Polyvagal Concept: An Method to Understanding Trauma

Co-authored by Lotus Huyen Vu and Robert T. Muller, Ph.D.

In 1994, Stephen Porges launched the polyvagal concept, primarily based on an evolutionary, neuropsychological understanding of the vagus nerve’s position in emotion regulation, social connection, and worry response. Since then, the idea has introduced a brand new understanding of trauma and restoration, offering for the primary time a physiological clarification for trauma survivors’ experiences.

Deb Dana, a scientific social employee and therapist, acknowledged the necessity for a sensible utility of polyvagal concept and has tailored the idea for scientific and therapeutic functions. Dana authored the books The Polyvagal Concept in Remedy, Scientific Purposes of the Polyvagal Concept, and most just lately, Polyvagal Workouts for Security and Connection, printed in 2020. Dana defined the idea and the way it organizes the nervous system into three key rules: hierarchy, neuroception, and co-regulation.

Hierarchy refers to 3 nervous system states—ventral vagal, sympathetic, and dorsal vagal—and their activation in a specific order. Dana states that ventral vagal helps us really feel secure, present up, talk, and join with others. She calls ventral vagal house, the place of security the place we need to be more often than not. Sympathetic is that power of flight or struggle that helps us mobilize to outlive in harmful environments. If we can’t struggle or take flight, dorsal vagal has us shut down, collapse, or go numb to guard us.

Dana describes the precept of neuroception as our nervous system robotically scanning the atmosphere for cues of hazard beneath our consciousness. She states that it listens from the within of our physique, exterior in the environment, and between the interplay of two folks. Neuroception determines whether or not we’re in states of ventral vagal, sympathetic, or dorsal vagal relying on the environment.

Dana describes co-regulation as “the organic crucial to be related with others to outlive. We hope to fulfill others who’re regulated and welcoming.” The longing to be safely related with different folks persists all through our lifetime, even when self-regulating.

Dana explains why the polyvagal concept is important for therapists and shoppers alike by saying the idea made a lot sense to her when explaining the inside workings of our mind and nervous system as a result of it’s the automobile by way of which we drive by way of life. Dana encourages her shoppers to know their nervous system in order that they’ll navigate the extra peculiar challenges in on a regular basis life. The nervous system informs the mind; it’s important to first comprehend the processes of the nervous system earlier than understanding the mind. Dana means that that is the basic breakthrough that the polyvagal concept proposed.

Christine* is at the moment present process the therapeutic therapy of Dana’s technique of rhythm regulation, derived from the polyvagal concept. She describes her expertise: “It was an eye-opener to return to know why my nervous system reacts a sure manner at instances. I used to be continually in a sympathetic state and infrequently felt depleted on the finish of the day. My nervous system was caught on the hierarchy. Figuring out the place I used to be on the ladder, I began to meditate and discovered deep respiration to relax. Abruptly, my mind didn’t catastrophize as a lot anymore.”

The polyvagal concept additionally explains why some victims don’t run away or resist within the presence of abuse or violence. Their nervous programs swap to the dorsal vagal response of numbing or immobilization for survival as a substitute of the sympathetic response of struggle or flight. For the trauma survivor, the nervous system has change into fastened within the sympathetic or dorsal states with out returning to the ventral state. Within the utility of polyvagal-informed remedy, it’s important for therapists to assist shoppers set up security by guiding them again to their ventral vagal state.

Caught within the sympathetic state, people with unhealed trauma could carry a narrative of worry, mistrust, dysregulation, and nervousness, whereas these caught within the dorsal vagal state could carry one in every of loneliness, disconnection, and numbness. When survivors heal and reside within the ventral vagal state, they’re able to let go of those tales and change into extra related and attuned with others.

Though the idea reveals promise in therapeutic therapy, some query the polyvagal concept as there isn’t any clear consensus amongst biologists that the dorsal brainstorm or dorsal-ventral centres are accountable for parasympathetic management of coronary heart price throughout psychological dissociation. Future analysis could make this connection clearer.

Nonetheless, the brand new understanding introduced by polyvagal concept pertains to the vital position of the nervous system in shaping the notion and understanding of trauma.

*Identify has been modified for anonymity.

Copyright Robert T. Muller, Ph.D.