Listen to the wind, it talks. Listen to the silence, it speaks. Listen to your heart, it knows.
—NATIVE AMERICAN PROVERB
Since humans first appeared on earth, we have been finding ways to safely move through the world. From ancient navigational aids like the North Star and the Viking sunstone to 20th-century machines that use echoes of radio waves, sound, and light, we map what is unseen and navigate to safety. Using the process of neuroception, the second organizing principle of Polyvagal Theory, the autonomic nervous system listens intently, searching for cues of safety and watching for signs of danger to help you orient and take action.
BENEATH AWARENESS
Through neuroception, the autonomic nervous system is listening inside to what is happening in your internal organs; outside, scanning the environment; and between, sensing the connection to another nervous system. Cues of life-threat bring a shift into a dorsal vagal state of immobilization or collapse. With cues of danger you step into sympathetic fight and flight. Cues of safety activate the ventral vagal branch and the social engagement system. A pang of hunger, the size and temperature of a room, the feel of a chair, a face with a smile or a frown are just some of the experiences that are taken in by the process of neuroception and bring an autonomic response.
MINI EXERCISE
Consider your personal neuroceptive cues.
– What is a cue of safety or unsafety from inside your body?
– From the environment?
– Between you and another person?
Neuroception is a passive pathway always running in the background moving your clients up and down the autonomic hierarchy. Beneath awareness, neuroception assesses present moment demands initiating some actions while inhibiting others. A neuroception of safety calms, connects, and dampens the need for protection. By first regulating the passive pathways of neuroception, a platform of safety is created that provides support for engaging the voluntary pathways involved in the process of change (Porges & Carter, 2017).
Neuroception is a deeply subcortical experience that happens below the realm of conscious thought and outside of awareness (Porges, 2017a). This internal surveillance system takes in a constant stream of information and responds by making autonomic adjustments that move you either toward connection or into protection. Always working in service of survival, neuroception activates “the most adaptive [behavior] as interpreted by the nervous system” (Porges, 2017a, p. 176). Long before the information reaches the brain to form a thought, biology has taken action. While you are often unaware of the cues of safety or danger, you feel the autonomic response. Reactions are felt on the inside, (e.g., warmth in the heart, ease of breathing, stomachache, or dry throat) and are sometimes seen on the outside (e.g., smiling, blushing, a relaxed or stiff posture).
MINI EXERCISE
Consider some of the ways you experience autonomic reactions.
– Which are known only to you?
– Which are visible to others?
SAFETY VERSUS DANGER
Neuroception is tuned through individual experience to take in cues in particular ways as safe, dangerous, and life-threatening. Based on interactions with people and places, neuroception creates habitual patterns of connection or protection. Over time, your internal radar is calibrated to respond in particular ways. Shaped in an environment that is safe and supportive, the system reads cues accurately and inhibits defense systems in safe environments or activates them when there is risk (Porges, 2004). Shaped in an environment that is unpredictable and filled with unexpected events, an environment in which you feel unsafe or unseen, neuroception is biased toward protection which leads to a mismatch between autonomic state and actual safety or risk (Porges, 2015a). This mismatch activates strategies that keep you from accurately sensing safety and inhibiting defense responses, or identifying danger and initiating protective responses. These early autonomic patterns live on through neuroceptive tendencies that create an autonomic profile.
A neuroception of safety is incompatible with a neuroception of danger or life-threat, making this an either/or experience (Porges, 2015a). Through neuroception, your autonomic nervous system is either open to connection and the possibility of change or locked in a protective response and stuck in a survival story. Patterns of connection arise from cues of safety that the down-regulate your defense systems and activate the social engagement system (Porges 2015a). Research has shown that health effects of positive affect, including greater longevity and better immune function, are more than the absence of negative affect (Segerstrom & Sephton, 2010). An embodied sense of safety requires both the reduction or resolution of cues of danger and the experience of cues of safety (Porges & Lewis, 2009). One without the other may not be enough to move out of a state of protection into readiness for connection. The nervous system needs the active appearance and experience of cues of safety (Porges, 2015a).
The hopeful message from Polyvagal Theory is that autonomic patterns and autonomic profiles can be reshaped. While early experiences shape the system, ongoing experiences can reduce or even resolve cues of danger. Cues of safety, often missed in the midst of cues of danger, can be recognized and over time become more abundant. One of the ways to reshape your system is to first bring perception to neuroception and then add context through the lens of discernment. Bringing attention to the present moment invites you to consider the origins of cues of danger. Has a cue from the past reached into the present? While it was a necessary survival response when it first activated, is it needed now?
MINI EXERCISE
Stop for a moment to notice your neuroception. Take in the environment through sight and sound. See the people and things around you.
What are the cues of safety and danger? Are there enough cues of safety to bring you into a readiness for connection? Or do the cues of danger keep you poised for protection?
Use this question to look through the lens of discernment: In this moment, with this person, in this place, surrounded by these things, are you actually in danger, or are you safe?
BACK TO BEGINNINGS
Neuroception launches a cascade of embodied events that become a story. When entering into an autonomic state, the information about that state travels up the autonomic pathways to the brain. There, a story is created to make sense of the experience. The physiological state creates a psychological story. Using the metaphor of a river, imagine the flow of experience. At the river’s source is neuroception and at the river’s mouth is the story. In between lie perception, autonomic state, feelings, and behaviors (Figure 2.1).
FIGURE 2.1. From Neuroception to Story
We’re accustomed to entering the river downstream with feelings, behavior, or story. But neuroception happens at the farthest point upstream. You need to make your way back to the starting point, leaving behind story, behavior, and feelings to identify the state and bring perception to neuroception. It is when you travel back upstream to consider neuroception that you become aware of how your internal surveillance system begins the sequence of events that eventually leads to the way you are feeling, acting, and thinking.
Attitudes, actions, and the way you see the world are the result of the autonomic nervous system moving between states of connection and protection. The stories you inhabit begin far away from the thinking brain in the autonomic nervous system with a neuroception of safety, danger, or life-threat.
MINI EXERCISE
Bring to mind an experience and make your way to the river’s source. Bring perception to the neuroception that was the starting point. What was the cue of safety or danger that you followed downstream into feeling, behavior, and finally story?
Through understanding the process of neuroception, you can begin to honor the ways the autonomic nervous system listens and acts in service of your safety and survival. Knowing that neuroception shapes the first part of your story, you can begin to listen in new ways and learn to become a skilled story editor.