Polyvagal Theory
Polyvagal theory is a useful model that helps us understand how we are wired to protect AND connect, and to get to know our nervous systems.
The theory was developed by Stephen Porgess. It hypothesizes that the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is organised hierarchically into three layers. The more primitive, reptilian parts of the ANS are organised solely along the principles of threat and safety and are constantly scanning the environment for cues of safety and cues of danger. The neurobiological perception of danger or safety, which does not involve the thinking part of the brain, has been termed ‘neuroception’. These cues are picked up at an unconscious level and then interpreted by the brain which creates stories to make sense of them. These ‘fear stories’ then feel very real and true. Frequently they are stories about future events, ie. worries; or are based on past traumatic events. Our brains compare incoming neuroceptions of safety/danger with past experience and may activate defences in our personality based on ‘faulty neuroceptions’.
Fight or Flight
There are two aspects of this primitive structure – the sympathetic nervous system which mobilises our response to the threat or danger with our fight/flight response and the dorsal vagus system which is characterised by immobilisation. In the sympathetic nervous system, you might become aware of physiological changes such as an increase in heart rate, breathing, an increase in blood pressure, and you may even start sweating. Psychologically there are subjective experiences of fear and anxiety.
Freeze
If however, we are unable to react because we are somehow trapped or disabled, or if the threat is ongoing and there is an absence of external support or inner resources, the nervous system then shuts down and the response is immobilisation or what we call ‘freeze’. Physiologically, you might notice that you have stopped breathing, or you are holding your breath, you feel cold and numb, your body is very still, and you might be unable to think clearly. Psychologically and socially, this state may be characterised by disconnection /withdrawal from others, feelings of depression, loss of hope, and helplessness. We might feel like we will never be happy again. In shutting out fear, we also disconnect from our loved ones and the activities in life that give us fulfilment and joy. We might feel helpless to get ourselves out of this experience because this state paradoxically makes us feel safe and it often takes active will power to shift out of it because the pull to remain here can feel magnetic. (While this doesn’t apply to all clients, it is useful to recognise that for some clients there is a reward for staying in this state, and to help them observe and recognise this too in order to move out of it. This can be like a resistance to Life and connection, and the kind of compelling magnetism of the death force. (The Neverending Story with its image of the Nothing captures how the characters are pulled into the energy of the Nothing, despair, and how it is a destructive force of hope and the creative capacity).
Connect
The third aspect to our nervous system is the system that enables us to connect with others. This part is considered in evolutionary terms to be more evolved, our mammalian brain. It is referred to as the ventral vagus system and is characterised by a response from our parasympathetic nervous system. The vagus nerves in the parasympathetic nervous system are thought to act as a vagal break on our reptilian brain. When we are functioning from our mammalian brain, one of safety and connection, our perspective changes. We see ourselves and our problems differently, we have access to greater diversity and complexity of brain functions, and we can therefore problem solve with more creativity and have many more solutions and options to respond available to us. Paradoxically, for most human situations, this actually keeps us safe rather than the limited options offered by the reptilian brain and its fight/flight/freeze response. Connection with others offers opportunity for what is termed ‘co-regulation’. In the same way that an infant is immediately calm in the arms of his/her mother, our nervous system feels immediately calm when we feel connected with others.
This is the model we will be using to understand trauma and the nervous system of our client, and to keep track of our client and their relative regulation/dysregulation.
What is Trauma?
Trauma is a threat to the physical and/or psychological integrity of the self. It may be experienced directly, or it may be vicarious, such as witnessing the trauma to someone else. Threats can be solely psychological, such as extreme humiliation or a responsibility or experience too big or the personality is too immature to manage the feelings elicited.
Physical correlates
Physiologically trauma is a stuck fight/flight/freeze response that has not completed its instinctive movement of the full circle back to rest/digest/connect – clients whose level of overwhelm incapacitates the ability to act can remain stuck in this state of immobilisation. “The body resigns itself to a situation of not being able to escape” (Levine, 1997). Feelings of helplessness and resignation as psychological correlates of the freeze take over. The person experiences defeat, giving up and only has thoughts of death as a solution.
The healing movement is to release the undischarged energy, the energy that is moblilized to deal with the threat/danger (Levine, 1997).
Energetic correlates – anthroposophical model.
When we experience a trauma, we stop breathing because it is painful to continue breathing into these places of vibrational impact (we avoid pain by reducing the breathing into that place). This results in different combinations of breath contractions that create a ‘trauma imprint’. Since the ‘I AM/am’ presence is carried by the breath, it is extinguished from the parts of the astral, etheric, and physical body that become contracted. These are the parts of experience that are not then included by the “I am” and remain unintegrated.
- I am = resources of the human spirit, capacities to rise above pain, limitations and darkness, bring back hope, healing and growth. Capacity to envision new realities, contains essence of uniqueness wanting to manifest into their life.
- The stronger the “I am”, the stronger the ability to access the ‘I AM’ and transpersonal resources.
Defence Mechanisms
As a result of the trauma freeze and incomplete movement back to rest, digest and connect, many aspects of experience are excluded. The mechanism facilitating exclusion is called a defence mechanism, which arises to ensure avoidance of pain and survival of the system. The defence mechanism preserves the integrity of the self/system in the face of overwhelming emotions and experiences. They defend the self by cutting out or changing the experience in some way. Some examples of defence mechanisms are dissociation (the soul leaves the body and the bodily experience), split off (an entire experience along with an inner part is separated from the executive personality), repression (squashing the feelings down into the body), denial/avoidance (pretending it didn’t happen or diminishing the severity), intellectualisation (separating from the feeling – and the body - by identifying solely with the intellect). Defence mechanisms often change reality in some way. Remember that the fundamental intention of a constellation is to look fully, to not avoid, diminish, change or repress reality in any way, but to look and feel all of reality as it is.
These split off aspects can run the system (and therefore the life of the client) unconsciously, but without being connected to the executive personality. A person’s life is then run unconsciously in repetitive and unskilful ways rather than by conscious choices (Sherwood, 2010).
Healing Movement
Most constellations involve a movement out of ‘freeze’, through fight or flight and into rest/digest/connect. Before reaching rest/digest/connect, the client may need to move through many emotional layers, including fear, anger, hurt and grief as part of the healing movement. These movements and emotions may be personal/systemic or belong to a particular ancestor. As a facilitator I have felt and expressed the grief of an ancestor.
In the field we represent the ‘trauma imprints” with the aim of returning breath to the client’s body and life force to the personal and family/ancestral system.
Scanning your awareness
Scanning the field of fight/flight or freeze – some examples of what to look out for:
- Stiff body, cold, numb (blood withdrawn from extremities).
- ‘Deer in headlights’ (shock, eyes wide, freeze);
- Disbelief
- Helplessness, hopelessness (important to name otherwise it will be acted out);
- Blank (Dissociation)
- Feeling outside the body (dissociation)
- Nausea (sick with fear), a kind of burning sensation like indigestion;
- Shaky feeling (disorganisation in the system)
- Shaky legs (fear, can’t run away)
- Right shoulder pulling back (flight),
- Confusion, muddled
- Can’t speak, mouth feels rubbery, can’t articulate (speech centres in the brain shut down).
- Anger (fight)
- Heart pain
- Grief
Processing the trauma
- Recognise the stages of freeze through fight/flight to rest/digest and connect that your client may go through;
- Notice how the field shifts and what surfaces and moves when you bring in a resource/supportive ancestor;
- Notice how feelings surface, not only anxiety but now there is space to move through anger, pain, hurt and grief before returning to rest/digest/peaceful acceptance and connection.
- If you don’t move through these layers peaceful acceptance is just helpless resignation and dorsal ventral shutdown, resulting in helplessness and despair and loss of connection to Life and others.
- The predominance of the ‘death force’ in this state leads to thoughts of suicide.
- Therefore the movement from freeze back to connect is the same movement as Death to Life.
Presence/Observing self
- Bringing your full Presence (inserting your ‘I am’ integrative self system as well as that of the client’s into the experience, including ALL and not rejecting ANY experiences, ie. Not pushing away any feeling that is unpleasant, including experiences like helplessness. That is absolute INCLUSION).
- Being present with, inclusion. Without aversion or desire for any particular outcome, so that means not pushing away the experience. Allows it to integrate.
Resourcing
- Check the capacity of the client to be a resource for themselves. This is more likely if they have done a lot of inner work and also if the trauma is a one-off event.
- In the case of developmental trauma over time and over the development of the personality, there may not be enough of an adult personality to contain and support the traumatised parts. In this case, the adult personality is still identified with the trauma and/or the traumatised part is in charge of the personality. Here you will need to bring in additional resources.
- Erik will also speak about other ways to alchemise trauma in the field that are more shamanic in nature.
Crisis Intervention
Generally speaking, the representation of trauma in the field of the client by others and the container that is created, provides sufficient externalisation and holding in order to process the trauma states.
I like to think that unless you are a harmful person, there are very few ways in which you can actively harm your client. The main risk is activating past harm done to the client so that:
- The harm feels as if it is happening in the present moment, and that you the facilitator are causing the harm.
- The activated harm is not contained sufficiently by the therapist and the client does not have the personality resources and structure to contain it for him/herself.
- You fail to contain the activated trauma and are even neglectful in recognising the need to refer to other agencies or professionals, such in the case of active suicide risk.
If a personal trauma is activated and a client or representative starts:
- Shaking
- Feeling actively unsafe
- Dissociating
- Acting out
- And your empathic representation is to start spiralling out of control and to feel helpless, then you are also joined with them in the trauma response.
Firstly, don’t panic:
- Bring in a resource for the client. Represent that resource yourself by standing behind them with your hands on their shoulders.
- If it’s a representative, take them out of the constellation.
- Bring the client/rep into the present moment – feet on the ground, what can they see, smell, hear and touch.
- Remind the client/representative that this is a MEMORY, it is not real or happening in the present moment. In the present moment they are perfectly safe.
- When the client is stabalised, start actively working with this inner traumatised part by:
- Resourcing extensively
- Gradually releasing the fight or flight charge from the system, to return to the rest/digest and connected state.
- This is assisted by putting your whole presence as the facilitator into this inner part and holding it with your Observing Presence/ ‘I am’.