The Polyvagal Theory - Stephen W. Porges

I was intrigued by the reptile social life mentioned in this thread, and I saw this study pop up

Garter snakes make friends, organize their society around females​

Garter snakes have something in common with elephants, orcas, and naked mole rats: They form social groups that center around females. The snakes have clear “communities” composed of individuals they prefer hanging out with, and females act as leaders that tie the groups together and guide their members’ movements, according to the most extensive field study of snake sociality ever carried out.

“This is an important first step in understanding how a community of snakes is organized in the wild,” says Gordon Burghardt, an ecologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who was not involved in the research. Other experts agree: “This is a big deal,” says integrative biologist Robert Mason of Oregon State University. “It’s a whole new avenue of research that I don’t think people have really given any thought to.”

Ecologists had long assumed snakes are antisocial loners that hang out together only for core functions such as mating and hibernation. However, in 2020, Morgan Skinner, a behavioral ecologist at Wilfrid Laurier University, and collaborators showed in laboratory experiments that captive garter snakes have “friends”—specific snakes whose company they prefer over others. Still, studies of wild snakes were lacking “because they’re so secretive and difficult to find,” Skinner says.
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One of the things that both Porges and Dana say is that when the ANS detects threat it over-rides the conscious decision making process. One of the examples given is that in rape trials it is common for the perpetrator to get off without charge when there were no signs that the woman fought back or physically resisted. Porges think that this is a gross miscarriage of justice because there is every probability that the woman went into dorsal vagal shut down controlled entirely by her own physiology as the ANS has deemed that this gives her the greatest chance of survival.

It's true that some women fight back and some don't, but the ability to do so can be moderated by both the resilience of the nervous system and how it has been retuned due to traumatic experiences. Those that don't act when they think they should have often experience shame, but Porges and Dana counter this with the idea that the ANS was doing the best that it could to save the individual under the circumstances and so deserves some acknowledgement for that.

Often if someone is carrying a load of toxic shame, it can be felt as feelings of disgust and when processed can be expressed as nausea - not necessarily to the point of vomiting, but it can be.

In any case, rebuilding resilience in the nervous system and it's capacity to flexibly move through different states is one of the points of PVT.

Recently Turgon shared some of the work of Irene Lyon that is super helpful too and gives more practices to help shift trauma responses from the perspective of patterns of tension in the body, movement therapy and Peter Levines work in somatic experiencing. Her video on the functional freeze is very helpful. The movements or actions that the body wants to engage in to release trauma are often quite primal and things that we suppress due to socialisation. If not for socialisation we may have allowed our body to complete movements and actions that could have been restorative. Obviously, these movements or actions are best not always done in social situations, but by getting in touch with our bodies and tension patterns they can inform practices that can be done at home. One story she tells is of a man who had a chronically tight jaw and when that was processed it turns out that he wanted to bite the person that he felt hurt by but suppressed the urge.

As always, taking things slowly, gently and titrating until ANS capacity is built to is important to overall advances. One sign that Irene Lyon gives that perhaps an intervention has gone too far too fast is that there may be initials signs of improvement for a short period, but then the person sinks into depression. This indicates that the ANS was overwhelmed as is attempting to freeze again.
 
Jones said:
One of the things that both Porges and Dana say is that when the ANS detects threat it over-rides the conscious decision making process. One of the examples given is that in rape trials it is common for the perpetrator to get off without charge when there were no signs that the woman fought back or physically resisted. Porges think that this is a gross miscarriage of justice because there is every probability that the woman went into dorsal vagal shut down controlled entirely by her own physiology as the ANS has deemed that this gives her the greatest chance of survival.

It's true that some women fight back and some don't, but the ability to do so can be moderated by both the resilience of the nervous system and how it has been retuned due to traumatic experiences. Those that don't act when they think they should have often experience shame, but Porges and Dana counter this with the idea that the ANS was doing the best that it could to save the individual under the circumstances and so deserves some acknowledgement for that.

Often if someone is carrying a load of toxic shame, it can be felt as feelings of disgust and when processed can be expressed as nausea - not necessarily to the point of vomiting, but it can be.

In any case, rebuilding resilience in the nervous system and it's capacity to flexibly move through different states is one of the points of PVT.

Recently Turgon shared some of the work of Irene Lyon that is super helpful too and gives more practices to help shift trauma responses from the perspective of patterns of tension in the body, movement therapy and Peter Levines work in somatic experiencing. Her video on the functional freeze is very helpful. The movements or actions that the body wants to engage in to release trauma are often quite primal and things that we suppress due to socialisation. If not for socialisation we may have allowed our body to complete movements and actions that could have been restorative. Obviously, these movements or actions are best not always done in social situations, but by getting in touch with our bodies and tension patterns they can inform practices that can be done at home. One story she tells is of a man who had a chronically tight jaw and when that was processed it turns out that he wanted to bite the person that he felt hurt by but suppressed the urge.

As always, taking things slowly, gently and titrating until ANS capacity is built to is important to overall advances. One sign that Irene Lyon gives that perhaps an intervention has gone too far too fast is that there may be initials signs of improvement for a short period, but then the person sinks into depression. This indicates that the ANS was overwhelmed as is attempting to freeze again.
Click to expand...

Thanks for this.

It has me thinking about stigma and social media. There are people who are ostensibly involved in a facilitated trauma release process of some kind, and make videos, and share this. For instance, in one video of a men's group, each man is cradling another man, who is weeping. In another video, a group of women with sticks in the forest are howling and beating the ground. That kinda thing.

I don't know what to make of these vids or how to interpret the raw emotion on display. These kinds of videos are pretty harshly mocked, though. The men holding each other and weeping are 'gay', or evidence of the decline of men in Western civilization. The women in the woods are 'crazy eco-feminists', and also evidence of the decline, this time of women, in Western civilization. Meanwhile, there's no real way to understand precisely what is going on with either group.

I've read that in older cultures, the social nature of release would be much more normal. For instance, there are Celtic stories of men coming home from war. It was apparently all done very consciously. The returning warriors were cared for by the whole village, and a welcoming space was created for all of that war intensity to come out in the proper way. They were bathed in water order to cool the violent fires in their blood. It also included the women meeting the men with their breasts bared, maybe to set the tone of vulnerability - the vulnerability of childhood, as well as the vulnerability of lovemaking. They probably knew that otherwise, the men could develop an emotional complex which could not be allowed to fester in a small village. Anyways, lots of talk of initiation, rites of passage, and ancestors these days. A 'return to the old ways' has generally been the refuge for those in the midst of social collapse. Strange that New Age stuff can have a return-to-the-old-ways flavour.

IMO part of the reason for the stigma and mockery is because the ones doing the mocking are convinced that they're 'normal' and that everyone should also be 'normal'. In other words, they're convinced that they have no shadow, no trauma inside, and have never seen shadow work being done. Maybe one definition of 'normies' is that they don't know that the shadow exists. Many normies are scared of feeling. And they're also scared of sharing. They're doubly scared of sharing feeling, because socialization and trauma trained them to put a lid on it. So it arrives as something that looks like it belongs in an asylum.

And maybe some of it does? There is a trend on social media where people are encouraged to TikTok their panic attacks, mental breakdowns, unhinged rants, etc. Some really cash-in on this an attention-seeking drive, and it seems to me that it's more of a reinforcement of their agitated state, and not an attempt to move through it in a healthy way. At the extreme end of this would be the woke screaming without much recognition of what is happening to them. It's a mechanical process, and when one gets social points for trauma and victimhood - then the reward centre establishes a circuit for its continuation. It's the opposite of repression, more like expression to the point of ritual projectile vomit.

Anyways, I don't know what it is. The weeping men-holding-men, or the women in the woods with sticks could be involved in shadow work, a return to the old ways, or something New Age, or the woke mind virus.

I can definitely relate to the (often startling) primal nature of release mode, both in terms of movements and vocalizations. It's been an intense time. But getting better.

The socialization angle is interesting to think of in continuum - how we suppressed it 'back then', and noticing how and why it is suppressed now. Which is what I'm getting at with the above paragraphs - attitudes towards non-normal behaviours.

Anyways, on a personal note, when I had an EEG done recently, and my neurological manifestations started, the poor lab tech who was in the room with me was pretty concerned, even though she was forewarned. And that was just with the movements, not vocalizations! My vocalizations can be a sort of infantile howling at times. I think it was the first time I manifested symptoms in front of someone who I didn't know, which was a good milestone to reach. Previously I had generally done my shaking alone.
 
I'm not really versed in the material, but this came up on my youtube feed. It was an intro into dorsal vagal shutdown, the triggers and how to start getting out of it:

Justin Sunseri - Understanding Dorsal Vagal Shutdown: Numbness and Trauma (SNB192)


Then I saw one of those browser article highlights and this one on Functional Freezing came up. I wonder if it's just a rebranded term and they're dumbing it down?

www.usatoday.com

Bed rotting every night? You're actually in a 'functional freeze.'

Mental health professionals encourage people to watch out for warning signs of \
www.usatoday.com www.usatoday.com
 
3DStudent said:
Then I saw one of those browser article highlights and this one on Functional Freezing came up. I wonder if it's just a rebranded term and they're dumbing it down?
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In some of their later videos both Porges and Dana acknowledge the existence of blended states. They talk about play being a blend of sympathetic fight/flight and ventral vagal safe/social/connected, sleep being a blend of dorsal vagal shutdown and ventral vagal safe/social/connected. As far as I know, they haven't addressed the functional freeze by that term, which I'm guessing is a blend of dorsal vagal shutdown and sympathetic fight/flight, but Irene Lyon does and has some good videos on it.
 
iamthatis said:
Thanks for this.

It has me thinking about stigma and social media. There are people who are ostensibly involved in a facilitated trauma release process of some kind, and make videos, and share this. For instance, in one video of a men's group, each man is cradling another man, who is weeping. In another video, a group of women with sticks in the forest are howling and beating the ground. That kinda thing.

I don't know what to make of these vids or how to interpret the raw emotion on display. These kinds of videos are pretty harshly mocked, though. The men holding each other and weeping are 'gay', or evidence of the decline of men in Western civilization. The women in the woods are 'crazy eco-feminists', and also evidence of the decline, this time of women, in Western civilization. Meanwhile, there's no real way to understand precisely what is going on with either group.

I've read that in older cultures, the social nature of release would be much more normal. For instance, there are Celtic stories of men coming home from war. It was apparently all done very consciously. The returning warriors were cared for by the whole village, and a welcoming space was created for all of that war intensity to come out in the proper way. They were bathed in water order to cool the violent fires in their blood. It also included the women meeting the men with their breasts bared, maybe to set the tone of vulnerability - the vulnerability of childhood, as well as the vulnerability of lovemaking. They probably knew that otherwise, the men could develop an emotional complex which could not be allowed to fester in a small village. Anyways, lots of talk of initiation, rites of passage, and ancestors these days. A 'return to the old ways' has generally been the refuge for those in the midst of social collapse. Strange that New Age stuff can have a return-to-the-old-ways flavour.

IMO part of the reason for the stigma and mockery is because the ones doing the mocking are convinced that they're 'normal' and that everyone should also be 'normal'. In other words, they're convinced that they have no shadow, no trauma inside, and have never seen shadow work being done. Maybe one definition of 'normies' is that they don't know that the shadow exists. Many normies are scared of feeling. And they're also scared of sharing. They're doubly scared of sharing feeling, because socialization and trauma trained them to put a lid on it. So it arrives as something that looks like it belongs in an asylum.

And maybe some of it does? There is a trend on social media where people are encouraged to TikTok their panic attacks, mental breakdowns, unhinged rants, etc. Some really cash-in on this an attention-seeking drive, and it seems to me that it's more of a reinforcement of their agitated state, and not an attempt to move through it in a healthy way. At the extreme end of this would be the woke screaming without much recognition of what is happening to them. It's a mechanical process, and when one gets social points for trauma and victimhood - then the reward centre establishes a circuit for its continuation. It's the opposite of repression, more like expression to the point of ritual projectile vomit.

Anyways, I don't know what it is. The weeping men-holding-men, or the women in the woods with sticks could be involved in shadow work, a return to the old ways, or something New Age, or the woke mind virus.

I can definitely relate to the (often startling) primal nature of release mode, both in terms of movements and vocalizations. It's been an intense time. But getting better.

The socialization angle is interesting to think of in continuum - how we suppressed it 'back then', and noticing how and why it is suppressed now. Which is what I'm getting at with the above paragraphs - attitudes towards non-normal behaviours.

Anyways, on a personal note, when I had an EEG done recently, and my neurological manifestations started, the poor lab tech who was in the room with me was pretty concerned, even though she was forewarned. And that was just with the movements, not vocalizations! My vocalizations can be a sort of infantile howling at times. I think it was the first time I manifested symptoms in front of someone who I didn't know, which was a good milestone to reach. Previously I had generally done my shaking alone.
Click to expand...
I love what you wrote. I was reminded of the 'Seven Fires Prophecy', especially regarding turning to more tribal/natural means of healing.

"He said, "In the time of the Seventh Fire, New People will emerge. They will retrace their steps to find what was left by the trail. Their steps will take them to the elders, who they will ask to guide them on their journey."

"Could it be that the road to technology represents a rush to destruction? The road to spirituality represents the slower path traditional Native People have travelled and are now seeking again."

Granted, you need to read the 'Seven Fires Prophecy' entirely (not too lengthy) to understand how this is relevant...but in my opinion, it's worth reading.
 
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