Our nervous system
Before diving into the polyvagal theory, there are a couple things that must be mentioned about our nervous system:
The job of the body’s nervous system is determining whether a situation is dangerous or safe. For that, it uses a mechanism called neuroception, the body’s process of reading social cues.
When it comes to how it is organized, you’ve probably heard of the 2 main subdivisions of the nervous system:
- The sympathetic nervous system: It is involved in promoting the “fight or flight” response when it senses a threat in the environment. It activates the release of chemicals, like adrenaline, to increase blood pressure and heart rate.
- The parasympathetic nervous system: It is involved in the calming of the body and the “rest and digest” response. It sends out signals to lower blood pressure and heart rate.
So, what is the Polyvagal Theory (PVT)?
The polyvagal theory was put forward by Dr. Stephen Porges in 1994.
Dr. Porges argues that rather than seeking a balance between our sympathetic and parasympathetic responses, the autonomic nervous system operates under a hierarchy of responses:
- Parasympathetic ventral vagal (or social engagement) – In this response, you feel safe and are primed for social engagement.
- Sympathetic (a.k.a. “fight or flight” or mobilization) – In this response, under perceived or real threat, you feel mobilized and run from danger.
- Parasympathetic dorsal vagal (or immobilization) – In this response, and under perceived or real threat, you feel unsafe and become immobilized.
These states are often depicted as a ladder, where the most primitive state is immobilization, and the less primitive state is social engagement:
The main takeaway is that the state of our nervous system determines if we feel safe or threatened, and this highly determines our behaviour and our ability to build relationships.
When people or animals feel safe, they open up accessibility, they give up vigilance. This process, when people or animals make one-another feel safe, is called co-regulation.
Being able to consciously switch between states of your nervous system means you have a good vagal tone.
Improving vagal tone makes a person less sensitized to perceived environmental threats over time and may be a useful strategy for supporting healing from trauma or stressful daily events. By naturally stimulating the vagus nerve, you can send a message through your body that it’s time to relax, which leads to improvements in mood, well-being, and stress management.
This concept has huge implications on our physical and mental health. In our current Western health system, medicine can miss our body’s healing mode. Our nervous system has a healing mode but when we are in threat mode we block that capacity.
Why is this theory important for HSPs?
PVT is a key concept for highly sensitive people as it really explains how we process stress in our bodies. Understanding and consciously using the nervous system regulation can tremendously help HSPs to turn their sensitivity into a superpower. Here is why:
Our nervous system is constantly scanning for cues that will tell us whether we are safe, or whether we need to be on our guard. Because of being highly sensitive, not only we will perceive more signs (that may be missed by non-HSPs), but we will also process them at a deeper level.
Depending on which state we are in, we might perceive the reality around us from different lens. Under a state of fight or flight, everything is more likely to be perceived as a threat.
HSPs may be in a constant stress response without being aware of it, meaning they are unconsciously looking for threats in the environment, so the experienced reality can become even more threatening. Taken to the extreme, it can become a negative cycle, where the more threatened you feel, the more alert you will be, the more threatening cues you will find around you and the more reactive or defensive you will become. This applies to all stimuli, from sounds and lights to facial expressions or inner thoughts.
Being aware of what state you are in, allows you to shift from a state of immobilization to a state of mobilization (as we cannot skip steps) to a state of social engagement. And that changes the lens from which you experience your reality. Where instead of using your sensitivity to look for threats in the environment, it tunes in to a different type of cues, allowing you to perceive all the beautiful little things, making you feel safe and connected, and putting you in a state in which you can build more fulfilling connections, be more authentic or access your creativity.
Therefore, learning how to self-regulate your nervous system is a key to live up to your highest state of wellness and highest potential.
Poly vagal theory in action: How can HSPs benefit from it?
Because highly sensitive people have a more reactive nervous system, there are more chances to trigger their fight- flight response. It is also more likely for them to experience trauma in a daily basis and to have unprocessed trauma stored in their bodies.
A way to benefit from it is developing the awareness to identify in which state your nervous system is, and then learning the tools to switch between states.
1. Identify in which state your nervous system is
How can you identify these three different states? How do they look or feel like?
- Parasympathetic ventral vagal (or social engagement) – You feel safe, relaxed, connected to yourself and others. You feel creative, intuitive and may come up with your most innovative ideas or deeper thoughts. It is also known as the “rest and digest” mode, because your body feels completely safe to engage in those activities, as there is no perceived survival threat.
- Sympathetic (a.k.a. “fight or flight” or mobilization) – You feel in alert. You feel the need to action. It might be your to-do mode at work, or your in-a-rush mode. You might feel a burst of energy so you can deal with the presented challenges. It can also involve moments of stress, unease, anxiety, and in most extreme cases panic attacks.
- Parasympathetic dorsal vagal (or immobilization) – You feel extremely alert and completely unsafe at a biological, primitive level. Your body will protect your main vitals so you can survive, and this means that socialising, resting, digesting or even moving are not convenient. You might feel unable to physically move or take action, cold or numbness in your limbs or restricted breathing. In early stages of this state, you might disengage emotionally from the people around you because the situation is too intense. You might suddenly seem cold and distant. In more extreme cases you might faint, for example at the sight of a needle (medical trauma is a real thing!).
2. Learn tools that allow you to consciously switch from one state of high arousal to another state of less arousal
Once you can identify in which state your nervous system is, how can you shift between states?
Due to its ladder structure, you cannot skip steps. In order to come out of a shutdown state, you need first to activate your sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight). Ways you can do that are pillow punching, shouting, practicing any form of martial arts, doing a strength workout, or any other activity that involves active movement and quite some level of stress discharge.
And this is often missed in our society: ways to discharge our stress. So it just gets stuck in our bodies until one day it explodes (or implodes).
So, remember, whenever you do realise you have entered a shutdown/ freeze response, the best thing you can do is to mobilize yourself into an activity to discharge that stress. And then you will be ready to come into social engagement mode.
Although it is biologically useful to have such a heightened stress response, nowadays we need a good dose of self-awareness and knowing those tools to make us move into a more relaxed (and connected) state. This is possible via activation of our parasympathetic nervous system. Here are some ways you can stimulate your vagus nerve to calm your body’s “fight or flight” response:
- Cold exposure. Yes, exactly, cold showers! Have you heard of Wim Hoff? I highly encourage you go check him out in Google. I have even read his book and highly recommend it. He has a deep personal story behind his cold exposure journey and has participated in quite some scientific studies, which are honestly very impressive.
- Breathing techniques that allow your breath to slow down and become regular. I personally recommend to start with simple techniques like the four-square or the 4-7-8 breathing method.
- Vagal nerve activation exercises. There are a bunch of them available in YouTube. My recommendation is to follow Sukie Baxter. She has a wide array of videos about the poly vagal theory and has done a very extense research on the field. Her videos are very useful and easy to follow, on topics like vagus nerve exercises or how to release trauma from your body.
- Body tapping. Have you ever heard of body tapping? I found it surprisingly effective. I recommend channels like The Tapping Solution, or Brain Education TV in YouTube.
- Listening to ASMR with headphones can really do the trick. ASMR stands for Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, and it’s a real thing in YouTube. There are huge channels entirely dedicated to it.
- Self-massage in certain parts of your body can cause a parasympathetic activation. An example is this ear self-massage.
- Oral stimulation: singing, humming, gargling. Did you feel better or more relaxed after a shower singing session? or perhaps after your singing class or practice? If so, you experienced the parasympathetic response generated by singing. Humming or gargling would have a similar response.
- Taking probiotics. Although I haven’t tried this option myself, there’re multiple research studies that mention the positive effect of probiotics on the mental health and vagus nerve regulation of the subjects. The main idea here is that the gut microbiome has a huge impact on the activity of the vagus nerve.
- Yin yoga has the potential of activating your parasympathetic nervous system because of the slow pace and breathing. It also has multiple benefits for your overall wellbeing like alleviating stress, restoring your energy levels, improvement of flexibility, circulation boost and tension decrease.
- Music has also the potential of stimulating your vagus nerve. Calming and soothing vibrations that have this power can be found with labels like nature sounds, music at 432 Hz, binaural beats, or 8d music.
What is your experience?
Have you tried any of the above? How does the shutdown response look like for you? What’s the most effective way to come out of it for you?
As I wanted to keep it simple and practical, I might have oversimplified the concepts in this theory. If you would like to dive deeper into it, you can have a look at Dr. Porges’ book “Polyvagal Theory”.
Would love to hear about any thoughts or personal experience in the comments below 🙂