Sublime

drop in blood pressure,

If a life-threatening event triggers a biobehavioral response that puts a human into this state of immobilization, it may be very difficult to reorganize to become “normal” again. This is the case for many survivors of trauma.

Sue Carter’s research. Sue is both my colleague and wife. Sue discovered the relationship between oxytocin and social bonding.

Porges: I like to say that a goal of society is to be able to immobilize without fear.

This adaptive skill required neural mechanisms that could turn off the well-developed defensive strategies that characterized reptiles and other more “primitive” vertebrates.

The ancient reptiles from which mammals evolved did not have neural mechanisms that allowed them to turn off threat responses to get close to others, co-regulate, and exhibit maternal behavior.

“stress” is often used to apply to both the stimulus and our body’s response to it.

The Polyvagal Theory also reframes trauma as a product of a nervous system that feels chronically unsafe, and posits that treatments will be most effective when they are designed with a sense of “safety” in mind—or administered in environments that make people feel safe.

the same psychophysiological systems that govern the traumatic state also mediate core feelings of goodness and belonging.