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A Polyvagal Primer: The Story of Polyvagal Institute and the Basics of Polyvagal Theory
587 Plays4 days ago
In this episode of "Wired for Connection," Travis hosts Deb Dana and Stephen Porges, who discuss the origins and developments of the Polyvagal Theory and its applications in therapeutic settings. Here are three key takeaways from their conversation:
- Polyvagal Theory's Impact on Therapy: The theory revolutionized understanding of trauma by introducing concepts like neuroception and the body's hierarchical response to threats. Its focus on embodying therapeutic principles rather than creating a strict protocol allows for flexibility and integration in various therapeutic models.
- The Power of Co-regulation: Stephen and Deb emphasize the importance of co-regulation in therapy and daily interactions. By being present and accessible, therapists and individuals can create a safe space that fosters healing and connection. This extends beyond therapy, influencing relationships and societal interactions.
- Embracing Evolution and Community: The conversation highlights the significance of the Polyvagal family, a growing community of practitioners and individuals applying these principles globally. This community supports the evolution of understanding by sharing experiences and expanding the theory's applications.
Explore how Polyvagal Theory can be integrated into your personal and professional life. Consider how the principles of co-regulation and accessibility might enhance your interactions and support your well-being. Engage with the Polyvagal community to share insights and further the development of these transformative ideas.
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Instagram: @polyvagalinstitute
Email: community@polyvagal.org
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Transcript
Introduction and Aim of Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
Travis, this is why you're here. The issue issue is, Deb and i basically drank the drank the Kool-Aid, we saw the water, we got the glimmer, we got the glimpse into what it would be like yeah to have nervous systems of a whole society.
00:00:17
Speaker
basically focusing on principles of hierarchical regulation and where social co-regulation becomes the pinnacle of what we want out of it being a transformative human.
Polyvagal Theory and Evolution
00:00:29
Speaker
That is Dr. Stephen Porges, who's a renowned researcher and scientist, celebrated for his groundbreaking polyvagal theory, which has significantly impacted the trauma therapy community.
00:00:41
Speaker
His work emphasizes the importance of physiological states in shaping behavior and highlights the role of social engagement in human evolution.
00:00:53
Speaker
And he has been introduced by many like this, that Steve is a researcher, but he has a heart like a clinician. and would say. When the cues of danger outweigh the cues of safety, you're going to move into a survival response. Because you're you're that's what an adaptive survival response, that's what it's meant to do.
00:01:13
Speaker
And I love that Steve always taught me, you put adaptive in front of survival response, always. And that is Deb Dana, who is a distinguished clinician and advocate of polyvagal theory in therapeutic settings.
Podcast Origin and Involvement with Polyvagal Institute
00:01:26
Speaker
Her work focuses on translating scientific principles into practical therapeutic strategies, emphasizing the importance of connection and regulation in mental health.
00:01:39
Speaker
And she has been recognized as a leading figure in integrating polyvagal theory into clinical practice.
00:01:48
Speaker
Welcome to Wired for Connection, a Polyvagal podcast. I am your host and my name is Travis. Deb and Steve, I am so excited to be part of kind of what the Polyvagal Institute is doing and kind of part of this origin story for Wired for Connection, this kind of podcast. And so um i thank you both just for being here and and just taking your time out today to to share a bit about the story. And so Let's just jump
Collaborative Beginnings in Clinical Practice
00:02:14
Speaker
right in. Can you tell us a bit about kind of the origin story of how you guys met and got into this line of work?
00:02:21
Speaker
Well, we're going to have to start because Deb called me, so let's go there.
00:02:27
Speaker
On a phone, no less, right? yeah're Back in the day when when people picked up a phone and and and talked, it was it was lovely. Was it a rotary phone or was it a... ah ah you I'm saying that because I'm also, i yeah, I had one. That was my first It wasn't quite that long ago. how yeah I'll thank Alan Shore for making the introduction because Alan had been to Maine and done a workshop for my my group and I had asked him if he knew you because I was trying to get an invitation to to connect with you to come to Maine. and He said, oh, I i know Steve and he
00:03:05
Speaker
made the introduction and then I called you up and it was lovely. It was lovely. you were you were very You were very friendly, which is what I know of you. And and um you you were, i was intimidated to call you, which is, you know, that was a long time ago and you were like my hero. And I had read Polyvagal Theory, your your book and thought, oh my gosh, this this man has offered me something that was missing from my clinical work.
00:03:35
Speaker
And I just wanted to to talk to you and have you come and explain it in a little more depth to me and and to my ah fellow clinicians so that we could become polyvagal guided in our work.
00:03:49
Speaker
yeah So it was really quite a lovely weekend. We were there with you. Sue and I were there and felt very welcomed. And, of course, you had to promise us a lot of lobster. I remember that. Yeah. And um it was it was quite enjoyable. And for me, it's always been because that actually I know exactly what year that was.
00:04:09
Speaker
That was August 2013. And I will share why that. So that was the last talk I had before I had to go in for surgery. yeah so i had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and basically this was the last talk before i went through the procedures and it's always nice to be with people who are engaging and interested in in who you are and what you do so it's kind of like a ah time landmark for me and so i do remember coming out and uh enjoying it very much and actually enjoying meeting Bob and talking and having a good time, learning about the minor league baseball team in in
Integrating Polyvagal Principles into Therapy
00:04:52
Speaker
Maine.
00:04:52
Speaker
right ah but But the part that is, getting again, ah we need to really put this out there. I have always viewed myself as a researcher and a scientist, and I always find it find myself feeling very flattered that people who are actually doing the work, meaning working with clients, find the ideas of interest and they can use it and they can put basically bring it to life and that's really has been our relationship and i relate you know learning in sense talking about the ideas but you as one of the first major people taking the ideas and literally translating it into
00:05:33
Speaker
a therapeutic strategy. And you know, the point, well and we've had this discussion multiple times, the issue was these were principles that could be embedded in any type of therapeutic strategy.
00:05:45
Speaker
So it was not like you have a polyvagal treatment model, that you're polyvagal informed in your treatment model. And that was not done by mistake or by accident. It was like saying,
00:05:56
Speaker
I'm not branding it. I'm basically saying these are principles that people can use. And when I saw what you did with it, actually, wasn't at that point. It was when we met again and we met at Bessel's meeting.
00:06:09
Speaker
And then we talked about doing the book together. And now it's back to you. I love that you have that belief about your work, about polyvagal theory, that that is that it's an approach, that it can be applied anywhere and that it doesn't become a protocol, right? That that's not what it is. And your generosity in wanting it to be out there in the world.
00:06:34
Speaker
I think is is so important to to respect and and to to follow with. So, you know, it as a as a mentor in the beginning, as somebody who was, you know, saying, yes, keep doing what you're doing, and that belief that we offer it generously to the world has been really important. You know, we don't we don't create a a protocol. we We create an approach. We don't certify people. You can't be certified in a theory. we You can be informed by. And I think that that has meant so much to me and and you know is is what you and I continue to believe is the way to to move forward. Well, it's so important to me that we don't get into competition about brands. And I still remember the in the areas of somatic therapies and areas of mental health, branding,
00:07:23
Speaker
Branding became very important because it also meant livelihood. So you had this dialectic between the passion to be helpful and then people had to make a living. And so you start getting into various gray areas of competition. And I didn't want that. I saw polyvagal. The term I used to use is there's something called the cipher, which is a a sense, a way of decoding or decoding anything. And I saw polyvagal theory as a cipher of a major component of human experience. And I just wanted to see I want to see talented, brilliant, intuitive people take the principles and
00:08:02
Speaker
and then expand into the world that they knew better than I did. yeah So what I often would say is that, you know, one can do research, one can create theory, but someone has to apply it to for it to be meaningful.
00:08:15
Speaker
Yeah. Thank you, Deb. Yeah. Well, thank you. for mean, my life changed when I read your book. you Truly, it was a before and after moment for me. But then it really changed. changed again um when we met the the one of the memories i have of that um time in maine was you and sue and me on that stone beach looking for heart-shaped rocks right to me that's like i just i have a picture of that i have a picture of sue holding a rock and you ah you know in back of sue hugging sue and it was like oh that to me was this beautiful you know heartfelt moment so yeah and and i think my my work
00:08:53
Speaker
bringing your work to life in the way I do has been filled with, with heart all along. Cause you're right. We were not, um we're not in competition with, with, you know, people where it's a collaboration. And from that beautiful regulated state of ventral, it there's abundance, right? This is plenty for everyone.
00:09:13
Speaker
Yeah. For me. Okay. So I, I was welcomed into this, the community of let's say trauma community from two different, ah let's say, parts of the country, the East Coast people with Bessel and the West Coast people with Marion Solomon, Dan Siegel, Alan Shore, and different perspectives, but great passion, great insights. And for me, i would come to those meetings and I would talk.
00:09:39
Speaker
And what I would always say is, unlike my other academic colleagues, of course, the academic colleagues who would be invited to these talks would come in, fly in, give their talk, and then they'd leave.
00:09:50
Speaker
yeah And they wouldn't spend time listening to the other talks or meeting the people in the audience who often were either therapists or people who were on their own journey. And
Therapist Presence and Co-regulation
00:10:01
Speaker
I took this as as an opportunity to go to school.
00:10:05
Speaker
And so i I learned and I learned because I felt in a sense that I was since the ideas were more theoretical, I felt I didn't know the experiential part of it, not to the the level that my colleagues did. But over the decades, and now it's been decades, I actually feel reasonably confident that I have a good sense of the experiential because I've listened. I've listened to both therapists and clients.
00:10:31
Speaker
And, you know, and I'm sure you have this as well, Deb. We get emails. All the time. And emails, what do the emails tell us? They tell us that once they grasp onto these principles, there was a transformative experience for them.
00:10:45
Speaker
Life made sense. So you talk about glimmers. I talk about a sense of experiencing gratitude. It's at those moments that I understand what gratitude is about. it's part For me, it's this ability to translate an idea into a glimmer yeah in other people's faces and minds.
00:11:05
Speaker
Yeah. and And we've presented together a fair number of times. and And so we both know that experience of so many people simply want to share their moment with us. They they want to tell us how polyvagal theory has changed their lives. And I think for me, i yes, it can feel exhausting sometimes, right? But it never it never gets old. Hearing how this work has shaped people's lives in in a new direction is amazing.
00:11:34
Speaker
In depth, you know, it changes one's role in life. When you start realizing that your presence is important to others, just being there, just acknowledging their presence can be literally transformative in their lives.
00:11:49
Speaker
Then you say, I'm here. And what I actually came up with is other type of way of expressing it. And that is, I now feel that we only have one gift to give. And that's our own accessibility.
00:12:01
Speaker
And in being accessible, what does that do to the other? It opens them up. And it's a gift that keeps giving. yeah I love that giving. what I keep coming to mind you guys are talking, just even hearing this back and forth as is this theme of giving generously, of generosity and not, or my mind is going, not othering yeah other modalities, but it's more of this kind of coming together integration of We're giving generously not to create a certification, I think you mentioned earlier, which i don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with that. I think there's a need in time and place, but something that you both have co-created has been this thing about the whole thing is about giving away presence and how does that sitting with others, like that to me is just standing out.
00:12:46
Speaker
maybe You can't be an effective co-regulator unless that is part of your persona. And again, ah whether we talk about, i flip into the academic world, ah which is very much a pragmatic and almost business world, except rather than money, it's called intellectual property.
00:13:07
Speaker
And people are continually leveraging their presence by their intellectual property. And what Deb and I are really saying is we're lever leveraging our presence by
Goal of Therapy: Safety and Connection
00:13:17
Speaker
how it impacts on others, how it makes them feel better, more real. And I really have bought into this whole concept that all of all therapy, and primarily the therapy that Deb's been involved with in this community of people dealing with trauma, all therapy is about re-embodiedness.
00:13:37
Speaker
coming back to your body, being safe in your body, feeling your body. In a sense, another form of co-regulation that I'm now using in my the descriptions is literally ah co-regulation between the organ above your neck and the organs below your neck.
00:13:56
Speaker
And in a sense, what we don't realize is that the culture that we're in has recruited or informed our cortex to inhibit everything else in our body.
00:14:07
Speaker
And we call that mental effort. We call that being smart. We call it being worked too hard, stressed. We call it all these other types of things. But functionally, when you look at, a sense, the neurophysiology of it, it's cortical inhibition of the brainstem's native ability to regulate our organs to help us heal, grow, and restore.
00:14:30
Speaker
Health, growth, and restoration. And that when you when you talk about that, it it takes me back to, and I love that you met Bob when he was still Bob before his stroke and then knew him after his stroke. and And you were one of the first people I reached out to when Bob had his stroke to say, what do I do? Because I was thinking you'd give me this great science about new stroke procedures to to recover from.
00:14:57
Speaker
and i don't know if you remember what you said, but you said that my job, was to be regulated so that Bob's body could do the necessary task of of rehabilitation. So that's health growth restoration that he needed me as a regulating presence. yeah it's so It's challenging. So the part you leave that left out is when you are human as we are and we're in a situation in which a loved one really very ill or loses function, It's a trigger to our own nervous system. It's a type of griefing.
00:15:34
Speaker
It's a trauma. But we have to step back and say, what can we do? So we have to respect that we're reacting. yes This model is really becoming very very yeah ingrained in my mind.
00:15:49
Speaker
that I'll give you the real more recent example is that ah What went on in Israel ah with the Hamas intrusion? The therapist contacted me and they said, well, what can we do now? I was on the phone with on Zoom with them for a few minutes. I realized basically they were angry and scared at the same point.
00:16:10
Speaker
And what they wanted to do, like most people who are totally immobilized, is to work with their clients. And they wanted to help fix the situation because they had internalized their responsibility.
00:16:23
Speaker
I listened to them and I looked at them and said, they can't do therapy, not in that state. Because what they are doing is broadcasting their own physiological state to their clients. And I said, you need to respect that your body is responding.
00:16:39
Speaker
But now you need to learn strategies to co-regulate with your colleagues before you see your clients. And it's it's this it's a message that we think that in doing, we're fixing and helping.
00:16:53
Speaker
But it's not in doing, it's in the quality of what we are doing. Yeah, I think the, you know, I i tell people in my in my trainings, the first question you have to ask is, what does my nervous system need in order to find the way to regulation?
00:17:06
Speaker
And I can't do anything else. And then I can ask the question, what does that other nervous system need in this moment? Not to be regulated, but just what does it need to feel a little safer, to feel a little more more welcomed? Yeah.
00:17:18
Speaker
Yeah, i think we do. we We want to do from a sympathetic drivenness rather than a regulated. It's so cultural. In a sense, we feel that if we're not doing actively something, we're not doing.
00:17:32
Speaker
yeah And in the case of like in in the situation with Bob, situation, even let's say my own post-surgical experience, the all I want or all we really want is someone to be there.
00:17:45
Speaker
yeah And the person who is there can be triggered by what's happening to us. But it's not our responsibility as the one who's being who's going through surgery or having a stroke to co-regulate our... So in a sense, we have to understand that in times...
00:18:05
Speaker
We ourselves are going to have to literally contain and understand what our body is saying to us, help art learn how to regulate it, not in a state like this, but with, let's say, that my cat is sitting on the chair, your cat, or friends, or go for a walk, where we understand that our body can be calmed down, but it needs to be acknowledged, not necessarily at this moment.
00:18:32
Speaker
So I've been really rephrasing this whole issue of both ah understanding empathy and compassion from a polyvagal perspective.
Empathy, Neuroception, and Compassion in Therapy
00:18:42
Speaker
Empathy is neuroception.
00:18:44
Speaker
I see pain in others. I feel pain. Well, I'll tell you, you know, empathy is not very helpful. no If you want to a sense support someone who's in pain. Right. Right. And in fact, in the trauma world, what is the, what is one of the features that most clients say?
00:19:01
Speaker
They don't want to talk about their trauma to others because the others start grimacing and asking for retribution when all the client or the person wants is really Someone to share with them in the moment that they can express their own bodily feelings. Yeah.
00:19:17
Speaker
Yeah. That place of being with. Yeah. And if I'm dysregulated, I become a threat to my, anybody else's nervous system, not a restorative resource, but a threat. So, yeah. Yeah.
00:19:28
Speaker
but But you're a natural. Well, I have to say there are many moments when I think I was a threat to Bob's nervous system because it's hard to stay regulated, you know? But, but yeah I would say the understanding of that is a very good,
00:19:42
Speaker
yeah educational, if we can step back from it. And of course you would be. It was important to you, your life. There was a dysregulation of predictability. ah It's not merely, everything is thrown into the wind. And, you know, it's not like we' we're 15 year olds and we have different dreams and things move on. This is our life. And a sense, in your life was really kind of like planning out the golden years would want to use it. And now everything is something different. Yeah.
00:20:14
Speaker
I like that. You know, step back is is so important to be able to step back and have a bit ah different perspective. yeah And to appreciate the mixed into one's own grief and sorrow can also be anger.
00:20:29
Speaker
Sure. yeah Yeah. We get all all the states going all the time, don't we? Well, the states, you see, we have the states. They're not that complex. yeah The narratives are. Yeah, the stories that the states bring are quite fun. Yes, exactly. And I think if if you and I, and hopefully you more than I, leave something for humanity, it's that the story, the story is...
00:20:53
Speaker
I always basically make it very simple say we have this very creative brain, big brain. It takes the information and makes a narrative in which we are always the one that has been, an injustice has been acted out on us. So we're always going to come out heroic or victimized in our narratives.
00:21:15
Speaker
And the issue is once we step back and say, look, the physiology has triggered this, I only have a few options of labeling this. Maybe if my body calms down, different options occur.
00:21:27
Speaker
yeah So it's the space. ah This is what Viktor Frankl said. The space between stimulus and response is where free will yeah lives. And what I say is the space, the stimulus creates neuroception. But the space between neuroception and the behavior is where compassion can live, including self-compassion.
Curiosity, Self-compassion, and Physiological Reactions
00:21:48
Speaker
So we can, in sense, say, oh, my body's reacting. And we can literally take a time and say, my body's reacting. Not, it's all because of you.
00:21:56
Speaker
Right. right so So you do compassion and self-compassion. and I usually start with a bit of curiosity. Because self-compassion is a huge reach. Compassion, okay, curiosity is like, ooh, I can start there, drop a curiosity, I know I'm on the right path at least, right? You are, in a sense. It's because you can articulate it in a way.
00:22:18
Speaker
For me, there is curiosity as well because it's the peculiar, in a sense, if I get triggered, the curiosity gets triggered as well for me because I start asking, why is this important to me to react?
00:22:32
Speaker
Yeah. And then I start saying, well, there are really not that many things that are important to me. i mean, I don't mean to say, but, you know, there are things that are trivial that get you feeling like you have to react. And I go on and say, why is this happening? That's the curiosity. yeah But you have, in a sense, this beautiful ah therapist co-regulatory mind and presence that it works.
00:22:57
Speaker
yeah you You do it naturally. I think it's so true, too, that what you guys are saying is this the interplay between nervous system response and the strong narratives that we tend to derive that...
00:23:09
Speaker
at least my experience working with clients, even my own personal life, where I've gotten more and stuck is not so much my nervous system. It's been, what's that story I'm telling myself? And that's the stickiest part is that story can override. Sometimes I see that the nervous system getting stuck. Now, Travis, you have to ask, why does the story override? It's because the character in that story has to be in the best light in terms of your narrative. You want to be the hero or the victim. You do not want to be the one aggressor or the one that's hurtful to others.
00:23:42
Speaker
right It's interesting because we therapists love story. We love story. And yet... you know if you If you get stuck in the story, it's like i like to say you're swimming upstream against the current because what you really need to do is get to state and begin to change the state and then you're going with the flow because every the story organically changes as the state changes. so But that's hard to do.
00:24:07
Speaker
So, Deb, how many people have said to you, oh, you mean that my bodily state impacts on my behavior? Yeah, right. the way I think? yeah Yeah. You mean it's not all in my mind? Yeah. yeah i yeah yeah it's And, you know, what's fascinating, Steve, is you give people a tiny experience of it.
00:24:28
Speaker
Right. So you take your, you know, beautiful three organizing principles. And really, if I'm just working with neuroception and hierarchy, you give them a tiny little experience.
00:24:39
Speaker
And it's like the light bulb goes off for them. I love that moment. Right. And they go, oh, I get it now because they get it here. It's not here. It's now here. It's like, oh, and now they're now they're hooked, which is lovely. Right. And if we think about co-regulation, that third organizing principle, that's why it works.
00:24:56
Speaker
Because I am with, and I'm not telling them how to or or giving them an agenda. I'm just with and allowing them, you know, showing them the map and saying, try it out.
00:25:08
Speaker
And the part that I really would like to emphasize now is that our society talks about self-regulation. I know. Without understanding that. Co-regulation creates the resources yeah for self-regulation. yeah and And it's, again, this notion that we are a single organism and we tend not to respect our own evolutionary history as a social species. Yeah.
00:25:34
Speaker
And that's really where polyvagal theory comes
Social Connection and Human Evolution
00:25:36
Speaker
in. It says, yeah, you share things with reptiles and other vertebrae, but we are a social species. And what that means is that for us to really feel safe, we have to feel safe with others.
00:25:49
Speaker
and Here's a question. I'm to drop this in because this is an interesting topic, and then we'll get into kind of how you guys see and play out the three organizing principles. but This lot sparked my mind. um We're in a society that, and I've seen this too in comparison to what we're talking about, the polyvagal theory, and that we're socialized.
00:26:07
Speaker
you know, that we're wired for connection, this concept of self-healing, that it's this push for self, like almost as a capital S and self.
00:26:17
Speaker
Can you guys speak a little bit about that? Actually, let me start on that. And let's start even with like illness like cancer, which is kind of like a interesting prototype of a dysregulatory system.
00:26:29
Speaker
And what does society say? It says you need to fight cancer. Well, those of us who have had cancer realize that it's not fighting cancer, it's learning from cancer.
00:26:41
Speaker
And it's not like you're saying you you welcome it, but you are understanding where it's coming from and what you can do to optimize your own health. And so what we end up doing when we say fight we're saying we're going to recruit our sympathetic nervous system.
00:26:57
Speaker
And that then creates all the background states and physiological reactions that literally create chronic diseases, chronic pain, chronic disorders. So it has to be a much more sophisticated one saying you need to allow your body to do what it evolved to do, which is to heal.
00:27:15
Speaker
It's not a cortical event. It's the cortex allowing those lower brainstem areas to promote healing. And this is complicated for our society.
00:27:26
Speaker
We want to fix and we want to fix it immediately. The irony is that once we, in sense, remove that inhibition of the brainstem, in sense, get that anger and that fight and that mobilization off the cortex, guess what happens to the cortex as the lower brain structures start to regulate?
00:27:43
Speaker
The signals up to the cortex now become much more creative, expansive, and more interesting. So as opposed to people ruminating, which is, again, features, which is part of this inhibitory bit, people who are, when they're trying to relax, they jump out of bed because they got to do that email or check that message.
00:28:02
Speaker
That's all inhibitory of those brainstem systems. It creates problems with it. I love that, Steve. I love that you talk about the path through cancer. is so It's not that fight, but the learning from being with, yeah being informed by something. yeah yeah so So there's real interesting, there are interesting data out there, like outcomes ah from cancer based on a heart rate variability data.
00:28:29
Speaker
And what they're saying is if you have low heart rate variability, your Gleason scores, which means your numbers, are destiny. If you have high heart rate variability, which reflects more of this autonomic feedback loops, more regulation, then Gleason numbers are almost unrelated to outcome.
00:28:49
Speaker
Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, you talk about the self-healing. I think we do live in a society, at least here in the Western world, where independence is privileged over connection. You know, so yeah we need to find where I do it myself, right? and And for many of us who grew up where doing it ourselves was the safest experience, couldn't, didn't have others predictably regulated of this to depend on, that just feeds right into it, right? Mm-hmm.
00:29:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah It's I mean, it's not like we haven't learned our lessons. The question is, why was the curriculum set up that way?
Accumulation vs. Relationships and Connection
00:29:30
Speaker
And because it doesn't lead to health, it doesn't lead to transformative experiences, and it doesn't lead to creativity. Yeah. So it challenges us as a resource.
00:29:40
Speaker
Yet that's what our society does. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why, so I think, Travis, this is why you're here. The issue is, Deb and i basically drank the drank the Kool-Aid, we saw the water, we got the glimmer, we got the glimpse into what it would be like yeah to have nervous systems of a whole society, basically focusing on principles of hierarchical regulation and where social co-regulation
00:30:10
Speaker
becomes the pinnacle of what we want out of it being a transformative human. In a society that said you can't trust others, you need to accumulate. And we measure transformative experience by how much you accumulate. And that's really the society we live in. And we're all victim of that. We accumulate degrees. In academics, we accumulate publications and grant dollars, spheree of a sphere of influence, citations.
00:30:37
Speaker
You know, we this is how we... define ourselves and the issue is do we define ourselves in terms of our relationships and the history of humanity has always been i would say the true history of humanity has been in terms of relationships uh so to me when people's okay this is how people used to introduce me at these clinical talks steve's a researcher but He has a heart like a clinician. There you go. And to me, that was the greatest compliment anyone could give me. and and then like that
00:31:11
Speaker
I go back to when we um were working on the clinical applications book, and that's where the polyvagal family began. that you know We would find people to do a chapter, and Steve would you would send me the the name of the person and say, here's another member of our polyvagal family.
00:31:30
Speaker
And so that's where it started. And now every time I teach, I say, you are now part of the polyvagal family. It's a huge family now, right? yeah But that's what it is. It's it's all about community and connection. to that That co-regulation, that on the the foundation of of having people in our lives we can count on, we can then self-regulate from safety rather than out of survival.
00:31:54
Speaker
And that's okay. You can do both, but you have to have the community first. So Deb, what I'm seeing, and this is really, i see as our goal, was create a community that was self-organizing.
00:32:06
Speaker
And and and self-re basically sustainable, self-organizing, and expanding. And where people would take the principles, move it into education, move it into business, and watching that occur is really touching. yeah I agree. I say that when people say, so how do I do this with, and they give me their specialty. And I say, I don't know. My job is to help you really embody the three organizing principles, and then you're going to go figure it out because you are a creative human who's going to bring it to life in whatever way you
00:32:37
Speaker
want to And I think we're seeing that happen, right? All around the world. It's exciting. Yeah. And I love that the polyvagal family. And I mean, part of what you both and others have created is that that invitation, that call to people's kind of deep souls or whatever you want to use, nervous systems, if there's this family. And and I'm part of that family.
00:32:56
Speaker
family as well, that part of even doing this is like it's spreading and growing. And it is an invitation is this deep connection in the soul, which I think allows for self healing because but the foundation is is the relationships. And I think that's so important. And really hearing both of you speak on this, you're really hearing that that heartbeat that this is our vision. and yeah and it's it's more than it's not a destination, right? It's not a a thing you achieve.
00:33:23
Speaker
It's the fertile ground for other things to grow. and At one of the PVI meetings, Deb, I remember just standing up and saying, What we want is a place, and community in which people feel safe enough yeah to be who they are. And then the brilliance will come out. And remember, safe enough to be who you are is not the world we live in. You know, talk to any academic or any professional or any performer.
00:33:51
Speaker
They don't feel safe. yeah So the issue is, what would life be like if we so felt safe enough to be who we are? Yeah. my my My tagline on my website is safe enough to fall in love with life.
00:34:04
Speaker
It's about being safe enough. yeah The poet shows. yeah And I'm wondering as we, as we, you know with all of this, like how, cause this is obviously you guys have been playing in this sandbox, if you will, this, this for a long time now. And it's,
00:34:19
Speaker
I'm sure it's evolved a bit and shifted a bit. um And I'm wondering, looking at just for the listeners who are either new to polyvagal theory and maybe the people who've been in the family for a while, but want to hear a fresh kind of version of it. Like if we can we speak a bit about how you both see and or play with the three organizing principles with the hierarchy, the neuroception and co-regulation. Can you speak a bit more detailed about that from your perspectives now after kind of being in this for so many years?
00:34:48
Speaker
I'm going to let Deb do that because Deb is the reducer of principles. i I am the conservative scientist who keeps adding more principles. He does. I love it. How many are you up to now? I don't know. i don't know um I don't know. I can remember the three. So let's start there. Well, that's kind of like B-sides, though, Steve. It's like, you know, that's why artists have B-sides is that, hey, there's ah this is all the stuff that we couldn't put on the album.
00:35:13
Speaker
It's a whole other album. but important well it's it's nuanced and the issue is the global ones are are the three but to get to those you have to have a ah okay so how do we even get to the three right it was really based upon literally the evolution of the autonomic nervous system and what the species gains when it becomes has that ventral vagal system has a social engagement it can nurse can do all those things so The social engagement system, which is not listed as a principle, becomes the turning point in evolution ah of mammalian species and actually is the cornerstone of humanity.
Evolution of the Social Engagement System in Therapy
00:35:54
Speaker
It's this ability to, in sense, it starts off with nursing, but it's the same circuit that's used for social behavior, same circuit that gives prosodic features and voice, same circuit that gives smiles and intonation of voice.
00:36:09
Speaker
So I get caught into some of the weeds because that's who I am. So, Deb, you you go with it. now I love that you're ah that you're in in the weeds. And and i love I love your evolution of the nervous system, which led to my simplifying and it into the the three states first and then the the way those states dance together.
00:36:30
Speaker
Right. So, you know, the the nursing that leads to social engagement, you know, in our work in therapy or in our work as humans allows us to connect, to communicate, to feel safe in each other's presence. That's that newest part of our nervous system. And so we can begin to get to know that place. And then as you begin to feel a bit under threat, you You know, your brilliant work showed us we go to sympathetic. That's the first place we go, fight and flight, and feel flooded with cortisol and adrenaline.
00:37:01
Speaker
I think every human can relate to that. That is a common human response, right? And one that we see. It's easy to see it happen in others. And then if if if that doesn't resolve the problem, what you've given us is understanding the state of collapse, disconnect, shutdown, disappear.
00:37:20
Speaker
Look like I'm going through the motions, but I'm not really here. And until you created those that hierarchy in that way through your work early work with neonates, we had no idea about that. And that is what we see in in clinical work. That's what we feel in our in our personal lives. And we had no way to understand it until you gave that to us.
00:37:43
Speaker
so So Deb, that was a shock to me. So I would be invited to these talks and I talk about the polyvagal theory and this hierarchy. And suddenly, literally, people froze space and time because suddenly they had a narrative. yeah They had an explanation.
00:37:59
Speaker
And for many clients and many therapists, who have had trauma, they were really their therapists would argue with them right that they did that that didn't happen.
00:38:10
Speaker
They were angry and they wanted to fight and and flee. They didn't understand that the body, when it gets overwhelmed, has its own conservation system and that it's shut down. And pragmatically, it's so obvious because the metabolic demands of fight-flight can't go on forever. where they have It's a feedback loop. It just can't maintain it So the body has to go into a of conserv conservation cycle. But the issue was that that was the point.
00:38:38
Speaker
And you're right, Deb. That was a point that affected the world of trauma. That was the one that gave it the traction. Yeah. Yeah, because it's harder to see. We see people in that state and we make up a story.
00:38:53
Speaker
And the story is about moral meaning or motivation or, you know, they're not trying, they're bored, they're, you know, though rather than, oh, my God, they're collapsed, right? And I remember the first, one of the first workshops I gave, and I talk about,
00:39:06
Speaker
we have a home away from home in one of these survival states my home away from home is dorsal it's always been i don't think that's going to change and when i said that half the room breathed a sigh of relief my oh my god it's mine too and i've always felt so ashamed of that so you've given us the the the science behind all that which has helped so many people be able to claim this is what happens to me and it's simply my nervous system acting in service of my survival rather than this story that of shame that that you know other people have put on me.
00:39:40
Speaker
So it's really brilliant. Well, over time, when we play, I play with time. Like I moved myself back, what was it like 30 years ago? And so you relive certain situations and you realize that so much of what people said about mental health and including diagnostics diagnostic categories like autism doesn't make any sense from a neurobiological physiological and evolutionary perspective. It just doesn't make any sense. Yet it was pushed on us.
00:40:12
Speaker
And the emphasis of course, on behavioral modification and that led into CBT as well as the way the mode of controlling cause behavior was controllable and we need to treat everything, including physiology as if it were like a behavior.
00:40:28
Speaker
And there's an aside that's being in the paper that I'm writing on the origin of all this. In the late 1960s and early 70s, a colleague, a very famous colleague by the name of Neil Miller, was ah writing papers about operant control of autonomic functions, meaning heart rate and blood pressure. Hmm. and showing that they followed the rules of behavioral learning. And there was all this discussion that he would get a Nobel Prize for that until they tried to replicate his findings.
00:40:58
Speaker
And the real reason it was unable to be replicated is that they were they were so concerned about motor behavior, confounding the learning of the autonomics that they paralyzed the subjects.
00:41:12
Speaker
But the drug, they were animal studies. studies But the drugs that they used not only paralyzed the skeletal motor system, they paralyzed the vagus. Oh, boy. Yep. They turned off the vagus. So the basically, you couldn't control heart rate or blood pressure with vagal disconnection because now you have high tech high heart rates. Mm-hmm. And blood pressure is going high, and you don't have the flexibility anymore. So it was just physiologically naive to think that you control these. And that was in the late 60s, and it got a lot of traction as something that was really going get a Nobel Prize.
00:41:49
Speaker
Well, I mean, I think the other thing that that, you know, that other organizing principle that you gave us, neuroception, I love that you you created that word. And I say that all the time. I have i have everybody say it with me because i love that word.
00:42:03
Speaker
I think it's so descriptive of how the nervous system listens and takes in information. But helping people understand those three pathways. Yeah. yeah That inside, outside, between pathway of neuroception. And that it's happening all the time, below our level of awareness. And until we bring perception to it, it's simply going to move you somewhere on the hierarchy.
00:42:24
Speaker
That has opened up the the experience of so many people because they can then bring perception say, what are the cues of danger? What are the cues of safety that is that is shifting this equation in this moment?
00:42:36
Speaker
So Deb, the bridge is really through interoception. So neuroception, the reason the word was invented was that I played with the word perception and realized that if I said perception, people would take responsibility. And if they didn't detect these signals, they would be taking blame and shame.
00:42:59
Speaker
yeah So I basically used the term neuroception. which really is detection, not perception, and basically opened the world for other types of research to study those features.
00:43:11
Speaker
However, neuroception does trigger a visceral reaction. That visceral reaction, we are aware that through interoception. That is the critical point. yeah So we get triggered, we feel it, and then we try to make sense out of those feelings, and that's the storyline. And if we take that time or space between the reaction and and our narrative, our behavior, then we can do something.
00:43:37
Speaker
Yeah. So slowing that down for a second for those listening, there's there's three things happening I'm hearing, right you got the neuroception, interception, and then the story. Can we speak a little bit more about that Because i think that's such an important piece of the interplay there with all three of those. Yeah. So the neuroception, you have no control over. It occurs. Yeah.
00:43:54
Speaker
And when we talk about getting perception of neuroception, that's not really what you're getting. You're getting more refined perception over your introception.
00:44:04
Speaker
And therefore, you're interpreting it in a different way. So it's being refined. So let's say we have a reflex, get a physiological response. That physiological response is detected through a process called introception.
00:44:18
Speaker
I am feeling something. Now, with people who have trauma, They can't even tell you what they're feeling usually. There's a sense of numbness, which means the feedback loops have been distorted as an adaptive strategy for them to survive. So if you're in a painful, horrible situation and you're getting triggered all the time, it's obvious that it's better for your body to downregulate its feedback loops.
00:44:43
Speaker
That's why embodiment becomes our goal because we're losing the experience of being a human. Mm-hmm. And so, interoception is the feedback of our bodily organs to our brain.
00:44:56
Speaker
And often it may be pain, but in general, interoception is not pain. It's like pleasure from, I'm enjoying eating foods. I have a sense of satiety. You know, I enjoy, ah and if sexual arousal is interoceptive bit.
00:45:12
Speaker
And so you start seeing all these interoceptive features are being dampened in people who have severe trauma histories as an adaptive way of coping with this dangerous world they're in.
00:45:24
Speaker
But the issue is, what is the goal of a therapeutic model is to re-embody the person so they have the feelings that are literally wired into their nervous system and not shut down. Mm-hmm.
00:45:39
Speaker
And I like to to, you know, we slow it down and and we we, you know, feel the outcome of neuroception, of intercept interoception. It moves us somewhere on that hierarchy.
00:45:51
Speaker
And if we slow it down and and can really get concrete about what are the cues that that are coming in that then move me in this place, we can begin to list them and we can see them. So we're taking Again, taking a step back from so that I can be with differently. And that's been really helpful for for clients to to look at it as an equation, right? When the cues of danger outweigh the cues of safety, you're going to move into a survival response. Because you're're that's what an adaptive survival response, that's what it's meant to do.
00:46:25
Speaker
And I love that Steve always taught me, you put adaptive in front of survival response always. There's a reason for it. So that's been helpful. And we want to shift that equation. How can we deepen the cues of safety and reduce or resolve cues of danger so that then we're ready to to engage?
00:46:42
Speaker
And so we're doing that moment to moment all the time. It's bringing it into active awareness is, you know, what's helpful. And as Steve says, coming back into your body feels terrifying for so many of us.
00:46:56
Speaker
So how do we do it? Well, we can do it, you know, on paper by by having a bit of safe distance from it, looking at concretely what is in the environment, what is... in my connection with others. So it gives us ah a way to move forward safely.
00:47:11
Speaker
So that was, we did hierarchy, the beautiful evolutionary, we did neuroception, which which is always fun to to think about. So that leaves us with co-regulation, which is the one I always end with, and probably the one I should always start with, right, Steve?
00:47:26
Speaker
I'm listening. I am too. I'm all ears. Yeah. but I think co-regulation is, you know, I talk about, we've got these competing imperatives, the drive to survive and the longing to connect.
00:47:41
Speaker
Right. And they're happening all the time. And like with, with you two today, my, my, My longing to connect is met with a sense of this feels safe and welcoming. So then move forward and be in that connection. But if it felt dangerous or a bit you know and unnerving to me, my drive to survive would keep me from really leaning into that connection. I think that's what's going on all the time.
00:48:06
Speaker
where What's going on, let's kind of put it on the table. We're in a world that understands that you keep people frightened, they can't connect, they can't share experiences, they can't co-regulate, they can only amplify their own fear of being injured.
00:48:22
Speaker
So we basically have a world that is chronically being traumatized. And so what we're seeing is saying political, whatever we want to call it, is again,
00:48:35
Speaker
created by people not feeling safe enough to be who they are. yeah And that's unambiguous. In a sense, I mean, if we start talking about, we we don't have to talk about anything, we understand what it is, that the bodies are going, in a sense, getting more like this.
00:48:49
Speaker
As long as you're like this, it's all about survival. It's adaptive survival of me. I don't have any generosity. I don't have benevolence. And I really, even though I may, on an intellectual level, care about others, I have priorities to take care of myself and my family.
00:49:06
Speaker
Yeah. And what I say when I teach is it's not that you're unwilling to be generous or be benevolent or be connecting. You're biologically unable. Yeah. I use terms. Yeah.
00:49:18
Speaker
I use terms like give your body, give your nervous system permission. That when you shift those states, you're literally getting the nervous system permission yeah to do its own regulatory yeah ah functions. yeah yeah I think part of the the the joy of understanding our nervous systems through your brilliant work is is to to then know that I can be responsible for what I'm putting out into the world.
00:49:45
Speaker
I can begin to have strategies to come to regulation, whether they're things I do by myself or connecting with others. And as I'm regulated, I then am putting that out into the world. it's de That's actually really interesting to focus on what happens with awareness is a different type of responsibility yeah and this is really what i was saying to the therapists in israel that you can't brought you can't of course they could broadcast their anxiety and discomfort but as a therapist that's not their objective as a parent it's not our objective as a spouse as a friend as a mentor we basically
00:50:25
Speaker
have roles of helping people feel contained, sufficiently contained to be co-regulatory. and Yeah. So we'll just broaden that out to say as a human, right?
00:50:37
Speaker
It's a human responsibility to to to be regulated when I can, to know when I'm not, to have pathways to come back and to do the repair from the ruptures that I've made when I'm when i'm dysregulated.
00:50:51
Speaker
So when i I worked on a paper on what I was basically the roots of sociality, which is what we're talking about. And i realized that even commerce business is based upon this predictability of a co-regulatory relationship and that ah ah rules and regulations are that.
00:51:12
Speaker
And we start to have to sit back and realize that as a species, we're very co-regulated. we there's not There's not rampant ah you know arguments or fighting on the streets.
00:51:25
Speaker
We're a pretty well-regulated species, even under these severe conditions that are not sufficient to calm us. we we In a sense, we all want the benevolent parent or parents to tell us,
00:51:42
Speaker
Everything's going to be okay. Yeah. yeah Yeah. Yeah. I'm just kind of soaking this in, but the thing that stood out to me again with all the the ways in which we can become dysregulated, disconnected in the society and then separate from and stuck in survival states and and kind of focused on really this self, like the lowercase s of like just my survival or my family's survival and how sometimes that's the most adaptive thing we can do depending on where we reside. Mm-hmm.
00:52:10
Speaker
um The thing that keeps sticking out to me among everything we talked about, I mean, a lot is, but the one thing that you said earlier, Steve, was, and this is kind of we're going to kind of wrap up today, is this concept of leveraging our presence.
00:52:22
Speaker
Like that to me was just like, just a beautiful way of saying like leveraging our presence, like three words, leveraging our, yeah, three, I had to count for a second, sorry. Is that three words? And I'm wondering two things, and feel free to share and and expand however little or much, but what would that look like if we leverage our presence in this world globally?
00:52:40
Speaker
And then maybe more practically, what would that look like in in Steve's life and Deb's life today about leveraging presence? I know you kind of spoke to it, but just to kind of leave those listening with this kind of this big vision as well as practical application.
00:52:51
Speaker
Well, I'll start off. I think we're doing that with PVI. I think we're doing that with international partners, ah And basically, when go internationally to meetings, people um have this expectation already that they're coming into a space that is has a degree of accessibility. And their own personal experiences of being literally bathed an accessible space, for many of them, has been transformative. I'm i in many ways, surprised, but pleasantly surprised that the ambience of what Deb and I are doing has been ah so so contagious. I like that word contagious. I talk about that when I teach that ventral vagal energy that that I love is, I think of it as an unstoppable force.
00:53:38
Speaker
And it's contagious, right? It's contagious, both in direct contact, And indirectly, as we're just moving through the world in a regulated way, it gets broadcast to all the nervous systems around us. so And I think you're right, Steve. I think you know we go places and people you know get the benefit of that, and then they go places. And I have this image, which I would love to figure out how to bring to life. It's that ripple that just, and it's taking over the world, right?
00:54:05
Speaker
Which is what we need. But the the ripple what is not really coming out from us. It's in everyone. It is. This is the whole irony of of this whole notion of connectedness. It's our natural state is to connect.
00:54:19
Speaker
Our natural state is to trust. And what we have to do is inhibit that natural state to survive in dangerous worlds. yeah And that's been totally generalized in our education, our medical world, everywhere.
00:54:32
Speaker
Yeah. yeah i You know, I say every human has a ventral vagal system. It's just waiting to come alive, right? and And, you know, your nervous system knows the way there.
00:54:45
Speaker
We just have to get on that path and and and you'll get there. And I think for me, that's incredibly hopeful. And i as I say that to people, they feel it. There's a hope in that you have brought hopefulness to the world truly. Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:00
Speaker
I share the optimism and I use terms like an autonomic nervous system that is retuned to be locked into a state of threat. And then I have this kind of other phrase, which is many individuals' nervous systems are reluctant to relinquish their defenses. In a sense, they'll fight to keep it on. yeah And and the the reason they fight is because of the vulnerability that this yeah creates. Yeah.
00:55:28
Speaker
yeah Yeah, the cues of danger outweigh the cues of safety. and it's Because we we think ventral is is wonderful. it's it's I mean, it's a health-giving place, and yet it's also incredibly scary for a nervous system that hasn't been there often and it hasn't found safety there yet. so So yeah, I get that. it's It's hard. It's hard work to invite people in. So gently, softly, persistence, patience, all those things that are needed. yeah Accessibility. Yep. Accessibility. I always think of the, um I play music and um you know the tuning, you said tuning earlier. I always think of if my guitar is tuned a bit, it could be in tune with itself, sharp or flat. And so you won't actually pick it up as being out of tune.
00:56:13
Speaker
Now, if this is the image I give people, is if I play a alone and I'm sharp, maybe a half step up, sorry for those musicians, whatever, then it's going to sound fine because all the strings, all six are in tune with one another. But if I go and sit with a community, and maybe sit in and in a at a pub or something and play,
00:56:34
Speaker
something's not going there's going dissonance because I'm out of tune with their nervous system. Something is, and I say that it going back to curiosity, like, okay, why, what, what happened? Oh, I need to retune here. And how do I practice retuning my instrument to be in in tune with the rest of the, the member sitting and playing? And thinking about that and thinking we want people's nervous systems to come into tune with systems that are regulated.
00:57:04
Speaker
So we want your out-of-tune guitar to be surrounded by in-tune guitars and then they'll be welcomed in, right? Because then get a sense, oh, that's what it's supposed to sound like. Yeah.
00:57:15
Speaker
Yeah. Right? Because then it's ah it's an invitation, not ah an othering. It's like, yeah what? Okay. And then you're right. We're all here and you come in. It's like, oh, Deb, it's okay. It's like, oh, that's what when I'm in in that space, the beauty that comes from adding that to yeah all the other instruments. It creates this tapestry of beauty, really. Yeah.
00:57:36
Speaker
man This is awesome. i this is I'm mindful of time, but I thank you both for today and just kind of I'm excited to see where Wired for Connection goes in this kind of narrative and kind of the legacy of what you both have done, are doing and will continue to do um and kind of how like you both have shared how we're all taking this and the ripple effect of the impact it's having in really all of life, um leveraging our presence and inviting in not othering but realizing that we really are our foundational core is wired to connect yeah so i thank you both so much and blessings to you both today thanks for listening to wired for connection a polyvagal podcast produced by polyvagal institute new episodes of this podcast are published monthly follow polyvagal institute on social media to learn more about upcoming guests and episode release dates
00:58:31
Speaker
To learn more about Polyvagal Theory and support PVI on their mission to create a safer and more connected world, visit their website at polyvagal.org.