Your Nervous System Is a Suspicious Little Bitch and She’s Not Wrong
A Field Guide to Polyvagal Reality
Your nervous system is not here for your career goals. It doesn’t care about your big presentation, your Hinge date, your desire to “be more emotionally available.” It cares about one thing: survival. And if that means ghosting your friends, ignoring texts for three weeks, or dissociating so hard during sex you forget what year it is, so be it.
This isn’t dysfunction. This is design.
Polyvagal Theory doesn’t exist to make you calmer. It exists to explain why your body keeps throwing you under the bus just because someone used the same tone of voice your mom did in 1998. It’s the science of why you shut down, explode, freeze, spiral, people-please, fawn, vanish, or rage-text in iambic pentameter at 1:41 a.m.
And no, telling yourself “you’re safe” isn’t gonna fix it.
THE LADDER: Because You’re Not “Crazy,” You’re Just in a Body That’s Sick of Everyone’s Shit
Polyvagal Theory gives us a ladder. And depending on the day, your body’s climbing it, falling off it, or setting it on fire.
1. Ventral Vagal - “I can do hard things”
You feel human. Connected. Not flinching at your reflection. Capable of texting without deleting it five times. You feel like maybe, just maybe, the world isn’t entirely hostile garbage.
2. Sympathetic - “EVERYTHING IS A THREAT”
Your heart is a jackhammer. You’re planning an escape route from your kitchen. You want to punch your phone. You want to run. You want to scream into a plant. You’re scrolling for answers, but all you find are podcasts by people who’ve never actually had a trauma response.
3. Dorsal Vagal - “I don’t exist and that’s probably for the best”
You’re numb. Heavy. Disconnected. You could sleep for 47 hours or disappear into a corner of TikTok where people whisper at you. Everything feels too much, so you do nothing and blame yourself for it. Again.
Spoiler: this isn’t mood swings. This is a finely tuned survival system that got rewired by trauma, abuse, neglect, chronic stress, or just surviving late-stage capitalism with a nervous system made for village life.
NEUROCEPTION: Your Body Has Trust Issues, and It Should
Neuroception is what your body does before your brain catches up. It’s the creepy prequel to your panic attack. It’s the flash flood of “nope” that shows up before your partner even finishes saying “We need to talk.”
Your system doesn’t care if you’re “objectively safe.” It’s responding to micro-signals, tone of voice, posture, eyebrow arches, how fast someone breathes when they text you “k.”
If you’ve been hurt often enough, your body starts assuming everyone is about to become a threat. Not because you’re broken. Because you adapted.
Polyvagal work is about helping your body stop prepping for war every time someone says your name.
THE TOOLS (FOR WHEN “JUST BREATHE” MAKES YOU WANT TO COMMIT A CRIME)
Let’s talk regulation. Not in the inspirational quote way. In the “my body is a feral cat and I’m trying to get it out from under the porch” way.
1. Grounding That Doesn’t Involve Imagining You’re a Fucking Tree
Forget visualizing roots and golden light. Try this:
Sit your ass down.
Grab something cold.
Press your feet to the floor. Hard.
Name the color of every object in the room. Loudly, if necessary.
Count backwards from 27 by 3 while squeezing a pillow like it owes you money.
You’re anchoring your nervous system to now. Not your trauma. Not your fear forecast. Now.
2. Box Breathing (aka, The Free Anti-Anxiety Drug You Keep Ignoring)
This is the one breath trick that doesn’t require faith or inner peace:
Inhale for 4
Hold for 4
Exhale for 4
Hold for 4
Do that until your system starts to believe you’re not under sniper fire.
If it doesn’t work immediately, good. That means your body’s been stuck in hell and it’s gonna need a few reps before it trusts you again.
3. Movement for the Emotionally Constipated
Trauma gets stuck in your body like spoiled leftovers. You can’t cry it out, so you gotta move it.
Shake. Hard. Flail.
Slam your feet.
Shadowbox your childhood.
Scream into a pillow or scream in the car like you’re being exorcised.
The goal isn’t grace. The goal is discharge.
4. Safe Place Visualization (Yes, Even If You’ve Never Felt Safe)
This isn’t about fantasy. It’s about building a pocket reality your nervous system can recognize as “not immediate hell.”
Pick a place. Real or made-up.
Fill it with details: light, texture, sounds, temperature.
Go there when your body says the world is ending.
Let it hold you long enough to come back to baseline.
If you’ve never felt safe, this will feel fake. That’s okay. Keep building. Brick by neuroceptive brick.
5. Social Engagement for the Touch-Starved and Trust-Phobic
We regulate through connection, but only when we’re not actively terrified of it.
Try:
Eye contact with a safe person for 3 seconds
Laughing, even if it’s hollow
Speaking slowly, like you believe your voice deserves time
Letting someone see you without explaining it all
This rewires the fear loop. Bit by agonizing bit.
6. Mantras That Don’t Make You Want to Punch a Crystal
No more “I am light” unless you’re about to spontaneously combust. Use mantras that speak to your actual state:
“This is hard, and I’m still here.”
“My body thinks I’m in danger, but I’m not.”
“I’m not failing. I’m dysregulated.”
“I don’t owe anyone my composure.”
Say them while breathing. Say them while pacing. Say them instead of spiraling.
REGULATION ISN’T A CURE. IT’S A SKILLSET FOR SURVIVAL.
You’re not trying to be a calm, soft-shelled enlightenment sponge. You’re trying to be functional enough to text back, eat food, and not collapse in public every time you feel shame.
Regulation doesn’t mean you stop getting triggered.
It means you stop staying stuck.
It means your life stops being dictated by old alarms.
It means maybe, just maybe, you get to stop apologizing for how your body survived.
FINAL THOUGHTS FOR THE DEEPLY DONE
You are not too sensitive. You were too aware in a world that taught you to shut up.
You are not lazy. You are shut down by a body that thinks effort = danger.
You are not broken. You are a haunted cathedral. And you are still standing.
This work isn’t pretty. It’s gritty. Boring. Nonlinear. Occasionally fucking infuriating. But every time you show your body a tiny scrap of safety, it logs it. It remembers.
And one day it starts to believe you.
Really, really nice essay.
There is a war going on and our adversaries' goal is taking self-control away from you.