WHY A BOOK OF CONVERSATIONS?
When The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation* was published, it provided a vehicle to archive the scientific basis of the theory. The book made accessible to clinicians and other professionals a Polyvagal perspective that provided new concepts and insights for understanding human behavior. The perspective placed an emphasis on the important link between psychological experiences and physical manifestations in the body. The book was dense and written for scientists. As a collection of edited papers that had previously been published in scientific journals and academic books, the book provided easy access to work that would have been buried in specialty literature. Thus, I was pleased to have my work lifted from the obscurity of the scientific publications with their limited and often costly distribution to public portals such as Amazon.
When I wrote the book, my goal was to archive the documents that formed the corpus of the theory. What followed the publication was not anticipated. To my surprise, the book has sold well and is being read by professionals in many different disciplines. It has been translated into German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese. It has helped to kindle interest in Polyvagal Theory, which has resulted in my participation in webinars and invited presentations at conferences in many countries. This interest in Polyvagal Theory has come with a request to make the theory more accessible to clinicians and their clients. I have frequently been told how dense (difficult) the book is to read and in the same interaction been told how accessible I have made these same ideas in my talks. I normally respond by saying that when I give talks, my objective is to communicate, and when I write papers, my objective is to convey data and ideas within the constraints of scientific publications.
During the past few years, at the prompting of many clinicians, it has become clear to me that I have a responsibility to deconstruct the dense content of the theory into a written style that will be more accessible. This book is a product of this urging. I approached the problem of translation by reviewing the transcripts of several of my interviews. Since the interviews were conducted by clinicians, the focus of my responses was on clinical applications.
The interviews follow a glossary familiarizing readers with the constructs and concepts embedded in Polyvagal Theory as well as an introductory chapter providing a discussion of the science and the scientific culture in which Polyvagal Theory was developed. The interviews have been edited to improve completeness and clarity. The interview format provides a spontaneous and informal vehicle to communicate clinically relevant features of Polyvagal Theory. The interviews have been selected to provide clinicians with an understanding of how our nervous system adapts to challenges and to enable therapists to develop therapeutic strategies to rehabilitate biobehavioral regulation through social interactions. The transcripts have been edited to reduce redundancy and to keep the flow of the discussions focused. In places, my responses have been expanded and clarified. The reader will note that rather than reducing all redundancy, several themes are discussed within the contexts of the different interviews. Reintroducing themes central to Polyvagal Theory within these different contexts provided an opportunity to expand meaning and clinical relevance.
WHY FOCUS ON OUR QUEST FOR SAFETY?
My exposure to the clinical world has motivated me to communicate the novel and relevant perspectives of Polyvagal Theory in a more accessible form. My talks have focused on how the regulation of the autonomic nervous system functions as a neural platform upon which different classes of adaptive behavior could be efficiently expressed. Polyvagal Theory emphasizes that evolution provides an organizing principle to identify neural circuits that promoted social behavior and two classes of defensive strategies, mobilization associated with fighting or fleeing and immobilization associated with hiding or feigning death. The phylogenetically most recent mammalian circuit fosters social behavior and is defined by a face–heart connection in which the neural regulation of the striated muscles of our face and head are neurophysiologically linked to the neural regulation of our heart. According to Polyvagal Theory, the face–heart connection provides humans and other mammals with an integrated social engagement system that detects and projects features of “safety” to conspecifics through facial expressions and vocalizations that are covariates of autonomic state. Within this model, how we look, listen, and vocalize conveys information about whether we are safe to approach.
Recently, after I was interviewed on a webinar, listeners posted comments on a blog. When I read their comments, I realized that the listeners understood Polyvagal Theory in a language that transcended the complexity of science. Despite my training as a scientist and the pragmatic way in which I was trained to write scientific papers, the casual conversation of the webinar provided an effective and accessible vehicle to convey the essence of the theory. As the listeners processed the hour-long interview, the message that was distilled was simply that a quest for safety is the basis for living a successful life.
In writing this book, it is my hope to highlight the important role of feeling safe as an important component of the healing process. From a Polyvagal perspective, deficits in feeling safe form the core biobehavioral feature that leads to mental and physical illness. It is my sincere hope that furthering an understanding of our need to feel safe will lead to new social, educational, and clinical strategies that will enable us to become more welcoming as we invite others to co-regulate on a quest for safety.
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* Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. Norton series on interpersonal neurobiology. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.