By the end of last year I had the privilege to attend a two days seminar arranged by Nordland sykehus in Bodø. The seminar was held by the American Dr Stephen Porges, a national and international well known scientists and researcher and the founder of The Polyvagal Theory.
The Polyvagal Theory is a sophisticated theory, so please excuse me if I do oversimplify this, which gives us an understanding of the biology of safety and danger. It's based of the subtle interplay between visceral experiences of our own bodies where the faces and voices of the people around us plays an important role of how we feel and act. So does the tone of the voices of other people. “In short, it explains why a kind face and tone from the people around us may dramatically affect whether we feel safe, in danger or in a life threatening situation. We are surprisingly attuned to subtle changes by the people around us. Only small changes in the eyebrow, wrinkles around the eyes, how the lips are looking, the tone of the voice, the posters of the body and so on quickly gives us an signal of how the status of the emotion of the other person is. Is he calm and relaxed, is he afraid or is he hostile? When the message we receive from the other person is “I’m not dangerous, you are safe with me,” we relax. It is important to notice that most of these processes are outside our conscious awareness. It just happens.
The Polyvagal Theory goes beyond the Fight and Flight mechanism and more on the social relationships. It also gives us an important supplement in our understanding of trauma and healing, by strengthening the body system for regulating arousal.
So far about the Polyvagal theory.
Together with the conference in Bodø we got several handouts. One that particular captured my interest was:”Making the World Safe for our Children: Down-regulating Defence and Up-regulating Social Engagement to ‘Optimise’ The Human Experience.”
As I am writing this article the tragedy in Orlando is only a couple of days away. Humans ability for hate and cruelty seems infinite, but luckily so do humans capacity for love and care for each other. Adults and children are daily bombarded with news about wars, terror, murder, child abuse, natural disasters, global warming and so on. We are all concerned, and one way or another affected by this, children as well as adults. The physical and psychological consequences by this are yet to be seen. But my fear is that they are going to be enormous. We already know that children exposed to danger suffer from an increased incidence of behaviour problems, learning delays, mental health issues and illness.
The ACE-study (Adverse Childhood Experiences) by Vincent Felitti & al has shown the long term effects by such experiences and they are terrible.
It's easy to believe that more and armed police in the streets and more Armed Forces; more surveillance will give us more safety. But there is little research that supports this. In other words, it will not make our children feel safe.
But what will make our children feel safe?
It is a well-established fact, I do believe, and that people interact with each other's nerve system. The Polyvagal theory proposes that safety is established by direct face to face interaction. Direct eye to eye contact together with warmly voices quickly lower defence mechanisms and provide more safety. I do believe, in contrast to a friend of mine who is just waiting for the Internet to pass, that the Internet has come to stay and together with it all the devices like computers, tablets cell phones and so on.
But an important question to ask our self is how is this affecting our children's ability for safety? It seems like children, and adults, are more and more interacting with the electronically devices and less and less through direct eye and face contacts. Children still play together as a group but less with each other, and more with their computers. The answer is of course not to abandon all the electronic device and go back to play with stones and cones.
But the challenges for all of us, researchers, teachers, politicians, parents and everybody else, is to re-establish the focus on the importance of social interactions and less on “social media” and find ways to combine the practical use of both. Or to use Stephen Porges’ words: “Effective social interactions may actively dampen defence systems and, when defence is down-regulated, our physiological state provides neural opportunities for us to learn and form strong social bonds while simultaneously supporting health, growth and restoration.”
We are all entitled to give an opinion here. And may be this could be a task for The Sound-Mind Community in the future?
Svein Furnes
Certified EMDR therapist
CAC
References:
Stephen Porges, at seminar in Bodø by the end of April 2016.
Stephen Porges; Making the World Safe for our Children: Down-regulating Defence and Up-regulating Social Engagement to ‘Optimise’ The Human Experience.”. Making the World Safe for our Children: Down-regulating Defence and Up-regulating Social Engagement to ‘Optimise’ The Human Experience.” Children Australia. Volume 40, Number 2 2015.
Porges and Geller: Therapeutic Presence:” Neurophysiological Mechanism Mediating Feeling Safe in Therapeutic Relationships.” Journal of Psychotherapy Integration 2014, Vo. 24, No 3.
Porges and Furman: “The Early Development of the Autonomic Nervous System Provides a Neural Platform for Social Behaviour: A Polyvagal Perspective.” Infant and Child Development 20: 2011.
Van der Kolk, Bessel: “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind and the Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Viking 2013
