Polyvagal Theory Explained
A personal Note
Welcome to my blog. I wanted to write this blog as a way of helping those who are focused on not just surviving, but thriving.
It has been a long time coming, and is a place for me to add in all parts of my experience. My personal experience as a wife and mother, my experience in working as a holistic worker in the National Health Service, my experiences of working for myself, and my experiences of talking therapy from both sides of the couch (yes, there is a couch, and no, neither my clients nor I have ever lain down on it).
Working for myself can be deeply rewarding, but it’s also hard. There are days when the pressure builds, and I notice old triggers creeping back in, moments when I feel stressed, self-critical, or caught up in the “I must not fail” mindset. Or even start procrastinating. I have learned that these patterns aren’t just about willpower or personality; they’re rooted in how my nervous system has learned to respond to the world.
That’s why I find polyvagal theory [https://www.polyvagalinstitute.org/whatispolyvagaltheory] so helpful. It gives me a way to understand those reactions with compassion instead of criticism. So this is what I have become most known for, so it seemed a fitting place to start.
What Is the Vagus Nerve?
You know, when you read an article in the New York Times about the latest health trend? It doesn't matter if it is Joe Rogan plunging into cold water [https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/cold-plunge-after-workouts], a svelte yoga instructor [https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/well/move/yoga-benefits.html] bending you to breaking point, or an older woman telling you the ancient Japanese art of Forest Breathing [https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/08/forest-bathing-japanese-practice-in-west-wellbeing]. It is always down to stimulating the vagus nerve for better physical and mental health. This nerve is key in creating a response in our bodies to the world around us.
It also influences how the primitive regions of the brain, including the Amygdala and the Hippocampus, interact with the highly developed areas of our brains to help us maintain a stable equilibrium and respond to stress. It plays a key role in regulating heart rate, blood pressure, muscular tension, respiration, and digestion by sending information from every organ in our bodies to the brain and back again. Because of this, it was named the vagus nerve [https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/vagus-nerve], meaning to wander and have no fixed home, but to have no fixed home (equally everywhere). It is not just about connecting the head but about connecting every part of your body equally to all other parts. Because of how involved it is, I have chosen a simpler mammal than a human being to show you what I mean.
A Newborn Learning Safety
When a rabbit is a newborn, their body, nervous system, and brain are still learning how to work together. A newborn human is even more helpless; they do not know how to coordinate their movements. They both need to learn how to respond and react to the environment around them. All babies do this by experimentation (play) and observing others. The results of each new stimulus and response is categorised by the Amygdala and stored as a signal of either safety or stress. Now, it is ready to leave the burrow and see the world outside.
Signs of Safety: “I Can”
If a rabbit is out and about, it needs to know how to respond to the outside world. If it is with calm friends, it will also become calm. As the rabbit learns about it’s world, it learns that hearing birds singing, seeing that the bushes are still, smelling mice nearby, and tasting the grass are all signs of safety. It might be thinking about eating more, washing, having a nap, socialising, or maybe making more rabbits. There are lots of signs of safety and many pleasant possibilities. The rabbit’s attitude to life is “I can”.
Signs of Stress: “I Must”
But one day the rabbit strays to the edge of the group; it is the furthest rabbit from the burrow. Now it notices that the birds have flown away and hears a rustle of leaves in the undergrowth. That rabbit will sit up, prick up it’s ears, and start scanning for danger. The other rabbits will pick up on it’s tense muscles, it’s increasing heart and respiration rate, as an uneasy feeling builds in that rabbit, and those around it start to echo this behaviour, as the physical symptoms build towards anxiety in all of them. Now, all the rabbits, one after another, after another, start scanning for signs of stress. When we look for signs, we can often miss signs of safety, like the smell of a mouse nearby, and even misread that sign as a dangerous sign of stress (is it a mouse of something bigger?) Their heartbeat, breathing rate, and blood pressure have increased; they are primed for action, their attitude is “I must”.
Coregulation to calm down
They run and hide. The rabbits are safe in their warm burrow and snuggled up as a family. It is warm, dark, and smells of freshly dug earth; the number of signs of safety is much higher, and there are few stress signs. They start to calm down: their minds stop racing, their heartbeat, breathing rate, and blood pressure decrease. They reassess the signs and realise that there’s no smell of a predator, the birds have started singing again, the food smells good, their family is calm, their friends want to go out, and the mouse never moved. There are lots of signs of safety, so they go back to “I can” and decide to go out and eat grass.
Surging Stress
But on a different day, a different rabbit decides the rustle is a mouse; they can’t smell the fox in the undergrowth because of the direction of the wind. The rustle they mistook as a safe mouse is a dangerous fox, and the rabbit is caught. The rabbits who witness this now learn to respond quickly to fewer signs of stress. After all, it is better to keep running inside than risk being wrong and eaten. Those rabbits are more and more in an anxious state with an attitude of “I must” do something (fight, flight, fawn, fidget, or fix).
Overwhelm and Shutdown: “I Can’t”
The rabbit that was caught by the fox will enter a different state. All the signals are signs of stress; there are too many, and nothing to say it is safe. The rabbit doesn’t know what to do; it can’t fight, flee, fix it, fidget, or fawn with a fox. It is trapped. The rabbit is overwhelmed, and it shuts down. It dissociates from it’s body to lessen the pain and panic. It’s heart rate slows, it’s blood pressure drops, it’s breathing becomes shallow and slow. The rabbit has shut down and can’t move, it’s attitude is “I Can’t”. This state helps it deal with injuries; it bleeds less, does not move or even cry out, and the fox can not tell it is alive anymore. This fox was more bored than hungry and so decided it wanted a different challenge and dropped the rabbit. The rabbit survived, and it’s nervous system learns that the shutdown response of “I can’t” attitude” works. Shutdown will happen much quickly next time.
What This Means for Humans
What we as people go through is the same exact response. Like the rabbits, our brain interprets external stimuli and works out what from our lived experience, if there are more signs of safety or signs of stress. The amygdala scans the incoming data for signs of safety or stress and if needed, will send an urgent signal to be alert. If we’ve had lots of negative experiences, our amygdala is likely to interpret more signals as signs of stress and become more likely to feel that we “must do something,” or if overwhelmed, we “can't do anything”. We become more sensitive to smaller signs of stress and more regularly go into “I must” or “I can’t” states.
The way back is to gather more signs of safety. That might mean being with those who make us feel safe, grounding practices, finding a calming environment, compassionate self-talk, or many more. Each signal helps the nervous system return to a calmer, connected, more creative state. Then, over time, this will expand our window of tolerance for stressful events.
Expanding the Window of Tolerance
The more often we give our bodies and minds signs of safety and allow ourselves to lean into those calm moments, the more resilient we become. Over time, this widens the range of situations in which we can stay steady, calm, and connected. It also helps us stay balanced so that signs of stress don’t tip us too quickly into “I must” or “I can’t.”
I will be writing more about the window of tolerance and ways to improve mental resilience so don’t forget to subscribe.
For me, polyvagal theory reminds me that these responses are not weaknesses but automatic survival strategies, deeply wired into our biology. They are a normal human response, but the theory also allows me to show others how to handle that body and brain response. By recognising them and by intentionally nurturing signs safety, we can return more often to the “I can” state, the place where growth, joy, and connection are possible.
I’d love to hear your thoughts: have you noticed times when your body shifted between “I can,” “I must,” and “I can’t”? Share your reflections in the comments.
If you found this helpful, then someone else might too. Please pass it along to a friend or share it on your social media.
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