Equilibrium.

 One of my favourite words!

OK, let's go. where am I? I'm below ventral vagal and above sympathetic in the zone called 'challenged' which is a pretty good place actually. Let me explain - I read a post a while ago criticising Porges polyvagal theory and so I headed off to download papers, to read blogs, to get a handle (Gendlin!) on what this criticism of a theory that actually proved incredibly helpful to me, is all about.

Oh!

Nothing but a storm in a tea cup actually. Gets people excited. Upsets some therapists. But fundamentally, total waste of time - the criticisms I mean. Unless you are going to do more research? And if you are a therapist the answer is probably no - since research means cutting up animals.

Between clients?

Seriously!

It doesn't change anything if you too find that reptiles have a ventral presenting vagus nerve. Simply means that they have a ventral branch too. Perhaps they can be more sociable than the people who cut up animals believed? I personally had very serious doubts about people who can cut up animals to such an extent that I walked out of my psychology degree...

Good news for me, or rather the positive outcome is that it caused me to revise polyvagal theory. Revising it as a guide to access the somatic effects of fear, threat and danger. I belong to that school of therapists who believe that to heal you have to feel - or rather, I believe that most psychological distress is created from secondary interpretations of somatic experiences that are linked to extreme threat states. Terrible situations create memories, those memories cause physical sensations as they replay. a person who doesn't know 'polyvagal theory' assumes that the awful playback sensations are pathological...rather than an attempt to reset.

So, back to me, this morning I was asking myself, how different would my son's psychosis have been if my husband hadn't been living with us? For one, my sense of security that I was loved by that man was incorrect - and he didn't help me to feel safe, he didn't really do anything except appear concerned. So I would not have been experiencing cognitive dissonance, I would not have been feeling that 'iron corset' sensation of being unable to let my gut speak...if he had not been there,

My son blames his dad for not being who he thought he was. and text book psychodynamic therapy might well say that believing anyone to be anyone at all is a path to pain. Regardless, that was my son's experience and so if his dad had already done what he was going to do - to just get up one morning and vanish? Well, overall that might have been better too. For then my son wouldn't have experienced his dad as a man who hits people who are in a mental health crisis. Can't help thinking too that might be an improvement!

I think overall, polyvagal theory - regardless of if it is the vagal nerve or what! Is so, so useful in helping people to externalise and map sensations with the purpose of increasing their awareness and compassion for their soft, animal, selves. My son still runs through every sensation as a symptom of catastrophic pathology. Me too, I watch myself diagnosing fibromyalgia (me) and thinking of myself as harmed. I do know better though - fibromyalgia is common when people have been chronically stressed, so I need to be kind and reassuring with myself. And harmed? Chronic stress causes hypervigilance, reduces trust in others. These things keep me safe as I wait for the bus home each evening in a very dodgy bus station.

And is my son heading back down into psychosis? as I understood this morning. We don't have the deceptive, lying husband blighting our lives. both of us struggle with that positioning of him, but people are what they do (words don't count for much! Especially from someone who proved himself to be a consistent liar).

I worry. I'm stressed. I don't see any sources of help really, other than support from my friends. But, all this has taught me that I can trust myself.

Good to get back to polyvagal theory, I guess it simply needs renaming?