Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory

The Polyvagal Theory restructures clinical disorders as difficulties in neural regulation of specific circuits associated with turning off defensive strategies and enabling social engagement to spontaneously occur.

Polyvagal Theory emphasizes that our nervous system has more than one defense strategy and that the decision of whether we use a mobilized flight/flight or an immobilization shutdown defense strategy is not a voluntary decision.

When we feel safe, our parasympathetic nervous system engages, we experience trust and a sense of grounding, and growth and healing are possible.

A polyvagal perspective shifts the discussion away from stress as some outside force and focuses on our nervous system’s response to it. Just as our concept of “safety” is all about how safe our nervous systems and bodies feel (and not an impartial measure of actual threat), what matters for the polyvagal concept of “stress” is how our individual n

Neuroception as a system for detecting safety is part of what distinguishes humans and other evolutionarily modern and social mammals§ from our asocial reptile ancestors.