“Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Understanding your nervous system has been tied to increased wellbeing and stress resilience. Polyvagal theory is the latest research on our nervous system’s stress response system. These three branches of your nervous system are responsible for our experiences of anxiety, panic, and stress.
Let’s start out with the foundation. Our nervous system operates below our consciousness, which means, it is always scanning the environment for threat and danger even though we may not feel it. This is called neuroception. The sensitivity of this scanner is based on our previous experiences. This is why a history of trauma can make it difficult for us to feel safe and small stresses will feel magnified.
We have 3 branches of our nervous system, each serving a different function. Sympathetic, Parasympathetic, and Dorsal Vagal.
Our ventral vagus nerve runs through the front of our bodies. This is a pathway that activates the parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic branch is where we feel calm, regulated. The ventral vagus is the hot girl of psychology, trauma, and stress relief. We can respond to stress with ease. Here we seek and easily connect with others as well as digest our food or settle into rest. In Sisu you can find exercises in the body adjustment and ground that stimulate your ventral vagus nerve, to find calm. Breathing and connecting with safe people, can help us activate our Ventral Vagal.
Our most famous pathway contains the flight or fight response. This is what switches on when our brains cannot ignore or calm ourselves from the cues of danger in the parasympathetic branch. Past experiences may cause our nervous system may narrow our ability to tolerate stress. Trauma will cause our nervous system to conflate or overlook signals of danger. (Check out Sisu’s orienting to safety if you notice that your nervous system might be doing this – Based on Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. These exercises help us to become more aware of what our nervous system is really picking up externally or what is the influence on our neuroception from past trauma)
The Dorsal Vagal nerve runs down our spine in the back. This is the last defense. When we become stressed, we run down a ladder from parasympathetic, to sympathetic, and when our nervous system is unable to regulate the stress through flight or fight we move into dorsal vagal “shutdown”. This can feel like numbness, overwhelm, being displaced from our bodies, having our body take over, or watching our bodies from afar.
Many who have experienced trauma, will often subsist for long periods of time within one state, fight or flight or even dorsal vagal shutdown. Sympathetic activation over time can manifest as constantly feeling on edge or easily startled, constantly on the go, and unable to still oneself or sleep. Dorsal vagal shut down might look like a period where you feel like you are dissociated, exhausted and unable to move, or disconnected from life and relationships.
We can broaden our tolerance of stress by learning the signs of our nervous system moving into flight or fight, or dorsal vagal shutdown. If we can intercept the state change before it happens, using our new coping skills, we will create new memories and train our nervous system to be more tolerant to stressors. When we can regulate greater and greater amounts of stress in our parasympathetic branch, we experience less of the physical and negative experiences of stress and anxiety and instead experience eustress, where stress is seen as beneficial and is more closely related to preparing ourselves for a challenge.
Sisu is created on the biological basis of our stress response, Polyvagal theory, and our body’s role in our mental health.