The Role of Polyvagal Theory in Relational Safety: Or, How to Avoid Being Eaten by Your Own Nervous System
Tuesday, February 11, 2025.
By now, you’ve probably heard about Polyvagal Theory, or at least about vagus nerve, which sound suspiciously like something from a Jules Verne novel.
And yet, here we are, dealing with them every day, in every conversation, in every awkward first date when someone brings up their childhood trauma before the drinks arrive.
Dr. Stephen Porges (2011) introduced Polyvagal Theory, which, in simple terms, explains why your nervous system is either helping you connect with other people—or convincing you that those people are trying to kill you.
And if Porges was right, then civilization itself is just an elaborate mechanism for nervous systems to co-regulate, a grand and ridiculous social experiment where humans keep pretending they aren’t slightly feral animals.
The Nervous System: A Drama Queen That Runs Your Life
Your nervous system is not a chill operator. It has three settings, much like an old-school rotary phone:
Ventral Vagal State (Social Engagement Mode) – This is the nervous system on a good day. Your brain is getting the "All-Clear!" signal from your body, and you can flirt, tell jokes, and remember people’s names. The sun shines. Puppies exist. Civilization stands a chance.
Sympathetic State (Fight-or-Flight Mode) – Here, the world is a danger zone. Your brain believes every shadow is a threat. Every person is an assassin disguised as a barista. Your own reflection? Suspicious. If you could, you’d sprint out of every room screaming "DANGER!" but instead, you just pick fights with your loved ones.
Dorsal Vagal State (Shut-Down Mode) – This is when your body, after too much stress, says, "Nope, I’m out," and collapses into a heap, scrolling TikTok in a dimly lit room while eating dry cereal out of the box. The world is meaningless. You are meaningless. Someone should really get on inventing a better nervous system.
Love and War (Mostly War)
Polyvagal Theory suggests that safety is the foundation of love.
Not passion, not shared Spotify playlists, not even mutual disdain for that one influencer everyone secretly hates. If your nervous system doesn’t believe it’s safe, your relationships will be about as stable as a folding chair in a hurricane.
And if that’s true, then human history is just a long, sad tale of nervous systems desperately trying to regulate and failing miserably.
Wars? Nervous system dysregulation on an international scale. Totalitarianism? Collective sympathetic overdrive. Depression epidemics? Mass dorsal vagal collapse.
But let’s make it personal.
Think about a fight you’ve had with a partner. The words flying back and forth like badly aimed darts.
The feeling in your chest that something is about to implode.
That’s your sympathetic nervous system hijacking the conversation, making it impossible to listen, impossible to de-escalate. Your body thinks you’re in a battlefield, and let’s be honest: sometimes, it’s not wrong.
The Cosmic Joke of Nervous System Regulation
If Porges is right, then relationships—hell, society itself—only function because humans have managed, however imperfectly, to hack their nervous systems into a state of safety.
We have built religions, families, institutions, and elaborate social rituals all in an effort to convince our nervous systems that we are not alone, that the world is not entirely out to get us.
And yet, every single day, we keep messing it up. We send panicked texts when someone takes five minutes to respond. We read rejection into the absence of emojis. We start fights about whether one of us loaded the dishwasher wrong when really, our vagus nerve just needs a hug.
The Secret to Not Ruining Everything
If you want to have relationships that don’t resemble a hostage situation, you need to hack your nervous system. And the best way to do that? Engage the ventral vagal state—the part of your nervous system that says, "Hey, you’re safe here. You can put down the emotional bazooka."
How do you do that?
Eye Contact & Voice Tone – Your nervous system is always looking for clues. Is their voice warm? Are their eyes kind? Or do they look like a stressed-out raccoon about to steal your sandwich? (Levine, 2010, on the role of eye contact in co-regulation.)
Breathing Like You’re Not Being Chased by a Bear – Slow exhales tell your nervous system you’re not in danger. Research shows that paced breathing engages the vagus nerve and increases heart rate variability, which is linked to resilience in relationships (Thayer & Lane, 2000).
Touch, But Only the Good Kind – A hug, a reassuring hand on the shoulder, even petting a dog. Your nervous system is like a golden retriever—it just wants to know everything’s okay. Oxytocin release from touch has been shown to counteract stress responses (Feldman, 2012).
The Takeaway (Or, How Not to Be a Nervous Wreck)
Polyvagal Theory explains why connection is a biological imperative.
You’re not paranoid. You’re not "too sensitive."
Your nervous system is just trying to protect you from getting eaten, which, in evolutionary terms, was a legitimate concern.
But now? The real danger isn’t saber-toothed tigers. It’s disconnection. It’s letting your nervous system trick you into loneliness.
So, the next time you feel yourself gearing up for battle in a conversation, pause. Take a breath. Look at the person in front of you and remind your nervous system: This is not a fight to the death. This is just love, in all its messy, terrifying, beautiful glory.
Be Well, Stay Kind, and Godspeed.
REFERENCES:
Bowlby, J. (1982). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books.
Carter, C. S., Lederhendler, I. I., & Kirkpatrick, B. (1995). The integrative neurobiology of affiliation. MIT Press.
Feldman, R. (2012). Oxytocin and social affiliation in humans. Hormones and Behavior, 61(3), 380-391.
Levine, P. A. (2010). In an unspoken voice: How the body releases trauma and restores goodness. North Atlantic Books.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions,