A Polyvagal Perspective in Daily Life

I’m getting ready to teach a 4-part workshop series on parenting from a polyvagal perspective and it’s making me think long and hard about my everyday experiences and how Polyvagal Theory (PVT) helps explain my reactions to daily events.

To bring this to life, I want to give you an example of something that happened to me recently. I’m on the subway. I had eaten a raspberry danish before boarding the subway, even though I promised myself I would no longer eat raspberry danishes because they make me feel sluggish and unhealthy. I’m on the subway platform deep underground, and the steel beams holding up the ceiling and platform seem rusty. I board the train, and I see a person with a menacing stare looking at me. The subway car wheels squeak. The train fuel fumes waft through the car. I begin to feel nauseous and trapped, but I’m not sure why. I glance at my phone and see a million emails I haven’t responded to. One email catches my eye, and I start thinking about how late I am on completing work related to a committee of which I am a member. I then imagine the faces of the people in the committee—I see them going through all of my past mistakes on a ledger, and I see that they’ve decided to kick me out of the organization. I begin to feel persecuted and overwhelmed. I wonder how I’ll be able to support myself when everyone finds out I’m a fraud.

For some readers, this illustrates a familiar train of thought. In fact, you might wonder, aren’t these just cognitive distortions (if we take a CBT point-of-view), or a disapproving, critical father (if we take a psychodynamic point-of-view), or an insecurity based in previously uncontained negative effect that caused me to feel alone and ashamed (if we take an attachment point-of-view)?

The answer is yes, all of the above. In addition, however, PVT suggests that physiologic aspects (undoubtedly evoked or inflamed by early memories and experiences in childhood, although this is not its emphasis)—the high blood sugar as a result of the danish, my sense of the threat of being buried underground, the menacing look of another passenger, the loud brake noise and fumes—all caused my body to feel unsafe. Then, when I was reminded of the work I hadn’t finished, my body, already in a panic, immediately went to thoughts of persecution, and then oblivion. The story that I am a no-good, rotten professional who will soon be in the gutter was a story made up by the sense-making, narrative-seeking part of my brain, and it was then attached to the panic in my body.

Through the lens of PVT, however, I can reorient my attention from the story to the various stimuli of which I may be unaware. My nervous system experienced sensations of a lack of safety, which is why my mind raced toward catastrophic thoughts. When I can attribute these thoughts to a physiologic response rather than to my faulty morality or a rotten personality, I can feel a tremendous sense of compassion. It is not my fault that I became stuck in my story; rather, it is simply that my body did not feel safe. What do I need to do? I need to help my body feel better: I need air, I need to breathe, I need to talk myself through this train ride with some type of soothing mantra. As soon as I can get out of the subway, I need to move a bit so as not to feel trapped. I need to rest a bit after that, perhaps get a cup of tea and take a break or talk to a safe friend so I can regain my equilibrium. PVT offers me an explanation and applicable set of tools for responding to feelings of discomfort or danger in this situation. To put this another way, its graspable map of the autonomic nervous system and the process it offers for activating the social engagement system enables me to achieve equilibrium and to thus find a sense of safety.

During the parent workshop coming up in September, I’ll be asking participants to go through this exercise with me, to go through it from the perspective of themselves as a parent, and also to look at their child from the same polyvagal perspective when their child is having behavior problems. I find it to be so useful and impactful for parents to be able to see themselves from a nervous system perspective, the same way it helps me in my daily life.