Understanding Your Nervous System: Polyvagal Theory
Our nervous system is the hidden story behind how we experience stress, connection, and safety. Polyvagal Theory, developed by Stephen Porges, provides a powerful lens for understanding why we react the way we do—and how we can cultivate healing and resilience.
Whether you struggle with anxiety, trauma, or emotional overwhelm, understanding your nervous system can help explain why certain patterns feel automatic, and why healing sometimes feels out of reach.
What is Polyvagal Theory?
Polyvagal Theory describes how the nervous system responds to cues of safety, danger, or disconnection. Key ideas include:
Fight, Flight, or Freeze Responses: These are survival mechanisms designed to protect us in moments of perceived threat. What may feel like “dysfunctional” behavior—shutting down, lashing out, or dissociating—is actually your body doing its best to keep you safe.
Vagal Pathways: The nervous system has different pathways—sometimes called the “ventral vagal” for social engagement, and the “dorsal vagal” for shutdown or freeze states—that influence how we connect, regulate, and survive.
Body-Mind Connection: Thoughts, emotions, and behaviors are tightly linked to the state of your nervous system. Trauma can disrupt this connection, making it harder to feel safe or respond flexibly in relationships.
Why Survival Responses Aren’t “Bad”
It’s important to reframe what we often label as maladaptive:
Shutting down, numbing, or lashing out are adaptive strategies that helped you survive in the past.
Your nervous system may still respond as if those past threats are present, even when you are safe today.
Recognizing these patterns as survival responses, not personal failings, is the first step toward self-compassion and healing.
Healing Through Awareness and Connection
Polyvagal-informed therapy focuses on noticing nervous system signals and creating opportunities to shift into safety and regulation. Practical approaches include:
Somatic Awareness: Learning to identify bodily sensations that signal stress, safety, or dysregulation.
Co-Regulation: Using relational attunement in therapy, or with trusted supports, to help your nervous system feel safe.
Self-Regulation Tools: Breathwork, grounding exercises, and gentle movement help the body and mind settle into states of calm.
As Deb Dana emphasizes, small moments of safety and co-regulation can have a cumulative impact on nervous system flexibility and resilience. Similarly, Daniel Siegel highlights how integrating mind, body, and relationships can strengthen self-awareness and emotional regulation.
Integrating Trauma Therapy Approaches
In my work, Polyvagal Theory is not just theoretical—it’s deeply integrated with trauma-informed therapies that support regulation and healing:
EMDR: Helps the brain process and integrate traumatic memories while the nervous system moves toward safety.
Anxiety-Focused Strategies: Understanding nervous system patterns can reduce worry, hypervigilance, and panic.
IFS, AEDP, and Parts Work: Supports relational safety, helps your inner parts feel seen, and strengthens internal integration.
By combining these approaches, therapy addresses both the body’s survival responses and the mind’s meaning-making, helping you reclaim flexibility, calm, and emotional freedom.
Why Connection Matters
Healing is relational. Compassionate, attuned connection—whether in therapy, with supportive others, or within your own internal parts—helps retrain the nervous system to recognize safety. Over time, this strengthens:
Emotional resilience
Capacity for curiosity and connection
Ability to respond flexibly instead of reactively
Self-compassion and internal coherence
Further Resources
For deeper exploration of the ideas discussed in this post, these authors and resources are foundational:
Stephen Porges – Developer of Polyvagal Theory, exploring the role of the nervous system in safety and social engagement.
Deb Dana – Practical applications of Polyvagal Theory for nervous system regulation and trauma-informed therapy.
Daniel Siegel – Interpersonal Neurobiology, integrating mind, brain, and relationships for holistic understanding of human behavior.
EMDR International Association – Resources and research on EMDR for trauma processing.
