In this episode, we begin to revisit the foundations of the Polyvagal

Theory from Dr. Steven Porges.

My name is Justin since I'm a licensed Verity family therapist and I'm

obsessed with the Polyvagal theory.

Welcome to Stuck Not Broken.

Throughout this episode, you'll be hearing from a couple other

people, and those people are Dr.

Steven Porges and Deb Dana.

Dr. Steven Porges created the Polyvagal Theory, and Deb Dana is

a therapist who's a very big name in the polyvagal theory space.

I had done interviews with both of them on the podcast already, so I took some

of the audio samples from that that I thought could add some clarity or just

some weight to what I was saying here.

But before I go further into this episode, please put yourself first.

I keep every episode as safe as I can, but just by the nature

of this I can almost guarantee something's gonna come up for you.

So you may experience some stuff come up.

Please take a break if you need to.

This podcast is not therapy, nor is it intended to be a replacement for therapy.

Topic number one, when it comes to the paralegal theory and is really,

we have to get this down before understanding anything else, and

that is the autonomic nervous system.

The Autonom nervous system controls the body's internal environments, all the

stuff that you don't have to think about, breathing, heart rate, hormone release,

sweating, uh, pupil dilation, digestion, salivation, and a whole bunch more.

There's all the stuff you don't have to think about.

No one is thinking about their pupil.

D like, do you have any idea how much your pupils are or are not dilated right now?

Right?

I mean, how do you have any idea what is going on with your digestion?

Maybe you could feel it, but you don't guide that, right?

You don't think about these things breathing, you kind of can, but really

moment to moment, no one is thinking about planning their breathing typically, right?

I think that what's really important about the autonomic nervous system is that,

yeah, it does control the body's internal environment without conscious thought,

but the autonomic nervous system can actually be used for different purposes.

So we have three basic states.

That's the autonomic nervous system governs through biological pathways.

The first one is the ventral vagal safe and social state, and

that governs social engagement.

This is one of the parasympathetic branches.

The second one is the sympathetic flight fight pathways, and that's

responsible for mobilization.

And the last one is the second parasympathetic system, and that is the

dorsal vagal shutdown, which is, which governs the, uh, immobilization response.

We have then these different biological pathways within the autonomic nervous

system that are responsible for responding to various levels of safety or danger.

So if we, if we're safe, great, and we utilize those pathways.

If not, we then utilize our mobilization pathways.

And if that's not gonna be successful, then we utilize

our immobilization pathways.

None of this is a choice, and I think this is really important to

stress that this is not a choice.

It's our autonomic nervous system.

So this is outside of our conscious control.

So we don't shift these states.

We don't shift from, so social engagement to flight fight because

we're choosing to, like right now, you can probably experience that actually.

'cause if you, if you close your eyes and think about a spider

hanging behind you by its web.

You might feel a shift within you right now.

You might feel a little bit more tense.

Your breathing might pause for a moment if you're like me at least.

But if you don't react, that's also out of your choice.

If you did react though and you did hold your breath, or you did

feel a little bit of fear, those are autonomic shifts happening

within you that you did not control.

You simply responded to the stimulus of the image of a spider hanging behind you.

And if that doesn't work for you, then just imagine whatever thing

that scares you behind you, right?

You'll, you'll have some sort of reaction to that.

Every behavior is in service of survival.

Everything is in service of survival.

No matter how crazy it looks, your nervous system has enacted something because

it's, it's trying to keep you alive.

So if we could start there, all of these autonomic responses are about survival.

This is supposed to happen.

We're supposed to shift from our safety pathways to our mobilization system.

And if that doesn't work, we're supposed to shift into the immobilization

system, the shutdown state, because it increases the chances of survival.

All of these states increase the chances of survival.

And I'm gonna go into these, uh, more later on, but I think it's

important right now just to realize that the autonomic nervous system,

I mean, just the basic idea so far.

Autonomic nervous system is something that's out of our conscious control.

It increases it, it shifts to increase our chances of survival.

So it shifts behavioral states, it shifts biological pathways that that

are responsible for behavioral states.

It shifts outside of our conscious control.

It shifts automatically and it shifts to increase the chances of survival.

So it's supposed to happen.

If you think about it, this is pretty darn important because

it really makes daily living and surviving possible for all mammals.

This is a mammalian thing, not just a human thing.

This is a mammalian thing and it really makes survival possible.

Mammals are able to socially engage with, we're able to be in families or

in herds, or be able to build tribes, and it makes daily living possible.

We don't have to stop and think about our heartbeat, right?

I mean, if, if it wasn't autonomic, like, think about it.

We would have to think about all these processes that I listed, like breathing

and heart rate and hormone release.

We'd have to somehow consciously be aware of that and plan it out

in real time all at the same time.

You know what I mean?

So, I I, if it's, if it wasn't autonomic, I don't know how long we would last

if we had to consciously control this.

We'd have to think about how much to tense our muscles when we're in danger, or

how much to sweat or if to sweat at all.

We'd have to think about, uh, how to, you know, what rate to increase, our

heartbeat to how to adjust our breathing.

And not just in that moment, but moment to moment.

We'd have to know when to calm things down and speed things up.

The autonomic nerve system is really good at that.

It does that for us, so we don't have to consciously do

that, and that allows us to.

Use our thinking minds for other things, and that's not always helpful,

but, but we have the opportunity at least to use our thinking potential

to make lives better for humans and other species in the world itself.

I've already laid out the primary autonomic nervous system states, and

that again is the safe and social state.

The flight fight state or the shutdown state, or and the shutdown state.

These are the primary autonomic states.

Just like we have primary colors, you can mix those to make secondary

colors like yellow, blue, and red are the primary colors, but you

can mix those to make other colors.

So we do have other states and mixed states, and that's something I'm gonna

talk about in the future episode.

But for right now, we're working with the primary states or the primary colors if,

if you want to have a metaphor for it, our primary state, whether it's safe and

social flight, fight, or shutdown down.

Our primary state is gonna be a reaction to, well, a few different things, and

one of those is the outside environment, and that could be a dangerous environment

or a dangerous person of loud sound, dark lighting, or even positive people

and happy people and safe environments.

Our autonomic state is going to be reaction to whatever environment, whatever

literal environment that we're in.

That's gonna be a reaction to the, really the sensory experiences of the,

of this environment, the exterior, the outside environment, the way

the environment sounds, the way that it looks, the way that it smells.

All of these sensory inputs are going to trigger our autonomic nervous system to

shift into social behaviors or flight, fight behavior, or shutdown down behavior.

But it's also a reaction to the internal environment.

And what that means is that we can actually shift state based

on what's happening within us.

This could be something like chronic illness.

It's being, being chronically ill might put someone in more of a defensive

state, living in that condition.

Whatever it is, living that con condition might really take them out of their

potential to be in their safe and social state and to socially engage and have

to feel happy and to feel positive.

It might put them in more of a defensive state.

When we're in pain, our capacity to socially engage with each other

is probably a lot less, right?

If you bang your knee on something, you're not gonna smile about it.

You're not gonna be, you know, laughing and connecting

with the person next to you.

No, you'll, you'll be in pain and probably have some defensive energy within you.

Or if we're hungry, if you get hungry enough, like if you don't eat and you get

hungry enough, you become hangry, right?

That fight system kind of comes on to make you get food.

The autonomic nervous system can also be in response to

the interpersonal environment.

That's person to person.

This is, this counts as environmental, but I think it's worth differentiating.

The interpersonal environment is going to be between two or more people, and there's

gonna be cues of danger in big ways and small ways between two more people.

I'm gonna go more into this when we talk about co-regulation

later on, but basically.

Between two people.

There's gonna be cues of danger and cues of safety in big ways and small ways.

It could be something as simple as looking at a cell phone, but

it could also be something as big as like outward aggression.

Both of these things might have an impact on the other person that shifts

their state, at least momentarily, that shifts their state out of

safety, out of social engagement, and like even with the cell phone.

If someone looks at their cell phone while you're talking to them, your capacity

to feel socially engaged is diminished.

At least in that moment.

It can be fixed.

It's not a huge deal, but it does take you out of your social engagement

pathways, at least just for that moment.

Our autonomic nervous system state can also be a response to our perceptions

of all of these things to the interpersonal, the internal or the outside

environment to our perceptions of it.

Our perceptions might not be an accurate reflection of the real world.

It's, it's sort of our sub, our subjective filter of the world in a way.

For example, a football fan, their reaction to something that happens

in a game, a football game is a lot different than someone who's not a fan.

So if you're watching football with someone who's like way

into it and you're not, whatever happens on the screen for them.

It's gonna take them into or out of their social engagement system, it's gonna take

them more into their defensive flight fight energy, or even in a shutdown.

If, uh, if it's a disastrous event, like the 49 ERs losing the past two Super Bowl

appearances, something like that might take someone outta their social engagement

system and into their defensive energy.

But for you, if you're not into football, it's like your perception

of this, this is not a big deal.

So it has no effect on you.

What it really, what it comes down to is like one group of men scoring

more points than another group might mean nothing to you, but

for other people it's devastating.

Like for me, or a Star Wars fan is much different than a non-start Wars

fan when it comes to watching those terrible sequel trilogy movies.

They're awful, genuinely upsetting due to its awfulness.

But for someone who's not in Star Wars, they could care less and

they just wanna enjoy the movie.

For those of us who are way into Star Wars.

We are basically personally offended by how bad those movies are.

I was talking, uh, in therapy with uh, one of my student clients.

I work at a public school.

He lived in a neighborhood that was definitely not, uh, on the safe side.

He was more on the dangerous side.

He was outside playing, uh, catch with his friends, throwing a football back and

forth, and he heard, he heard a gunshot.

And for him, his perception of gunshot was way different than mine.

In my neighborhood.

That's not something that we hear, I don't think ever.

So if I am in his neighborhood, just even imagining it, if I hear

a gunshot, I'm gonna get in my car and leave, or I'm gonna go in that

into a house or somewhere safe.

But for him, for his perception of gunshots and for his perception

of the safety of his neighborhood, of his neighborhood and what that

meant to him as far as his danger, his perception was a lot different.

For him, it was like, well, it's not about me, someone else

that's about somebody else.

So for myself or for maybe even you, if we hear that we react a certain way for

him, he didn't, it didn't trigger his defensive energy, whereas it would trigger

defensive energy for somebody else.

His perception of it was, was different.

These autonomic nervous system states, the primary ones that we were talking

about here so far, these are reactions to the outside world, to the internal

world, the interpersonal world, but also our perceptions of these.

And these primary autonomic nervous system states become the filter that

we experience the world through these.

These are not just states that we're in momentarily and then we're out of it.

We, we can actually stay in these states for quite a long time.

And while we're in these states, we experience the world in

significantly different ways if we're in the safe and social state.

We're gonna experience the world in a much more positive,

hopeful, empathetic kind of way.

If we're in a shutdown state, we're gonna experience the world

as probably a lot more hopeless.

We're gonna view ourselves as worthless.

We're not gonna feel much hope, we're not gonna feel much of anything.

It's, it's a very disconnected state.

We bring those filters to all of our interactions with people.

With companies and with family members and school and our workplaces, or

where we bring those everywhere we go, it is the filter that we

experience the world through.

It's also possible to become stuck in these defensive states that I'm talking

about, the flight fight sympathetic or the shutdown parasympathetic.

It's possible to become stuck in those defensive states.

When we talk about trauma, that's really what we're talking about.

When trauma is not the event or the lack of events that left

us in a stuck defensive state.

It's not the event, it's the stuck defensive state.

It's the inability to get back up into the safe and social state.

That's what trauma is.

It's the impact of the event, not the event itself.

I hope you don't mind me pausing here real quick to tell you about something

called Building Safety Anchors.

It's a course that I created.

Grounded in the polyvagal theory, grounded in the somatic pieces of our

wellbeing of our of our mental health.

The goal with building safety anchors is to feel safe.

It's to help you to feel what it feels like to be safe, to

discover what brings you to safety.

It is a 30 day course.

It has six exclusive learning modules, uh, 45 minutes of audio.

It has printable and downloadable PDFs, some worksheets in there.

It's called Building Safety Anchors.

There's a link down below in the, in the description.

There's a metaphor for all this autonomic nervous system stuff, and

it's called the Polyvagal Ladder.

This is from Deb Dana.

She's a therapist that applied polyvagal theory to therapy,

and she has a couple books out.

One of her metaphors that she uses is the Polyvagal Ladder.

This is a metaphor for how the autonomic nervous system is stacked in the body.

It's the hierarchy of these states and how it's built inside the body.

So I want you to picture a ladder.

At the top of the ladder are the ventral vagal pathways which control the

safe and social state or the safe and social behaviors that's at the top of

the ladder, and that mirrors our body because that's the, those pathways live

in our head, neck, and are connected to the heart in the middle of the ladder.

So underneath the safe safety state, in the middle of the ladder is the

flight fight sympathetic pathways, and those pathways live in the chest.

They govern arms and leg usage, and at the bottom of this polyvagal ladder is

the dorsal vagal shut down pathways.

Those live in the gut.

You'll feel those in your gut when something's not quite right, you'll

feel that shutdown system come.

Come on.

The ladder is, that's how it looks.

But it's also a great metaphor because in order to access these different

biological pathways, these different states, we have to go up and down

the ladder in sequential order.

We don't skip.

Again, this is not a choice.

So we're not choosing from a a menu of options.

Now we're going through a sequence of events.

So if we can't exist in our safe and social state, at the top of the ladder.

We drop down the ladder into our flight fight system, and in that

order, flight first, and then fight.

If we can't run away from whatever it is, then we fight.

But if we can't fight, then we drop down further to the bottom of the

poly eagle ladder into our shutdown pathways, our shutdown state,

and this is where we immobilize.

So if we can't be safe, then we run.

If we can't run, then we fight.

If we can't fight, then we.

Immobilize we collapse.

And again, all of these are about increasing the likelihood of surviving,

you know, whatever, whatever's happening.

But that, that is the sequence of events from top to bottom.

Now, likewise, if we want to go up into our safety state, we

actually have to go through each rung of the ladder, uh, back up.

So from our shutdown, immobilization, we have to come

out of that, up the ladder into.

Flight fight energy, but it's fight first.

So we have to have a sympathetic fight surge and then up into our flight

energy, and that is also a sympathetic state and then up into our safety state.

Now do this, does this look the same for everyone?

Does it feel the same?

Does it have the same intensity?

No.

All that's very subjective.

Um, case by case, but that's the basic biological hierarchy and sequence

of events that mammals go through.

We've covered autonomic nervous system.

We have covered autonomic states.

We've covered the polyvagal ladder, but what about the vagus nerve itself?

This is, if you've spent any time learning about polyvagal theory outside of this

podcast, you may read or see or hear people talking about hacking the vagus

nerve or stimulating the vagus nerve.

But I, I don't think that's quite the issue here.

That's not the goal when it comes to best utilizing the

knowledge of the Polyvagal theory.

Dr. Porges calls the vagus nerve a conduit.

It's not the thing that we're addressing in and of itself.

So when it comes to trauma healing, or self-regulation, or just anchoring

yourself in the present moment.

Stimulating the vagus nerve is not the goal.

Take away this, uh, uh, intelligence to the nerve and understand, think

more in terms of feedback loop.

Really, the brainstem is the key to all this, and the, as I listen to Dr.

Porges, that's what I get out of it.

So the vagus nerve is a conduit.

It, it sends the signals, but it's not the primary focus.

We're more interested in the feedback loop of.

Brain to body or brainstem through the vagus nerve to the bodily organs and

muscles, and then what those organs and muscles are sending back up through

the vagus nerve to the brainstem.

It's, it's a communication loop.

That's what we're interested in.

It's not the vagus nerve in and of itself.

The majority of the communication is actually from the body up to the

brain, not the brain to the body.

We put a lot of emphasis on brain stuff, right?

But the majority of the communication, I think is like 80% of the fibers that

are going up through the vagus nerve.

80% of that communication is gonna be from the body to the brain.

The vagus nerve is a conduit.

It's a wire.

That's not what we're really concerned about.

We're concerned about the regulator that's sending signals through that wire

and the impact of, uh, those signals to the target organs and then the target

organs through the sensory part of the vagus sending signals back to the brain.

So we're more concerned with the feedback loop.

Between organ and brainstem, that's going through the vagus, then the nerve itself.

Hmm.

So we get caught up and we, the term I use, uh, is that we start giving

executive function, right, decision making properties to the nerve.

And we're literally, um, obfuscating, blinding, covering up the real process,

which is really regulatory system that is a feedback between brainstem structures

and actually lower body or bodily organs.

The communication is what's important.

It's the communication of safety or danger from brain to body and body to brain.

That's what's important.

The, the vagus nerve is just the conduit.

It's just the, the pathway that the information is being sent through.

This is not about hacking or stimulating the vagus nerve.

The brainstem is the key point that triggers the autonomic nervous system into

different behaviors and also triggers the brain into different, uh, possibilities.

So.

If we are detecting danger in the environment, we detect

that through our senses.

Whatever we're detecting through the senses, the it goes in the brainstem.

The brainstem, I don't like the word decides, but the brainstem decides

based on information, what level of safety or danger that we're in.

If it decides that we're in danger, it's going to reduce our potential

for things like critical thinking.

And empathy.

It's also gonna reduce our potential for getting close to other people

or breathing in a relaxed way.

So it affects the brain, it affects the body, but the brain stem is

really the key point, uh, in, in this and what we're bringing in

from the outside and how we're.

Deciphering safety or danger.

And the brainstem is where the regulation of our bodily state occurs, and the

effect of our bodily state goes up and affects our brainstem and our brainstem.

Now, on top of it, has all these other brain structures, but those

brain structures, what they can do are in part limited by the

state that the brainstem is in.

There's a name for this that Dr. Port has created.

It's called neuroception.

Dr. Port has created this word, neuroception.

To explain the phenomena of these hardwired autonomic shifts

within the mammalian organism.

Hardwired is the key here.

There are predictable ways, or even universal ways that hu that

mammals react based on le various levels of safety and danger.

That doesn't mean it looks the same for all of us.

There's a wide variety of what that can look like, but the mammalian

organism u. As a living organism have hardwired responses within you based

on what your senses are detecting.

This is similar to for like a, I don't like comparing to computer,

but it's the best analogy I think we have for a computer.

If you press a certain button, it has a certain response, right?

It's similar, not exactly the same, but very similar for humans.

Or all mammals, I guess all animals that we're focusing on mammals as well.

For, for this, we have these hardwired autonomic shifts that take place

within us, simply as an organism that is primed to survive and always

scanning for the potential to survive.

So the information comes into the five senses, primitive

parts of the brain evaluate for safety or danger or life threat.

These responses are unconscious.

They're biologically hardwired.

Again, this is not a choice.

So we're hardwired to respond to some stimuli in a certain ways, but again,

not gonna look the same for everybody.

For things like the sound of somebody's voice, it's called posity, vocal posity.

If somebody has a lot of posity in their voice, like a, uh, the sing song,

equality of their voice, like right now, I can kind of go up and I can go down.

Me being able to use a larger or wider range of my voice probably is

giving you a neuroception of safety.

So you're neuro accepting that myself, even though you're just

hearing my voice, your neuro accepting that Justin is a safe mammal.

And that might help you in your autonomic nervous system to get

to the top of your polyvagal ladder and to feel safer or safer.

This is different for something like monotone voices, which are

typically a neuroception of danger.

For example, if I lost all vocality and just talked like this, and I

taught you about the polyvagal theory, you might not feel very safe or at

the top of your polyvagal ladder.

Ugh, that was hard to do.

Sorry about that.

You might notice.

There, there was a shift there as I spoke in a monotone, slow voice versus my more

prosthetic voice, which I am speaking with now, more or less, you didn't choose

to respond the way you responded, right?

You just did.

You have these responses built within you.

Let's do a quick thought experiment here, and I want you to, uh, close your eyes.

If you're driving, don't, don't do that.

You can still use your imagination though.

Close your eyes and picture.

Somebody who has wide eyes, their muscles are tense, their head and their neck are

just straight looking at you, and they're just looking straight ahead at you.

Where, how do you feel about that?

Does that bring you to feeling more safe or more in a defensive feelings of state

wide eyes, stiff muscles looking dead on.

Now compare that to a baby that's cooing and smiling and giggling and

they're looking at you in the eyes.

Would that bring you to feelings of safety or of defense?

It's, it would be a different experience, right?

So depending on what we are, neuro accepting as safe or dangerous

or life threat, depending on what we're neuro accepting.

Our own social or defensive behaviors are gonna be triggered as we

drop down or climb up the ladder.

The potential for safe and social behaviors and the depen potential for

defensive behaviors are, it changes when we're in a flight fight state.

We don't need social behavior, so that stuff kind of get

more or less gets turned off.

Neuroception is.

The body's ability.

It's, I mean, in my opinion, it's pretty darn amazing.

It's the body's ability to detect risk outside of our conscious awareness.

Now, again, like just think about if we had to consciously be deciding safety

or danger, the fact that it's autonomic allows us to quickly shift state

and respond hopefully appropriately.

Neuroception shifts our autonomic state.

Up and down the polyvagal ladder, two to those three different primary states.

Basically, as we move down the ladder, we're gonna lose access to the

behaviors that are higher up the ladder.

But what it does is it unlocks defensive behaviors, which is actually really cool.

So it's kinda like a key.

If we neuro set, in my opinion, if we neurop danger, we drop down

the polyvagal ladder, we lose access to our social behaviors,

but it unlocks the capacity to run.

Fight.

You know, if, if you're sitting there right now and a tiger walks in the

room, I don't know why it just does.

Your ability to neurop that is dangerous and I really hope you

do to neurop that is dangerous.

Shift down your Polyvagal ladder into your flight energy is going to potentially

increase the chances of you surviving 'cause that's gonna unlock your capacity.

To probably have a big old adrenaline rush and get the heck outta there.

You're not gonna need to pet the tiger, right?

You're not gonna need to smile at them and use your own vocal prosy.

No, you need to get outta that situation.

So, uh, that, that's, it's a adaptive, it increases the chances of survival.

It's kind of a good thing.

But when it comes to neuroception, you're probably thinking well.

Uh, I, I don't respond to danger in the ways that I'd like to.

I or I don't detect safety in ways that I'd like to.

Well, there, according to Polyvagal theories, there are two.

We kind, we kind of break down neuroception into,

into healthy and unhealthy.

With healthy neuroception, the body detects and shifts to the appropriate

state based on, I'll say the environment.

I mean, it's based on other things as well, but.

Based on the environment, it detects and it shifts to the appropriate state

based on the environment the body uses.

Safe and social behavior uses pro-social behavior in a safe environment.

That makes sense, right?

If you're in a safe environment, we should be able to access the top of our ladder

and utilize our pro-social behavior.

When we're in a safe environment, we do not use things like fighting

or running away that that's only if we're actually in danger.

In a safe environment, we neuro accept safety.

We climb to the top of our autonomic, the Polyvagal ladder, and we access

our safe and social behaviors.

With healthy neuroception, we're better at accurately identifying red flags

and accurately identifying safety.

We're able to, with healthy neuroception, we're able to feel safe with safe others.

We're also able to mobilize when we need to.

We can access the defensive energy when we need to, or the defensive

pathways, uh, when necessary.

But when people are safe, we're also able to access our safety pathways.

Like if you go out on a date with your spouse, let's say ideally we feel safe on

the date with your spouse, but if there's danger, we also would be able to mobilize.

That would be healthy.

Neuroception is that we're in a safe environment with someone we love.

We're able to be and feel safe and access our social behaviors,

but if something happens on that date, we're able to detect it and

mobilize and, and get, get to safety.

This is different than unhealthy neuroception.

This is when the body does not accurately detect and does not shift state based

on the environment that they're in.

That means the body does not run away or does not fight.

When it is in an unsafe situation, the body does not use safe and social

behavior in a safe environment.

So there's like a mismatch.

You're, you're in a safe environment, but you're not accessing the safe

and social pathways, or you're in an environment that is dangerous, but

you're not running away or fighting.

That's called unhealthy neuroception.

We're not accurately shifting state and not accurately

detecting, uh, safety or danger.

This unhealthy neuroception according to Dr. Esson.

I completely agree.

It makes complete sense to me.

This may be at the core of many mental health disorders, not being able to

detect safety or not being able to access those safety pathways would

leave somebody in a defensive state.

They would leave them with that flight fight energy or that shutdown depletion,

the collapse, that lack of energy.

That could look like, well, many, many different, uh,

mental health disorders, right?

Many, a lot of the things from the DSM might be better explained by where

somebody is at on their own polyvagal ladder and whether or not they have more

or less healthy or unhealthy neuroception.

With unhealthy neuroception, there's gonna be a lot of missed red flags.

I work with a lot of teens and their ability to recognize danger in.

Their love interest is like, is very compromised.

And as these teens tell me about their, uh, their boyfriend or their

girlfriend or their significant other, for me on my end, I hear what they're

saying and I'm, red flags are going off for me red, you know, left and right.

But for them, they don't detect it, they don't cept the danger in these, in

these, uh, people that they're with or the environment that, that they're in.

They don't neuro that until.

They're in their own safe and social state and they're better able to

identify it after, you know, therapy.

And I, uh, explain, you know, this is what I'm hearing.

And then they can be like, oh yeah, now I see it.

But only once they have access to their own safe and social

state and that would help them to detect safety or not, or unsafety.

There's also an example that comes up a lot, uh, in therapy.

Again, I work with teens and I hear fairly often about a mom that was

sexually abused that then allows their short-term boyfriend to move in with them.

And the teen that I'm working with, or the children that sexually abused

mom, their neuroception, their ability to detect safety or danger in their

partner is severely compromised.

So having that person move in, they're not picking up on how dangerous

that could be that short term.

Boyfriend or or love interest, they're not detecting the danger in that for

you, you might be into yoga and being still in yoga can be it actually.

It can feel like danger.

It can feel like, well, like unsafety, even though it's literally safe, right?

It actually is safe.

But that individual is having some challenges with neuro accepting safety

and they stay in that defensive state.

Even though it is literally a safe environment with safe people, but

certain poses or the Shavasana, I believe it's called at the end of class, where

they have to lay down and be still, that even though it's safe, literally

they might not be able to neurop the safety in there and climb and at the

top of the ladder and actually, uh, do it and feel safe at the same time.

Kids in class that can't sit still.

Are more concerned about who's saying what and who's looking at who, and that like

that they're not able to detect safety even though classrooms are typically safe.

Not all, of course not.

I know that, but typically classrooms have safe people or safe enough.

They're safe environments with safe teachers, right?

Safe adults, literally.

But the student's capacity to detect that is, it's just compromised.

The final concept that I want to go into here before we delve further into

the Polyvagal theory in future episodes is the concept of story fall state.

This is again from Deb Dana story.

Fall State is the idea that our thoughts reflect what state, what

autonomic state that we are in.

Polyvagal theory in, in the clinical world is a paradigm shift.

So we're asking people to, to look at things differently, and one of the

things is that story follows state, that your autonomic state comes to life, and

then the information's fed up to your brain and your brain's job is to make

sense of what's happening in the body.

So it makes up a story.

And the stories that emerge from dorsal sympathetic and

ventral are very different.

This highlights the idea that our thoughts don't simply exist on their own.

The story in our heads, our thoughts, the story follows the state that we're in.

If we're in a safe and social state, our thoughts are gonna be more hopeful.

Our thoughts are going to involve more critical thinking and

planning and problem solving.

If we're in a flight fight state that sympathetic flight fight energy.

Our thoughts are not gonna have much empathy.

They're gonna be more fear-based.

There's gonna be more about blaming or avoiding responsibility.

Our thoughts are gonna be more about who's out to get us.

It won't be anything empathetic.

It won't be, uh, about, uh, slowing down and thinking critically.

It's gonna be highly reactionary.

The thoughts in the shutdown state are gonna be kind of, uh, hopeless.

They're not gonna, those thoughts are gonna be very judgmental toward

the self especially, and we're still not gonna be able to access

things like critical thinking and weighing pros and cons and being

able to see someone else's viewpoint.

All that, all those skills are kind of lost more, more, or at

least compromise more or less.

So you can see how the story changes depending on my state, not

depending on what I choose to think.

The story that follows the state might not be a reflection of reality.

So someone who's in a very shutdown state who has stories in their head

about how worthless they are, that might not be a reality and, and in my

opinion, it's, it's just not a reality.

So the story that follows the state might be wrong when we're in that

fight energy and we're blaming whoever it is for our problems.

That might not be correct.

It could be.

Not necessarily.

And once we're in our safe and social state, you've probably experienced this

where you're, you know, really upset one moment or really anxious one moment, and

then later on that day, or maybe after you sleep and you wake up the next day,

you look back at the same situation and you just, you feel differently about it.

You think differently about it because you're possibly not in

that defensive state anymore.

You possibly have more access to that safe and social state.

And now when you reflect on the same situation, it just,

your thoughts are different.

It's, it just changes because your state has changed the story.

False state, it's, it's an attempt really to explain what just happened.

It's an attempt to explain why our state is the way it is.

I'm pissed off because of that person.

I'm scared because of this situation.

I feel this way because I'm worthless.

It's an attempt to explain what's happening within us.

So it reflects what's happening within us.

It follows it, and it's trying to explain what just happened or why

we, why we feel the way we feel.

I remember this, uh, one night a couple years ago where I was not quite asleep.

I was pretty close to sleep, and in my room the lights were off.

Outside of the room, I think we had like a whole light on for the kids.

I saw a shadow.

The shadow crept toward, I could- it was only, it was just for a moment,

but the shadow moved toward my room.

Okay.

So it was, it was just a briefest of moments, but the shadow was moving

toward my, the room, middle of the night.

My body, I could feel neurocepted danger.

My muscles tensed.

I held my breath, my heartbeat picked up a little bit.

So, I shifted my state unconsciously into a flight

fight, kind of sympathetic energy.

But then in my head, a image popped in my brain of a burglar.

So the story in my mind was burglar.

Someone's robbing the house, right?

Story follows state.

The state changed first without me being aware of it, and then the

image of a burlar popped in my mind.

It ended up being my son.

If, if you have a kid, they often do very scary things at nighttime

when you're trying to sleep.

So that's what ended up being, it was fine.

I also, I remember I had this, uh, procedure done,

which I'm not gonna go into.

But I had a procedure done where I was awake, numb, but awake.

During the procedure, something happened.

There was a, I don't know what the heck he was doing, izing or something like that,

but I felt in my body, I felt this shock.

It felt like either a burn or some sort of electrical, uh, spark.

I don't know.

But it was painful.

The idea is it was painful.

That's a basic idea.

So there was the pain.

My heart rate kicked way up.

And this is again, it just, instantaneous heartbeat picked up muscles flexed.

I know this because I was laying on the hospital bed, the

surgical bed or procedural bed, I don't know what you call it.

And when I felt that heat or that spark, whatever it was, my

body basically folded in half.

Like my torso went up, my legs went up, kinda like, you know,

like a, it's folding in half.

My body responded, instantaneously shifted, state tensed up, and I

know it was a fight state 'cause I couldn't run away from this.

I was in a procedure and I know my body went into more of a fight

state in that very brief moment.

I also know this because the story that popped into my mind, the words

that popped in my mind that came outta my mouth was, "What the fuck?"

Definitely fight energy.

Like, "What are you doing? What is happening down there?"

So we're talking about instantaneous, tiny moments of time where we're neuro

accepting safety or danger or life threat.

And then our bo- our autonomic nervous system shifts.

Our body is responding.

It feels different, the experience is different, and

our thoughts change as well.

Tiny moments of time that can get stretched out and

we can get kind of stuck.

Again, we can get stuck in these certain feedback loops or, or defense strategies

can literally be stuck... The bottom line is to think about feedback loops

and ask the question, is the autonomic nervous system in the state of defense?

I know this is a lot of information.

We're really just laying some foundations here for what's coming next.

We, we gotta go deeper into all of these states.

We gotta go deeper into what trauma is.

We gotta go deeper on, what the heck do we do about all this?

So we have a long way to go, and this is a lot.

I know.

This is what I want you to take away from all this.

Okay.

The, the Polyvagal theory is a new paradigm, and this

is what I love about it.

It's, it's important to me to convey useful information that enable people to

understand who they are as human beings.

There's almost a strange metaphor.

It's like when, say, um, battery's not included.

In human beings, the manual wasn't included.

Right.

And so it's really a, a retrospective development of a manual of

what it is to be a human being.

And we, polyvagal theory has some of these features.

It brings a new paradigm to you, to mental health and to me it's in, it

fits along with the DSM, but in my opinion, it's a different paradigm

and I think it's a more useful one.

It's a way to look at us.

And if you're a therapist, a way to look at your clients as an issue

of being stuck in a defensive state versus having some sort of disorder.

I, I think what you would find is that it really doesn't matter

what the diagnosis is, that there, they share some common features.

And the common features have to do with state regulation.

And in fact, the manifestation, whether it's DID or borderline, has to do with the

strategy that the higher brain structures developed to regulate their state.

Polyvagal theory also brings with it a roadmap of change.

'cause we have the polyvagal ladder, so we kind of have some

milestones of what change looks like.

It's not a therapeutic modality in and of itself, but it is a way to track

change and to understand change, but also understand ourselves as therapists,

to understand ourselves as parents, or as teachers and whatever role we have.

It's a new way of looking at us and our, and our interactions.

I really wanna stress, in my opinion here, there is way more utility of

the polyvagal theory in our lives than other paradigms of mental health

and relationships and, and whatnot.

And there's more utility with, in my opinion, far less judgment.

This is not, there's no judgment in this.

This is just biology.

It's just biology.

That's it.

So if we can learn the new paradigm of the Polyvagal Theory, and I, and

I hope that you're buying into this and you want to get more because

we got, I got a lot more coming.

If we can buy into the Polyvagal Theory as a new paradigm and then

apply that paradigm to ourselves, that can create a, a new narrative.

"So if we have these feelings, what do we make of those feelings?

How do we, how do we use those feelings to create a, a reality?

And the, the issue is the personal narrative.

When this is where polyvagal theory became useful to many

people with a variety of disorders.

It enabled them to inform their personal narrative that functionally

there was a reason why they were experiencing these things.

Then a different reality would start, in a sense, it was a self-healing process.

If the higher brain structures are cognitive, or a sense of awareness

becomes attuned to what's going on in our body, and that makes sense in a

psychoeducational way, then it creates a container on top of those feelings."

So the Polyvagal theory can be a new narrative for you in understanding

yourself, understanding how you feel, why you are the way you are,

why you aren't the way you aren't.

Without judgment.

It just, it is what it is for now, and it's an issue of being

stuck potentially and not broken.

Thank you so much for listening.

I know this is a long episode.

We're laying the foundations here.

We got a long way to go.

I hope that through this episode you've learned something new to help

you climb your own polyvagal ladder.

Bye.

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Please consult with your therapist or seek for one in your area if you're

experiencing mental health symptoms.

Nothing in this podcast should be construed to be specific life advice.

It's for educational and entertainment purposes only.

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