ANS theory..

 

Visualisation.

Imagine a ladder...

Your home is close by. You are going out with friends later. You look at your watch - you have three hours - then you can take a shower and get ready. And you are looking forward to later, the swirl of light, friendship, food...

But.

There is this hole.

Today there is a ladder, no idea how far down the hole goes...Who put the ladder there? Are they still down there?

You kick a pebble - it doesn't seem to land. You can't hear it land. 

Oh my...

Commentary.

The ANS, or rather the autonomic states are complex. 

The three main states are: 

1. Safety - in this visualisation: lights, friendship, food, enjoyment.
2. Danger - the ladder goes down a long way, it might wobble a bit, is it old, breaking, what's below? And it is getting dark
3. Life threatening danger - The bottom of the hole....

There is a LOT more going on than this, but when introducing the theory the ladder metaphor as created by Deb Dana is perfect!

Mapping the states.

~You decide to do this.

So you pull up the old ladder and order the safety gear!

Three days later.

You are ready.

OK, I'm not going to give you instruction. You can buy Deb's book, or use YouTube because the point I really want to make is...that things are not so simple as polyvagal theory (as created by therapists) makes out.

Add Pansksep's seven basic emotional states, add Tuvig's descriptions of memory. Differentiate between striated and smooth muscle and the physiological signs.

And it is more than lists of feelings mapped to memory and needs.

The starting point for any exploration is always the ground. The foundation of all experience and reality. And the ability to allow feelings, memories and needs to speak. 

Contact.

Once you have practiced mentally evoking memories of a time when you were in danger, or dissociating, and been able to describe these states in words, images or find music that matches.

But.

There will never be an antidote, you will always encounter stress, danger, be paralysed by fear, overcome by rage, unable to face things.

These states are hardwired!

But, the ability to process gets quicker! And by mapping the states you can learn to navigate the traps.

Traps?

Yup, there are many traps.

See, that ladder is just the entrance. Just a convenient metaphor telling you that you can increase your awareness. And those three states of safe, danger, life threatening danger? Just the start. There is sex in there. There is violence. There is self attack and the desire for altered states via drugs or anaesthesia. There is ignorance and bliss, the sacred and the profane...It is more complex than parasympathetic - digest and relax, sympathetic = fight flight.

For instance orgasm starts as parasympathetic, shifts into sympathetic and then back to parasympathetic [+]

That would have you starting at the top of the ladder, rapidly descending to midpoint  - danger zone - and then climbing back up and out! The words associated with those positions on the ladder need to be increased, to get the full, ANS tones captured.

There is after all a sweet spot when safe becomes danger, called challenge and flow, fully immersed and focused on an activity.

It occurs when the person has confidence. Yup, more to it, but...that will do for now.

There is also a horrible spot between danger and life-threat that appears as the backrooms. Infinite recursion, self attack, impossible to navigate. The door out is often a new theory, a new way to organise what is already there...

It could be that this place only occurs when people have been right down to the bottom? Down there we are in the endogenous opioid state. Giving up, dissociation, anaesthetised to attack and insults. It feels OK...eventually. Until the opioids wear off.

Then theories about how we should have done things differently, a feeling of hopelessness.

I don't know!

It is interesting though.