Our nervous system is functionally a triangle upside down. I’m talking about the circuits that are being regulated in the brain stem, that regulate our underlying state. Perculate information up to the brain stem and the brain stem it clearly is, transmitted information to the higher brain structures enabling access to different brain areas. So that when we’re in safe states we can access higher corticol functions but when we’re in danger states those systems turn off and we’re defensive. If we think of this triangle, each time we get higher and higher we have greater diversity of expression and outcome.
0:43 So I’m talking about basically three states that provide a neural platform for great diversity of expression. If you are in a constant dangerous environment your nervous system is going to find it difficult to detect safety. So if it can’t detect it’s going to be more in this state of more fight flight, a low threshold to react, and when you’re in that state you’re going to misread other peoples cues.
1:10 So you’re more likely to see neutral faces as being aggressive, you’re more likely see fearful faces as if they were angry. So you can really confound difficult relationships. So you won’t be able to use people to self regulate, they will become threatening and reactive. So if you have a history in which there is no experiences of using people to regulate a very pro social positive way, people will then become threatening or damaging to you. And what I always want to emphasize is that the social interactional behavior is a neural exercise. It’s a neural exercise of using newer mammalian structures. Its evolutionary newer structures to inhibit very primitive defensive systems. So if we feel that we’re in safe environments, we’ll use our face, we’ll use the intonation of our voice and we’ll negotiate a relationship or maintain safety by doing that.
2:08 And this is what friends do, this is what lovers do, this is what supposedly teachers are supposed to do and therapists, right? If we’re a little bit in a more dangerous situation, like a novel environment, we don’t know anything about it. We’ll go into another physiological state of the support, fight or flight mobilization behaviors. And if we can fight or flee, get away from something then we’ve actually negotiated the danger. But what if we can’t get away from the danger? What if we’re held down while we’re in a confined environment? What if we’re trapped in a car or a plane or in the bathroom and someone is now going to hurt us the possibilities could trigger a third circuit which shuts us down. And it’s that shutdown circuit that makes it so important in understanding trauma and the polyvagal theory articulates that shutdown circuit. While most other theoretical models of trauma and and what people would call stress disorders, only talk about a fight flight system.
3:07 Okay, so that’s the core of what I would tell a person about the polyvagal theory. And the second component of that core is that these responses are not voluntary.
Our nervous system is picking up information the environment in evaluating that information, not on a cognitive level, but on an on a subconscious. We want to bring back that term. But on the neurobiological level, we’re picking up features of risk or danger. And our nervous system puts us into those different states. And we can become aware of that because when we’re in certain environments, we may feel our heart pounding. We ask the question, why is my heart pounding? And then you’ll say, well, something in the environment must have triggered it. But often we don’t know the cues that trigger these things. So the point I want to make is first that the polyvagal theory provides us with an understanding of three neural circuits that support different types of behavior. One is social engagement behaviors in safe environments. The other was fight flight and mobilization. And the third one is really a shutting down a second level of defense.