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By now, you've probably learned about the Polyvagal Theory, how your nervous system shifts between safety, flight, fight and shutdown. And now you're asking yourself, OK, now what? You're not alone. Understanding why and how your body reacts the way that it does is really useful and it can be validating and normalizing as a new piece of knowledge. But, the real transformation happens when you apply that knowledge to your daily life.
In this episode and the next four episodes, I'll give you small, actionable things that you can do to daily apply the Polyvagal Theory. By the end of this episode, you'll better understand the polyvagal primary and mixed states. And you'll be able to identify which state you spend the most time in. Knowing your state will help you because you might know what to do next based on your state's needs. And if you have that, you have a potential avenue for self regulation.
Hi, my name is Justin Sonseri. I'm a therapist and coach who helps you live more calmly, confidently and connected without psychobabble or woo woo. Welcome to Stuck Not Broken. You've learned about the Polyvagal autonomic states, great, but identifying them and how they show up in your real life, that, that might be difficult. Especially if you have a hard time identifying how you feel, if you have a hard time recognizing your emotions.
On top of that, can you identify which state you spend the most time in? Can you spot when your safety state is active and how much of it is active? It's also common to get confused by these states and how they present. Like, the difference between freeze and shutdown in particular.
So, I'm going to lead you through all of the official Polyvagal Primary and Mixed States, also, I'll add in another one which will make complete sense, but it's not an official polyvagal mixed state, though perhaps someday it will be. So what I'm going to do is ask you a question, and then I'm going to follow it up with a brief explanation to help you answer the question.
Do you feel like connecting? You might be ready to connect with your environment, with yourself, or with others. You would connect to the environment by mindfully using your senses. You would connect with yourself through mindfully experiencing your inner sensations, and you would connect with others through co-regulation. Examples of connecting with the environment would be things like smelling a candle, tasting a peach, looking out your window at the horizon,
¶ Intro: Apply your Polyvagal Knowledge
or maybe there's some rain falling in your pool that you can sit and watch. No matter what it is, you connect with the environment by using your senses mindfully. Connecting with yourself could be, or could look like, noticing what you feel when you connect with your environment. When you smell a candle, uh, what does that trigger within? How does your body respond when you taste the peach or look out your window at the horizon or at the rainfall? Do you feel lighter? Is breathing easier?
Are you more likely to smile? Do you want to mobilize or stay put and expand your mindfulness? Connecting with yourself is connecting with the inner sensations of what it is to be you in the present moment. You can also connect with yourself by looking inwards at your emotions and mindfully experiencing them. But, this includes even the difficult ones. The last way we could connect is through others.
Now, connecting with others can look like hugging, smiling, making eye contact, or reaching out to somebody that you haven't spoken to in a while. If you said yes to connecting with the environment, connecting with yourself, or connecting with others, you likely have lots of safety state activation. Congrats. That means your body has enough activity in its ventral vagal pathways to open up these avenues for connection.
In the safety state, You're not only ready to connect or receive connection, but you might also be ready to play with somebody else, um, relax with a book or even work on a project.
Do you feel like escaping or aggressing? So maybe you don't have that connection impulse that I described earlier. Maybe you feel like, or more like, escaping or being aggressive. You might need space. Now, leaving a situation directly provides you with space, right? But being aggressive eventually creates space as the target of your aggression. They're likely going to back off.
It may not be super obvious, but the lingering impulses to escape or to aggress can show up in other ways, like our emotions and our cognitions or our thoughts. Some examples of how escape can show up are nervousness. Anxiety, um, thinking of the past, worrying about the future, like an interaction that you had with a coworker that day or one that's coming up tomorrow. And sorry if I just reminded you about something that's coming up.
Examples of aggression moving on are anger, irritability, frustration at not attaining a goal, snapping at your loved ones, apologize if you need to by the way, working out in the gym with no relief, not being able to sleep because you're too activated, If any of this describes you, you would likely have enough mobilization with sympathetic flight or fight activation in it. So you, you have some level of mobility, some level of sympathetic flight fight activation.
Do you feel like collapsing? Maybe you don't feel like connecting and maybe you don't have the energy to mobilize. Instead, you may feel like collapsing. Just falling face first onto your bed and staying there, doing nothing but breathing. You may feel like you need to be alone and turn down the stimulation around you. The lights are too much, sounds are too loud, people are overwhelming, and you can't handle another responsibility. This is a state of disconnection.
So if this describes you, you likely have some level of shutdown. At the extreme, this could even look like dissociation. This means that your dorsal vagal pathways, uh, are overly active, probably because you have some current or past life contex- I mean, I don't mean past life. I mean, younger life when you were younger context that you could not be safe and could not run away from and could not fight off.
Those are the primary states, safety, flight, fight- both of those are sympathetic and shutdown. You likely have one of these primary states dominant in your system day in and day out. But these polyvagal theory states, these primary states can mix or combine to create mixed states like primary paint colors mixed to create other colors like red and blue mix to create purple.
Do you feel ready to have fun with someone else? So what happens when your safety state mixes with your flight fight? sympathetic activation. What happens when you're mobile, but also connected? If you're feeling spontaneous, fun, or imaginative, and you want to share that experience with somebody else, you're likely in a state of play, or mixed state of play. Play is mobile, but safe. It's flight and fight mixing with safety, resulting in connection with somebody else.
Um, but also competitiveness, spontaneity, imagination. During play, you're mobile, you're active with flight and fight, but the safety aspect allows you to stay within the rules of the game, or just, you know, general social norms. Play feels like fun and excitement, but it's a shared experience with somebody else or multiple multiple people. The connection with a safe other is a really big part of play. It's kind of necessary.
Do you feel motivated? If you're alone, safety can still mix with flight and fight, resulting in motivation, creativity, exercise, and productivity. All of these require energy, right? Motivation means you're energized to complete a task of some kind. When you're motivated, you can be creative and productive. Motivation feels confident. It feels excited.
Motivation means you take the mobilization of flight and fight, and you point it in a specific direction, like a painting that you're working on or a project that you want to get done for your business. Motivation is not an official polyvagal mixed state. But to me, it seems pretty darn obvious. When you remove the variable of co regulation from play, you can still be in safety and you can still be mobilized.
Motivation has some elements of play, like the spontaneity and imagination of art, or the challenge of improving on a score, like, like how many bicep curls you can do this week compared to last week. But motivation lacks the co regulation from another in play. All we're doing is removing that variable. Play and motivation are both safety plus flight fight. But what happens when safety mixes with shutdown with a defensive state?
When safety and shutdown mix we get two results one that depends on a safe other and one that just needs you to be alone just like play and motivation. When we remove the variable of a safe other, we still have safety and shutdown it just results in something differently.
Do you feel reflective and mindful? Are you curious about your inner world? Do you feel connected with your environment? Are you aware of your senses and how your body responds to them? If so, you likely have access to your mixed state of stillness. Stillness is the ability to immobilize and be okay with it. It comes from the connection of ventral vagal safety and the immobility of dorsal vagal shutdown.
Right now you likely have a mixed state of stillness or some level of it as you lay down or sit down and listen to me talk in this podcast episode. You're in stillness when you can sit down and reflect on life. Uh, when you meditate, when you go to sleep, or if you, even if you stand at your work desk. Stillness can be a deep meditative experience, feeling tiny, but at one with the universe and in the present moment. But it can also be just sitting down to use the restroom.
Both of these require stillness. And by the way, if you're mobile while using the restroom, I would argue that you're doing it wrong. Uh, and your life might be a lot easier if you immobilize in stillness. Just a life tip. Stillness is safety and shutdown when you're alone. But what happens when you introduce a safe other into the mix?
Do you want to connect with someone else? Do you feel like you could connect with somebody else right now? Like, uh, could you hold them, or look in their eyes, listen to their feelings, or do you feel like you're ready to receive that and share that with another? If so, you may have access to your intimacy mixed state. Intimacy is safety and shutdown with a co regulative other. Intimacy doesn't necessarily refer to physical intimacy, but it can, and it can include that as well.
Um, like holding hands when watching a movie or massaging your partner at the end of the day. Intimacy can also refer to emotional connection with another, sharing personal stories and feelings, and connecting on a deeper level with a safe other. Intimacy isn't the right word for it, but that safe connection with another when immobile is also necessary for other relationships. Even like a therapeutic one, or a parent holding their child.
I don't like the word intimacy for those, but you get the idea. The co regulation aspect of intimacy is huge, just like it is in play. If the person you're with is not projecting safety cues, it's hard to exist in the intimacy mixed state with them. Uh, maybe impossible. Likewise, if you're not neurocepting safety cues, even though they are the other person's projecting them, it's hard to settle into intimacy.
So, a safe other is important, but so is your ability to detect safety through neuroception and then to shift into enough safety for intimacy. Play, motivation, stillness, and intimacy are all mixed states involving safety. But what if safety is not a part of the mixed state equation?
Do you feel out of control or overwhelmed? Do you feel panicky or rageful? Are your emotions extraordinarily intense and you feel like you're losing it? You might be in freeze. If safety is inactive, you're left with sympathetic flight fight and shutdown immobility. Is it possible for the body to be both immobile and mobile. Yeah, that's what freeze is. It's both defensive states active at the same time. Freeze is like having your foot on the accelerator and the brake at the same time.
It's both mobile and immobile. The engine's revving and ready to move the car forward, but the brake is on too. Freeze is shutdown plus sympathetic. But sympathetic can be flight or fight, so freeze can be flavored more like flight or more like fight. You might notice a difference in your system. When flavored more like fight, freeze shows up as a chronic underlying rage that explodes when triggered.
Or when it's flavored by flight, it can show up as chronic underlying panic that can also trigger into a full on frozen panic. Freeze shows up not just as anger, but as rage. Not just as anxiety, but as panic. Not just as stress, but as overwhelm. Freeze can also show up in milder terms, like when your child jumps out of their room and yells, scaring you as you innocently walk down the hallway.
Do you placate or appease others? There are two more polyvagal mixed states, though I personally have some questions around these. I will link you to my discussion on these mixed states in the description. The two final mixed states are appeasement and fawn. Both of these are seen when someone is in an unending, life threatening scenario, like a hostage situation or an abusive household. Appeasing is creating a connection with a life threatening other.
It's convincing the other that you're on the same side. The connection acts like co regulation or like a pseudo co regulation and it might get the other person, the captor, to reduce danger enough for the captive's needs to be met or maybe even to potentially escape the situation. It is hypothesized that appeasement is a combination of all the Polyvagal primary states, safety, flight, fight, and shutdown.
Fawn though, or placating, I like that word better, is similar, but instead of offering pseudo connection and co regulation, the placater, or the fawner, is positioning themselves as a non threat and submissive. They will anticipate the needs of the dominant other and largely try to remain invisible and not cause problems. To me, they seem like behavioral adaptations to a severe and ongoing shutdown or freeze mixed state.
If you put others well being before your own, you may have some level of these mixed states or behaviors. Thanks so much for joining me on Stuck Not Broken. I hope this episode has helped you to identify your current state and what state you spend the most time in. The Polyvagal Theory is mostly simple to understand, but applying it is not so obvious. So I invite you to spend the next week or so identifying, just practice identifying your state.
You can do so at any given moment or reflect on your states at the end of the day or the next morning as you sip on a cup of coffee. After you do this for a week, check out tip two in the next episode. It's not over. We continually build on our knowledge and our application of the Polyvagal Theory. In the next episode, I'm going to be discussing setting up passive safety cues. I have written two books now on the Polyvagal Theory and what to do with it.
The first book helps you understand the theory deeply and apply it to yourself without judgment, without shame, and without blame. The next one, book two, helps you recognize and build safety. They're called Stuck Not Broken, books one and two. I know, wild, wild titles. I have a link in the description to learn more about both of these books if you are interested. Thank you again for joining me. Bye.