We were all hungry, but it was Elizabeth who realized our true starvation was for connection, the company of other people . . . for fellowship.
—ANNIE BARROWS, THE GUERNSEY LITERARY
AND POTATO PEEL SOCIETY
Through the process of evolution, anatomy and biology have been shaped to enable social engagement and reciprocal connection (Carter & Porges, 2012). Experiences of social relationships and loneliness significantly predict wellness, illness, and mortality. “There are perhaps no other factors that can have such a large impact on both length and quality of life” (Holt-Lunstad, Robles, & Sbarra, 2017, p. 527). The social environment effects biology. It has become apparent that social connections and physiology enter into a reciprocal relationship that impacts the ways genes are expressed (Cole, 2014). When people feel socially disconnected, they seem to have an increased inflammation response coupled with an impaired immune response (Cole, 2009). Applying this understanding of the interconnection of physiology and psychology, the British town of Frome developed a project focused on building networks of social support and connection and found hospital admissions reduced by over 30% (Abel & Clarke, 2018). Your biology responds to being out of connection and your happiness is interwoven with the happiness of people with whom you are connected. Community can be a cure for illness.
“Life on Earth is fundamentally social” (Carter & Porges, 2012 p. 12). Connecting invites your clients into exploration of social connections, reciprocity, and co-regulation. Your clients connect with people whose autonomic patterns fit with theirs and feel familiar. Their relationships are often with people who are similarly dysregulated or whose autonomic responses mimic their childhood experiences. As a result of engaging in polyvagal exercises, your clients’ autonomic patterns begin to change, and they are drawn to look for other people who attune to their new patterns. Looking at relationships through the lens of a reshaped system brings clarity to what is autonomically draining and filling. Autonomic resonance is a powerful guide for your clients to use in evaluating current relationships, shaping old relationships in new ways, and looking for new connections with people whose rhythms are similar.
Chapter 8 offers two categories of exercises that help your clients embrace the human longing and biological need to create community: Belonging, and Connecting to Something Greater than Self. Each of these offers ways to engage the autonomic nervous system in deepening pathways to connection. Belonging begins the process with three exercises that use the experience of reciprocity to help your clients understand their personal needs for connection and create ways to meet those needs. Connection to Something Greater than Self offers clients ways to connect to the autonomic experiences of gratitude, compassion, and awe and build connections beyond their immediate personal relationships.
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.
—PLATO
We come into the world wired for connection, one autonomic nervous system reaching out to another. Connection is a biological imperative—essential to survival. Being predictably cared about creates a sense of belongingness (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). The autonomic nervous system requires reciprocity to regulate states and to feel safe (Porges, 2012). In fact, the quality of your clients’ relationships has more impact on their health and well-being than the quantity (Ozbay et al., 2007). Although your clients may interact with lots of people in the course of a day, they can still feel profoundly lonely. They can be “alone together” (Turkle, 2011).
A sense of belonging to a group and having things in common with fellow group members brings satisfaction with life (Wakefield et al., 2016). In an ever-increasing feedback loop, when your clients are embedded in connections with friends, they are more likely to experience life satisfaction and when they experience life satisfaction, they are more likely to have stronger and more intimate connections (Amati et al., 2018). Your clients’ individual sense of happiness is impacted by being part of a network of happy people (Fowler & Christakis, 2008).
This exercise helps clients look at experiences of intra- and interconnection in daily living and ways to create the right balance to meet their autonomic needs (Figure 8.1).
BACKGROUND
You don’t require reciprocity, proximity, and face-to-face interactions all the time. In fact, well-being is found in a balance of time with others and time by yourself. You have your own reciprocity requirements, and when they aren’t met, your body feels the absence. Without the right measure of reciprocity, your autonomic state begins to shift from readiness for connection to preparation for protection. Incorporating a therapeutic dose of reciprocity (the amount necessary to bring the desired effect) into your daily living means first knowing your needs and then building sustainable connections and opportunities to meet those needs.
STEPS
1. Fill in the following equations to find your reciprocity rhythms. Recognize the signals that you’ve been on your own for too long, you’ve spent too much time connected to others, or you’re in a sweet spot of symmetry.
FIGURE 8.1. Reciprocity Equation Chart
2. Reciprocity is not a static experience. Return to this practice regularly to track when you are out of balance or in a rescuing relationship to yourself and others.
3. Take care of your connections.
•Write reciprocity intentions that describe how you are going to pay attention each day to ways you are in and out of reciprocity. Examples might be, “I will track my reciprocity rhythms and take action when I’m out of balance” or “At the end of the day I’ll reflect on my moments of reciprocity.”
•Create time and space for reciprocal interactions. Identify when, where, and with whom you can build predictable, sustainable opportunities for connection into your life.
TIPS
In beginning therapy it is expected that your clients’ equations will be out of balance. Often one of the things that brings clients to treatment is the experience of autonomic dysregulation that is an outcome of focusing too much on others or on themselves. Help your clients understand that there is no one single formula for balance; rather, each person creates their own formulas based on their personal autonomic needs. This is a process of finding and maintaining a balance between tending to self and connecting with others.
This exercise helps clients identify what they are doing to feel connected, decide what they would like to try, and use that awareness to create a connection plan (Figure 8.2).
BACKGROUND
What does a map of your pathways to connection look like? Your personal plan brings a dual focus: what’s working (the things that are already in place) and what’s wanted (things to explore and invite in). The questions in this exercise reference people, but feel free to add pets to your exploration.
STEPS
1. Identify what’s working.
•Who are the people in your life with whom you feel a connection?
•What are the things you do together that foster that connection?
•What are the things you do to nourish your sense of connection to self?
2. Identify what you want.
•Who would you like to invite into connection?
•What might you do to explore new connections?
FIGURE 8.2. Personal Connection Plan
•What would you like to explore on your own?
•How does interacting with others in a playful way fit into your connection plan?
•How do moments of shared stillness fit in your connection plan?
3. Fill in the boxes to create your personal connection plan. Update your plan as you try new things and make new connections.
TIPS
Clients may feel the absence of connection as they work on this exercise. Moving into sympathetic or dorsal vagal reactions shuts down their ability to explore what they want. Help your clients anchor in the energy of their ventral vagal state so they stay in self-compassion when looking at what is present and have access to curiosity when considering what they want.
Connecting with others is a universally beneficial experience, but the ways people benefit from connection are individually created experiences. This exercise uses the categories of who, how, and how often to help clients look at the ways they connect with people in their networks.
BACKGROUND
There are many ways to reach for reciprocity. There are many pathways to connection. Who you connect with and how you connect is an individual experience. Find the ways your autonomic nervous system feels nourished and create relationships with people (and pets) that nurture your sense of being woven into a resilient network.
STEPS
1. Look at people in your life.
•Make a list of the people to whom you are connected.
•Listen to your autonomic response as you think about each person. Using a scale of 1–3, loosely connected; 4–7, pretty connected; or 8–10, very connected, identify how close you feel to these people. You may find that you have several people in the 4–7 pretty connected range or one person in the 8–10 very connected range and feel very safe and supported with either configuration. It isn’t a particular number of connections that matters, it’s the ways your personal autonomic needs are met by those connections.
2. Look at how often you connect with people in your network. A match with others feels resourcing while a mismatch between your wish for connection and your experience of connection is painful.
3. Look at the ways you connect.
•Create a pie chart to map your kinds of connection. Use the communication categories that fit for you. The two examples in Figure 8.3 show very different connection profiles, but each person identified feeling deeply connected to their network.
FIGURE 8.3. Types of Connection
4. Look at what you do when you connect.
•quiet moments
•physically active adventures
•go out or stay in
•favorite activities you love to return to
•new things you want to try
TIPS
Your clients each have their own connection needs and ways of connecting and often judge their patterns in comparison to what they think is the right or normal way to connect. Help your clients change from thinking about ways of connecting as right or wrong and instead stay curious as they look at the different kinds of connection that are personally autonomically satisfying.
CONNECTING TO SOMETHING GREATER THAN SELF
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
—W. B. YEATS
Gratitude, compassion, and awe—called self-transcendent emotions—are experiences that bind people together. They bring benefits beyond individual experiences and create relationships that extend outside the family system. These experiences are associated with ventral vagal activity, bring physiological and psychological health, and may even be connected to your molecular well-being (Cole, 2014).
Gratitude is a universal experience, offered and received by people in cultures around the world (Emmons & Stern, 2013). “Whether it stems from the acceptance of another’s kindness, an appreciation for the majesty of nature, or a recognition of the gifts in one’s own life, gratitude enhances nearly all spheres of human experience” (Emmons & Stern, 2013, p. 846). Individual moments of gratitude weave together to create a more general sense of being grateful in daily life (McCullough, Tsang, & Emmons, 2004). Just as compassion can be deepened through practice, practice strengthens the gratitude response.
The ventral vagal state of safety creates a platform for compassion (Porges, 2017b). When you feel held in the safety of a regulated nervous system, you can look out into the world and see the ways other people are suffering and respond with compassion. Increased ventral vagal activity is linked to compassion and self-compassion and both are strengthened with regular practice (Neff & Germer, 2017; Stellar, Cohen, Oveis, & Keltner, 2015).
Awe is defined by two features: vastness (experiencing something larger than yourself or beyond your ordinary experience) and accommodation (a reorganization of your ways of thinking to adjust to the new experience) (Keltner & Haidt, 2003). Awe is an information-rich experience that pulls your attention outside yourself toward something greater than your individual experience and expands your frame of reference (Shiota, Keltner, Mossman, 2007). Awe reminds you that you are part of humankind, inextricably connected to the world.
This exercise brings attention to everyday experiences of gratitude that clients often miss. These experiences of gratitude are in the family of ventral vagal micro-moments that, when brought to conscious awareness, strengthen the pathways to regulation.
BACKGROUND
Sometimes gratitude comes in the form of life-giving or lifesaving events (a stranger donating a kidney, someone not leaving your side when you are in the depths of despair) that irrevocably change the way you think about and move through the world. More often the gifts of gratitude come through ordinary, everyday experiences. Simple interactions with people (holding a door open, offering a smile, recognizing someone’s contribution), pets (your dog greeting you at the door, your cat nuzzling you awake in the morning), or in nature (the return of the sun after a stretch of rain or the rain after a period of drought, the first hint of spring) are opportunities for gratitude. Gratitude is good for your body and brain (fewer physical complaints, better heart health, less depression and anxiety, more happiness). A gratitude practice helps you see the small, everyday experiences of goodness that might otherwise pass by unnoticed.
STEPS
1. Keep a gratitude list. Make a practice of noticing what you might otherwise take for granted.
2. Find ways to express your gratitude. Say thank you. Return the favor.
3. Use a breath practice to deepen into appreciation.
•Imagine breathing into the beginnings of your ventral vagus at the base of your skull. Follow the pathway as it makes its way to your heart, and then breathe out of your heart. Follow this cycle of breath and imagine your autonomic nervous system supporting your experience of gratitude.
•Breathe in with a word that acknowledges a moment to be grateful for. Breath out with a word that expresses your gratitude.
TIPS
Gratitude is often an easier experience for your clients to recognize and resource than compassion or self-compassion and builds the foundation for moving into those experiences. Because gratitude grows over time and seems to have lasting effects in increased ventral vagal experiences, changes in personal stories, and increased connections with others, an ongoing gratitude practice is a simple way for your clients to shape their intra- and interpersonal connections.
This exercise helps clients connect to their ventral vagal state and use the language of the autonomic nervous system with three small practices that build the capacity for compassion and self-compassion.
BACKGROUND
Through the eyes of compassion, from your own regulated nervous system, you can see another person’s dysregulated system, respond with regulation, and connect with kindness. From the energy of your ventral vagal system, you can also connect inside and be with your own suffering in an act of self-compassion. Ongoing experiences build the capacity for connecting with compassion. Find the combination of practices that brings your ventral vagal system alive. Create your own compassionate connections.
STEPS
1. Create a compassion statement using the language of the autonomic nervous system.
•Use language that recognizes another person’s dysregulated state and names the ways your ventral vagal state helps you see them with compassion.
•Decide on a timeframe for using your statement. You might choose to create a new statement each week or each day.
•Notice people in need of compassion and use your statement to send a message either in silent thought or in spoken words.
2. Make this three-step compassion practice a routine part of your day.
•Find your ventral vagal anchor.
•Look through the energy of your ventral vagal system. See the other person not as bad or unworthy but as dysregulated, pulled into sympathetic or dorsal vagal protection, and unable to regulate.
•Hold the other person in your ventral vagal energy. Let your nervous system send cues of safety toward theirs.
3. Create a self-compassion statement using the language of the autonomic nervous system.
•Use language that acknowledges your own dysregulated state, identifies that dysregulation is a normal human experience, and reminds you that your autonomic nervous system knows the way back to regulation.
•Decide on a timeframe for using your statement. You might choose to create a new statement each week or each day.
•Notice when you are in need of compassion and say your statement to yourself either silently or out loud.
TIPS
It is only from a state of being anchored in ventral vagal that your clients have access to compassion and self-compassion. Remind your clients that their ventral vagal state and compassion form a feedback loop that deepens both experiences. When they are anchored in ventral, they build their capacity for compassion; likewise, more moments of compassion strengthen their ventral vagal capacities. The ability for compassion and self-compassion is built over time. Understanding that compassion and self-compassion emerge from an autonomic state offers your clients a way to think about, talk about, and work with these practices and bring patience to the process.
Create your own examples or use these samples to illustrate autonomically guided language.
Sample statements for compassion:
•I see the suffering your dysregulation brings.
•I can hold you in my ventral vagal energy.
Sample statements for self-compassion:
•Even as I feel myself losing my anchor in ventral, I remember my system knows the way back.
•It’s natural to move in and out of regulation.
For many clients, the experience of being alone and disconnected is one of the things that brings them to treatment. This exercise gives clients ways to bring the autonomic state of awe alive and feel connected to something larger than their individual experience.
BACKGROUND
You feel moved when you are awe-filled and motionless when you are awestruck. Awe lives along a continuum of ordinary to extraordinary. Some moments stop you in your tracks and demand your attention. Other everyday moments pass by without being recognized. People, nature, architecture, the arts, spiritual experiences, and inexplicable events each have the potential to elicit feelings of awe. Where are your moments of awe each day that are waiting to be discovered?
STEPS
1. Build a reservoir of awe memories.
•Remember a moment of awe.
•Replay it in your mind and bring the richness of it back into full awareness.
•Revisit it in writing to deepen the experience.
2. Notice where in your life you find awe.
•Certain people inspire awe. Who are those people for you? They may be people you know and have a relationship with or people you know of and admire.
•Places, the architecture of a particular structure, and natural formations in the outside world routinely bring experiences of awe.
•Art and music predictably activate awe.
•Spiritual experiences are awe-filled.
3. Either physically or through a memory, return to the awe-inspiring people, places, and events you identified in step two. Returning in person or revisiting in memory brings the experience and your ventral vagal response alive again.
4. Be open to the inexplicable events that unexpectedly appear. Let go of the need to understand and explain those moments and let in the experience of awe.
TIPS
Awe is an experience that is accessible to everyone. While an awe experience often leads to a desire to share the experience with others, it is first an individual experience that happens when people are by themselves. Although the state of awe is often unexpected, it can also be intentionally inspired. Help your clients find small moments of awe that are easily repeatable.
Here is an example of revisiting an experience and bringing the richness of the memory alive through writing an awe story:
I was visiting the medieval city of Bruges in Belgium a few years ago when I found a church. I was drawn into the church by its commanding Gothic architecture and the stillness I knew I would find within. As I entered the church, I went from being curious to something more, something palpable I could not explain. I walked along the nave toward the altar and came upon a series of paintings depicting the Passion of the Christ. As I walked from painting to painting, I could feel the pain and sadness of all humanity, and yet I could also feel a deep and abiding love. Tears streamed down my face as a force larger than myself flowed through me. I was everything at once: grief and joy, love and pain, anger and peace. When I left the silence of the sanctuary and climbed the stone stairs into the sunshine of the medieval town square, it was as if I was entering an entirely new world. I couldn’t put words to what had just happened, but I knew I had touched a holy place, both inside and outside of myself. I am forever changed by my experience that day in Bruges when I knew that all was broken and all was right in precisely the same moment.
CHAPTER 8 SUMMARY
You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.
—F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Connecting invites your clients to explore the questions, “Where are the places, what are the experiences, and who are the people that nourish my nervous system now?” Through this process of inquiry, your clients bring their implicit experience into explicit awareness in order to discover their new rhythms of regulation and experiment with creating daily living experiences that fit their changing autonomic profiles. Recognizing the combination of newly established and still emerging autonomic pathways now available to guide their choices is often both exciting and alarming for clients. As they begin to connect to self, others, the world, and spirit in new ways, your clients may feel sad about the things they are letting go of, anxious about all the changes new perspective brings, or confident in connecting to their autonomic nervous system and ready for the adventure. Learning how to move through the world with new rhythms can be daunting. Help your clients hold on to the ventral vagal pathways they’ve built and tend to the new patterns that are taking root.
The exercises in this chapter support your clients in building inward and outward connections by engaging the power of their ventral vagal pathways. Simple awareness practices that lead to the creation of safe and sustaining connections are offered in combination with exercises to engage with the transcendent experiences that evoke a sense of being woven into a network much bigger than self.
SECTION II SUMMARY
Little by little, one travels far.
—J. R. R. TOLKIEN
Everyday life is filled with challenges. To safely navigate throughout the day, the autonomic nervous system quickly responds to both actual and perceived demands in order to assure survival in moments of danger and the ability to thrive in times of safety. With a flexible autonomic nervous system, your clients have the ability to meet those challenges with equanimity—to stand in the middle, anchored in a ventral vagal state. With a nervous system that has been shaped away from connection toward protection, a system that can neither self-regulate nor co-regulate with ease, a cascade of events is set in motion that ends in suffering. When your clients are stuck in old patterns that use the mobilizing energy of the sympathetic nervous system or the shutdown response of the dorsal vagal system, they are separated from the biological resource of their ventral vagal system. These adaptive responses, once necessary for survival, now keep them from connecting to themselves, to others, and to the world around them.
With a foundation of understanding Polyvagal Theory, your clients can look at daily life and explore how to connect to the world through the lens of the autonomic nervous system. When you and your clients speak the language of the autonomic nervous system, you share a language—a kind of shorthand—that creates clarity and facilitates communication. With Polyvagal Theory as a guide, you can help your clients shape their autonomic nervous systems toward safety, regulation, and relationship. The steps presented in the BASIC sequence empower your clients to listen to their embodied stories, find cues of safety, and create new patterns that bring the possibility of health, growth, and restoration.