Slogging through books so you don't have to

I am less than ten pages away from being done with The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, Self-Regulation by Stephen W. Porges. I won't lie, it's been a slog. I started it when I was in Arizona, so that is nearly a month it has taken me to finish it. A month for me to read a book is fairly unusual. It has been interesting (the last half at least, though I understand the need for the details in the first half), and it makes clear why some of the more 'out there' treatments for struggling children work. I think I will be glad that I have read it. Right now, I'm more relieved that I am nearly done and can check it off my list. 

To give you an example, this excerpt is one of more readable passages:

"Regardless of the model of attachment or its dependence on cognitive, affective, behavioral, or biological constructs, the critical features that determine the valance of the interaction of the interaction are related to perceived safety. Thus, the perception of safety is the turning point in the development of relationships for most mammals. The perception of safety determines whether the behavior will be prosocial (i.e. social engagement) or defensive. If the context and the other individual are perceived as safe, then the candidates for the social bond may inhibit the adaptive primitive neurobiological reactions of defense allow the expression of social engagement." (p. 193)

See? I wasn't kidding when I called it a slog. Essentially, for humans to function well, they first need to feel safe. This is preliminary to other functioning, including the building of relationships. This confirms in more than so many words what I have discovered from parenting my children. If a child's ability to regulate is at all compromised, they are even more affected by not feeling safe. Instead of the vagal system working as it should, the stress and fear circumvent that system which is able to modulate the body in healthy ways when stressed, and instead a child's neurological system reverts to a less complex, more primitive one, with fight or flight being right at the top, followed by an even more primitive system of freeze with body systems slowing... possibly to a dangerous degree... if the stress and fear cannot be relieved. In other parts of the book, Dr. Porges notes that these extremely primitive and less functional states will become the automatic default, with the vagal system not being engages at all, if the the stress is so constant that there is no relief. 

Felt safety is the biggest answer to how to remedy this. If you can stand one more excerpt...

"To effectively switch from defensive to social engagement strategies, the mammalian nervous sytem needs to perform two important adaptive tasks: (1) assess risk, and (2) if the environment is perceived safe, inhibit the more primitive limbic structures that control fight, flight, or freeze behaviors. In other words, any intervention that has the potential for increasing an organism's experience of safety has the potential for recruiting the evolutionary more advanced neural circuits that support prosocial behaviors of the social engagement system." (p. 273)

There is so much more, but this sticks out because it is accessible. Children truly cannot do much of anything except react if they do not feel safe. They cannot form relationships, they cannot learn, they cannot engage with the world. It's not just children; adults have the same neural function, but if they have had the experience of feeling safe during their childhood, they are better able to make use of the vagal system and appropriately manage their fear and stress... for a time. 

How can we create felt safety for our children and each other? How can we think cooperatively instead of competitively? Instead of hoarding gasoline (needlessly, btw), what if we made sure that our family and friends and neighbors could get where they needed to go by helping them? If you knew everyone around you had your back, there would be a lot less concern for looking out for number one. 

If you stop and think about it, we actually live in a very unsafe society and the levels of stress that children, teens, and adults report they feel on a daily basis confirms this. Few people actually feel safe. What can we do about that?

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