By Abigail Liescheidt, LCSWA
Have you ever noticed your heart racing when you’re anxious, your stomach feeling unsettled when you’re stressed, or your body becoming tense when you feel threatened? These physical responses are not separate from our emotional experiences. Our brains and bodies are constantly communicating with one another, helping us respond to what is happening around us.
One framework that can help us understand this mind-body connection is Polyvagal Theory, developed by neuroscientist Dr. Stephen Porges in the 1990s. Polyvagal Theory provides a way of understanding how the autonomic nervous system responds to cues of safety and threat and how these responses can influence our emotions, behaviors, relationships, and sense of well-being.
What Is Polyvagal Theory?
Polyvagal Theory focuses on the role of the autonomic nervous system, the part of our nervous system that regulates many functions that happen automatically, such as heart rate, breathing, and digestion.
The theory emphasizes the importance of the vagus nerve, a major pathway connecting the brain with organs throughout the body. According to the theory, our nervous systems continuously evaluate our environment for cues of safety or danger, often without conscious awareness.
This means that our bodies can respond to a situation before we have consciously identified why we feel uncomfortable. You might walk into a room and immediately feel uneasy without knowing exactly why, or feel relaxed when you are around someone you trust. These experiences illustrate how our sense of safety can influence our physiological and emotional state.
How the Nervous System Responds to Stress
You may have heard of the “fight-or-flight” response. When we perceive a threat, our nervous system can prepare the body to respond by increasing alertness, heart rate, and muscle tension.
Polyvagal Theory expands on traditional understandings of stress responses by describing different patterns of autonomic activation and shutdown. The nervous system responses are not necessarily conscious choices. They are protections that have developed to help us respond to challenging situations, and include:
- Fight or flight: Someone may become restless, irritable, panicked, angry, or feel an intense urge to escape.
- Shutdown or immobilization: Someone may feel numb, disconnected, exhausted, or unable to respond when they become overwhelmed.
- Social engagement: When we experience greater safety, we may have more access to connection, communication, curiosity, and emotional flexibility.
These responses exist on a continuum, and people may move between different states throughout the day.
How Can the Nervous System Affect Mental Health?
Understanding the nervous system can help us recognize that some emotional and behavioral responses are not simply a matter of “trying harder” or “calming down.”
For someone experiencing anxiety, a racing heart or rapid breathing may actually make the person feel even more threatened. This can create a cycle in which physical sensations increase anxious thoughts, which then increase physical symptoms.
For adolescents and young adults, these responses can be especially important to understand. This stage of life involves significant changes in the brain, body, relationships, and environment, which all influence how a young person experiences and responds to stress.
For parents, this framework can also provide a different way of understanding behaviors that may otherwise feel confusing or frustrating. A teen who becomes irritable, argumentative, withdrawn, or overwhelmed may not simply be choosing to “overreact.” Instead, their nervous system may be responding to stress in a way that is difficult for them to control in the moment.
Understanding this response as a protective nervous-system reaction can create space for curiosity and self-compassion rather than shame. Instead of asking “what’s wrong with me?”, we can begin asking “what is my body responding to right now?”
Safety Is More Than the Absence of Danger
One of the most useful concepts associated with Polyvagal Theory is the importance of perceived safety.
Our nervous systems don’t respond only to objectively dangerous situations. They also respond to how we interpret our environment. Past experiences, relationships, trauma, chronic stress, and social circumstances can all influence what feels safe or unsafe.
This perspective aligns closely with the social work concept of person-in-environment. Mental health is influenced not only by what happens within an individual, but also by relationships, communities, institutions, and broader social conditions.
A trauma-informed approach therefore asks not only, “How can we help this person regulate?” but also, “What has this person experienced, and what might their nervous system be responding to?”
What Does Regulation Actually Mean?
The goal of nervous-system regulation is not to feel calm all the time.
Human beings naturally experience activation, excitement, sadness, anger, fear, and many other emotional states. These responses are not inherently problematic. Regulation means having the ability to experience emotions and respond to them in ways that are supportive and appropriate to the situation.
For someone experiencing anxiety, regulation might mean noticing:
“My heart is racing, and I’m feeling overwhelmed. I can pause and take a breath before deciding what I need.”
For another person, regulation might mean recognizing:
“I’m shutting down right now. I need some space before I can continue this conversation.”
Developing this awareness can help individuals move from automatically reacting to their internal experiences toward having greater choice in how they respond.
How Can Body-Based Practices Support Regulation?
Mindfulness, breathing exercises, grounding techniques, and movement encourage individuals to pay attention to their bodies and become more aware of changes in breathing, muscle tension, heart rate, and other physical sensations.
Yoga in particular combines movement, breath, and attention. A person might notice that their shoulders are tense, intentionally slow their breathing, move through a grounding sequence, and eventually experience a greater sense of ease.
These practices do not need to force the body into a particular state. Instead, they can provide opportunities to notice what is happening and experiment with different ways of responding.
A Trauma Informed Perspective
Trauma can affect how a person perceives safety and responds to their environment. A reaction that may seem disproportionate to someone on the outside may make sense when viewed in the context of a person’s experiences.
This is why trauma-informed care emphasizes choice, collaboration, autonomy, and psychological safety. In practice, this might look like offering choices rather than demands, using invitational language, respecting boundaries, and allowing individuals to decide what feels comfortable for their bodies.
Rather than asking someone to simply “calm down,” we can help them develop awareness of their own nervous-system responses and identify strategies that support them.
Polyvagal Theory and Therapy
Polyvagal Theory can offer clinicians and clients a useful language for talking about experiences that are often difficult to put into words.
A client might recognize that they tend to become highly activated during conflict, while another may recognize that they disconnect when situations become overwhelming. From there, therapy can help clients explore the thoughts, emotions, relationships, experiences, and environmental factors connected to these responses.
The nervous system is only one part of the larger picture of mental health. Polyvagal Theory does not replace evidence-based psychotherapy or other forms of treatment. Instead, it can serve as one framework for understanding the relationship between physiological responses, emotional experiences, and behavior.
Creating More Space for Safety and Connection
Our nervous systems are constantly responding to the world around us. While we cannot control every stressor we encounter, we can learn to become more aware of our responses and develop tools for navigating them.
For some people, that may involve therapy. For others, it might include mindfulness, movement, breathing exercises, supportive relationships, or other grounding practices.
At Queen City Counseling & Consulting, we recognize that mental health involves the whole person. Understanding the connection between the mind, body, relationships, and environment can help create a more compassionate approach to mental health treatment.
Ultimately, the goal is not to eliminate difficult emotions or keep ourselves in a state of constant calm. It is to develop greater awareness, flexibility, and choice in how we respond to life’s challenges.
Interested in working with Abigail Liesscheidt? Learn more about her here or contact Queen City Counseling & Consulting to learn about current availability.
