Polyvagal Theory : The 3 States of Anxiety in the Nervous System

Do you ever feel hopeless, shut down, or walled off? Or do you get triggered and feel anxious, angry, or agitated? There are essentially 3 states of your nervous system: Ventral Vagal (Safe and social) Sympathetic (Fight or Flight) and Dorsal Vagal (Shut Down). Most people aren’t able to identify which state they’re in, and then they feel helpless to change. This is especially difficult for people with trauma, which includes about ⅓ of the population. When you have trauma, your nervous system can get stuck in a hypervigilant state or a frozen, numb state.

And when you can identify the states of your nervous system, you can learn skills to spend more time in the safe and social state of your nervous system. You can retrain your nervous system to be healthier. One approach to learning how to feel safe in your body is the Polyvagal approach. It’s known as the science of feeling safe. The researchers and clinicians who developed polyvagal therapy have developed a system to help people learn to turn on that safe feeling in your body, so that you can feel more calm, have better relationships, and make better choices.

In this video you’re going to learn the three states that your nervous system can be in according to polyvagal theory. This will help you learn to identify what state you’re in and then use self-regulatory skills to shift your nervous system to a state of safety.