannot happen through insight alone; it requires repeated experiences where settling does not lead to harm.

The second task is to discover that stillness is survivable. For someone whose nervous system learned during toddlerhood that constant vigilance is necessary for survival, choosing to be still is terrifying. What if the threat comes while you're not scanning? What if relaxing means missing the danger? What if trusting is what gets you hurt? The work is to discover, gradually and in small doses, that moments of stillness are possible.

Sometimes in sessions with clients who carry these patterns, I notice the moment when hypervigilance briefly releases. A person who has been scanning the room constantly suddenly maintains eye contact. Someone who has been shifting topics rapidly stays with one thought. A client who always sits near the exit moves to a different chair. These moments are profound. They represent the system experimenting with states other than constant alert.

Our role is to notice these moments, name them gently, and help the person recognize that something different happened. "You just sat still for several minutes. Did you notice? How did that feel?" These are the experiences that, accumulated over time, can teach a nervous system new possibilities.

The Disappearance

One day Trench simply disappears. I wait for him in the office, I check my schedule to make sure I have not mistaken our meeting time, I call his voice mail and leave a message. But I suspect there is more to this than a scheduling error. After all, Trench is reliably punctual and consistent. He arranges his days around our meetings. He confirms and reconfirms appointments. His absence today is not a good omen.

I walk to the window and search up and down the street. A bus rumbles by but does not stop. I check the answering machine again. But a certainty has crept in: he's not coming today. Perhaps not ever again.

This is common with departure addictions. The person cannot settle even into the therapeutic relationship. When the work begins to touch something real, when the possibility of actual change emerges, the hypervigilance activates: danger, threat, must move. Better to leave than risk the vulnerability of staying.

I settle into the chair and begin the small personal ritual that I enact for clients who vanish. It's a simple matter, a deliberate farewell, a means of responding to the pervasive sense of futility that occasionally accompanies addictions counseling work. I think of the time I have spent with Trench, of our conversations about music and psychology and pop culture. I focus on the core of goodwill that I feel (wrapped up though it has sometimes been with anxiety and resentment). I focus on his playfulness, his sparkling intelligence. I imagine my goodwill extending outward, crossing the distance between us, finding its way to him. I trust that my thoughts, rising on the wind and carried, as a prayer is carried, will be transmitted by the invisible forces that shape the world. I hope that Trench will make his way back to himself, to the life he has long sought and repeatedly denied himself. I pray that he will be held aloft, out of his suffering, that his call will be met and made quiet by companionship, that he will find the still center of a whole and unfractured life.

Over the next few weeks I make several confidential inquiries in the community, asking for news of Trench. No one seems to know where he is or why he moved on. I watch for news reports of unidentified bridge jumpers floating offshore, or murder victims found in the trunks of abandoned cars. But nothing.

As the weeks pass, I accept that Trench has departed, once again, to the Land of Shadows—that realm where the hypervigilant go, where constant motion feels necessary, where settling is impossible, where coyotes run through urban alleys and never stop to rest.

This is the nature of departure addictions. The person cannot arrive because arriving means vulnerability. Cannot settle because settling means trusting. Cannot stop scanning because the nervous system learned long ago, during those critical months when exploration should have been safe, that the world requires constant vigilance.

But sometimes—not often, but sometimes—people find their way back. The system reorganizes. The hypervigilance quiets. Trust becomes possible. The person discovers that there are places safe enough to rest, relationships trustworthy enough to risk, moments where scanning is not required.

This is the work we're called to as professionals supporting people with departure addictions: to be the safe base they never had in toddlerhood, to model the possibility that some places are secure enough for settling, to wait with steady patience for the moment when the perpetual motion can cease and the person can finally arrive.

For Further Reflection

As you work with people whose patterns suggest departure addictions, consider:

Developmental Questions:

• What happened during the Autonomy stage (8 months to 2.5 years)?
• Was the environment safe for autonomous exploration?
• How did caregivers respond to the child's independent movement and impulses?
• Were there sources of genuine environmental danger or instability?

Current System Questions:

• Are there actual current threats that validate hypervigilance?
• What environmental constraints maintain the pattern of perpetual motion?
• How does stimulant use support the hypervigilant state?
• What would settling look or feel like for this person?

Intervention Questions:

• How can you provide predictability and consistency?
• What very small experiments with stillness might be safe to try?
• How can you help the person distinguish between past danger and current safety?
• What structures might support rhythm without feeling like control?
• How can you honor the adaptive function of hypervigilance while inviting moments of rest?

Systems Perspective Questions:

• What would it take for the entire system (not just the person) to reorganize toward trust?
• Which constraints need to be modified? Which affordances for settling need to be created?
• How can we work at multiple scales simultaneously?
• What signs would indicate the system is beginning to allow moments of relaxation?

Remember: you're not trying to force the person to stop moving or trust prematurely. You're participating in a complex adaptive system, creating conditions where moments of stillness become possible. Like Coyote who must learn to wait, the person must discover through experience that arrival is possible, that some places are safe enough to rest.

The one running perpetually can learn to pause. The work is to be the secure base that makes pausing survivable, the consistent presence that teaches the nervous system something new about whether trust is possible.

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