The Emergence of a Polyvagal-Informed Therapy: Harnessing Neuroception of Safety in Clinical Treatment – Stephen Porges

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Scientific evidence reveals how to help your clients feel safe enough to get to the REAL issues so they can finally heal from trauma, depression, addiction and other mental health challenges.

Trauma and stress rewire your clients’ nervous system – keeping the autonomic nervous system (ANS) in a constant physiological state that supports fear and defense. This can make them easily agitated, always scanning the environment for signs of danger, or numb and completely shut off from the world.

When the nervous system is in self-protection mode, clients are physically incapable of feeling safe, connecting with others or healing mental and physical wounds, which compounds their suffering.

You can help them find their way back to safety by leveraging the revolutionary tools and insight from the Polyvagal Theory.

1. Determine how the autonomic nervous system is related to social and defensive behaviors.
2. Appraise the clinical conditions necessary to promote feelings of safety in the client.
3. Theorize why deficits in the Social Engagement System are core features of several psychiatric disorders.

Polyvagal Theory

• The role of autonomic state as an intervening variable mediating trust and calmness or reactivity to threat
• The importance of acknowledging and honoring the consequences of a neuroception of threat
• The effect of treat on autonomic state and neuroception

Strategies to mitigate threat

• Role of the social engagement system is therapy
• Harnessing the power of neuroception in therapy