Hi, thank you for joining the Empowered Relationship Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Jessica Higgins, licensed psychologist and relationship coach. Today’s episode is 261, “How to strengthen your relationship from a polyvagal perspective”, an interview with Dr. Stephen Porges.
Before we get started, I wanna take a moment and just take a breath with you… It’s interesting, in today’s topic we’re gonna be talking about how we create safety, reciprocal cues of connection in relationship, again, from a polyvagal perspective, and really working with our nervous system. So even just the deep breath in and the deep breath out is one way to signal to our nervous system that it’s okay. It’s okay to relax a little, it’s okay to be present, and more open and responsive.
Regardless of whatever you’re doing in the moment – you may be driving, or perhaps doing another task, or simply just listening – that we are opening a part of ourselves to receive more information, perhaps even contemplate aspects of our relationship and how we show up in the interest of improving our skillfulness in relationship, with the long-term goal of developing the capacity for more love, connection, security, safety, authenticity and passion in our bond with our significant other.
The Empowered Relationship Podcast is intended to support you in the journey of long-term intimacy, again, helping you cultivate with your significant other a relationship that is a win/win, and that is reciprocal, that you continue to cultivate and co-create together.
If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com, and you can click on Podcast there in the top navigation bar and you’ll find all of the episodes. Again, today’s episode is 261, “How to strengthen your relationship from a polyvagal perspective”, an interview with Dr. Stephen Porges.
Recently I noticed a couple of reviews about the Empowered Relationship Podcast, and I wanna thank people for submitting a rating and review. It really does help support the show. This review is a five star, entitled “Empowering and actionable.” “It’s obvious that Jessica puts extraordinary effort into finding guests that are authentic and truly care about being a positive force in this world. Easy to relate to, and always speaks to me right where I’m at!” Thank you so much for submitting that review. I’ll read another one next week… And thank you, again, for taking that time. It really does mean a lot. And I love hearing from you listeners, so thank you.
Okay, let’s get started in today’s interview. I am beyond thrilled to share this conversation with you. Dr. Stephen Porges is the creator and founder of polyvagal theory… And you may be hearing people talk about polyvagal theory; it’s been around and popular for the last decade, and it’s increasingly getting more attention in the importance of being trauma-informed and understanding our nervous system, how we respond to stress and threats, and also when we have confronted trauma.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Stephen W. Porges, Ph.D. is Distinguished University Scientist at Indiana University where he is the founding director of the Traumatic Stress Research Consortium in the Kinsey Institute. He is the originator of the Polyvagal Theory, that emphasizes the importance of physiological state in the expression of behavioral, mental, and health problems related to traumatic experiences.
He is the creator of a music-based intervention, the Safe and Sound Protocol, currently used by more than 1500 therapists to improve spontaneous social engagement, to reduce hearing sensitivities, and to improve language processing. I will make sure to put a link to the Safe and Sound Protocol on today’s show notes if you’re interested in learning more about that.
Stephen, thank you for joining us today. It’s such a privilege and an honor to have such a distinguished guest joining us today.
Dr. Stephen Porges: Well, thank you, Jessica. I look forward to our discussion today.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes… And we’re gonna be talking about polyvagal theory and how it relates to the couple experience in relationship. You are the founder of polyvagal theory, and I know we could probably do a whole series… You’ve written books on the topic and taught many therapists and academics on the topic, but could you give listeners a general framework of polyvagal theory?
Dr. Stephen Porges: Polyvagal theory really tracks our evolutionary history to become a social mammal. So the issue really is “What does our physiological state, our biological state bring to our dialogue with the world and other people? How do we become a co-regulator?” I think this will be our theme when we talk about couples – how does our presence and interaction with another help them regulate their physiological state or disrupt their physiological state?
So polyvagal theory gives you this understanding that in between the context where the stimuli in our environment and our responses is our body, is our organism. And the physiological state that we’re in is gonna bias how we react to others and to other things. And if our body is in a state of calmness and accessibility, we’re welcoming. If our body is under a series of threats, like during the pandemic or in the financial crisis, our nervous system has less flexibility, and rather than being welcoming and accessible, we’ll be reactive.
That’s a summary of polyvagal theory… It’s really our evolutionary history of how we have changed how our nervous system regulates physiology to enable mammals, and especially humans, to turn off their defenses, to be sociable. So it’s really a journey of sociality. But this journey of sociality becomes disrupted when our body shifts at physiological states that support defense. But we all know that we use labels, like “Don’t bother me now, I’m stressed out” or “I have too much to do” or “I’m too anxious.” What does that mean? It means the person’s nervous system and their body feels like it’s under threat. Well, stand back, give me space. All these cues that are really observables of a body not being [unintelligible 00:07:58.26]
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. And I think what you’re talking about in the social engagement and co-regulation is really important for us to be aware of, as well as our awareness of our nervous system and the state we’re in… And you’ve really done a great job and a huge contribution to the field to help people distinguish between the different systems… So can you help people just have that framework?
Dr. Stephen Porges: Sure. We have to think of our autonomic nervous system, which is really the nerves from our brain stem that are regulating the organs inside our body, and how these nerves are there to optimize homeostatic function, enabling our body to heal and to grow and to mature. But under threat, it could be disease, it could be a predator, it could be over-work… Our body will stop serving the homeostatic or the health functions and will try to defend. And the defense is really utilizing what most people think of as fight/flight behaviors. It’s called the sympathetic nervous system, which helps us mobilize.
And if that doesn’t get us out of trouble, we may actually shut down, pass out, functionally disappear, and certainly may even dissociate and become numb to the world… And that will be using a very old, evolutionarily old, ancestral system of an older dorsal vagal system, which is primarily regulative, our gut. So for many people who are listening to this, they may have gut problems. And the gut problems are really gonna be — we use the term comorbid; they occur when our nervous system shuts down and we become under threat.
Now, what holds everything together is a newer, mammalian vagal pathway that sits more ventrally from that older vagus… And what’s interesting about this innovation that mammals have – this has links to the muscles of the face and head, so that we project our bodily state in the intonation of our voice and in our facial expressions. But everyone knows that. If you talk to someone and something’s bothering them, you’re on the phone and you’ll say “What’s wrong?” because you’ll intuit it from the shift in intonation.
You may find certain people, as you’re interviewing, you may find them accessible, or basically very stand-off(ish). And you’re reading the interpretation of the intonation of their voices, becuase they are broadcasting their physiological state. If their physiological state is in a state of a mobilization instead of a state of defense. If their physiological state is a state of calmness and accessibility, they’re broadcasting that they want to have a reciprocal social interaction with you.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: This is so helpful, and I just encourage anyone that’s listening and finding resonance or curiosity in what you’re describing to really learn more, because there’s a wealth of knowledge and insight here.
Steve, I just wonder, as you’re talking, and what people have been habituated… If they’ve been under long-term stress, or have experienced complex traumas, multiple traumas, and learned to adapt… Is it quite possible — I’m wondering in your experience if people aren’t even aware…
Dr. Stephen Porges: Your intuitions are right on target, because the learning or the adaptation of a body that’s been under chronic threat is to functionally become disembodied, in that you don’t feel your body. So we talk about numbness, or lack of awareness of our physiological state, and in part, since humans are functionally a traumatized species – just think about the history of humanity; it’s a traumatized species, but it’s a traumatized species with the capacity to be aware of the trauma, and thereby regain the beauty of what it is to be a human.
From a polyvagal perspective, the core of being human is accessibility and co-regulation, meaning benevolence and feeling good in the presence of others. But due to the culture that we come from, we’re very tentative about being accessible, because of being hurt… And that’s symptomatic of a person who has suffered from trauma. Because if they get cues of safety from someone else who’s using a prosodic voice when reaching out, their body starts to relax, open up and become accessible. But then the memory of accessibility to them is really a memory of vulnerability to be hurt, and they then react with defensiveness, which in their mind is “I can’t sit still. I’ve gotta get out of this room. I’ve gotta get away from this person/people.”
So in the understanding of relationships and couples you may find that people have great intentions to be safe in the arms of another, but they’re functionally betrayed by their own nervous systems, which when they’re in the arms of another says “Get me out of here. I can’t be this close.” So it becomes this paradox where the mental image of relationship is there, but the body says “I can’t go there.” And I think this becomes symptomatic of our culture, of the culture that we live in, because not enough personal resource [unintelligible 00:13:41.04] institutional resource is directed towards understanding our physiological and behavioral state. We’re so cortical-centric or cognitive-centric. Everything is about our ideas and our intentions, and little is about our own feelings.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I just wanna underscore the importance of social systems to support our nervous system, and this really social engagement place of co-regulating, and the importance — it sounds more important than anything else, because if we’re trying to prioritize our thinking or high-pace drive and productivity, then we can’t, as much as we wanna will ourselves into the goals that we have for ourselves, we can’t override this nervous system in the body.
Dr. Stephen Porges: Or respect it or honor it. In a sense, if you respect and honor it, then it’s there to help you reach those other goals. The interesting part is what’s going on during the pandemic. The pandemic is really this big, natural experiment or open classroom where we learn about who we are, and we learn about what’s important to us… And assuming that we are not financially challenges by the pandemic, or going crazy having our kids homeschoooled, while we’re trying to work from home – assuming that we’re just being isolated, which is kind of a privilege now, just being isolated… But what that “just being isolated” does is it teaches what’s important to us, and that it’s the relationships with others that it’s important, and that’s what’s pulled away from us, and that is the sadness that our bodies feel.
On a personal level, we realize that that is so much more important than how much wealth we accumulate, or how many things we have… Or what I say within my academic world – how many publications and how many grants we have. That’s not important. Those are things. Our body wants relationships.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay. So, so, so important. And I’m just gonna try to be mindful of the couple experience… So if we look at the paradox that you described, of longing for love, but also feeling the fear of being hurt, and the desire to protect, or even the automatic response of feeling threatened and wanting to push away – so we feel that long and that call to be partnered, but then when I look at developmental stages of intimacy in couplehood, I often think there’s a lot of truth to that first stage of romance, where it’s highly fueled by all the neurochemicals and oxytocine and dopamine… Do you think that that initial romance stage, and it’s fueled by those feel-good hormones – it almost creates a supported state, if you will, and then when those lessen and we’re faced with that maybe second stage, where things calm, and we’re getting more real, but then perhaps we’re seeing our attachment insecurities come up, or we’re feeling less supported by those neurochemicals and then we’re confronted with the actual fear more?
Dr. Stephen Porges: Yeah, I wrote a paper in the late 1990’s about love… And it really was about exactly what you’re saying, that we get kind of overwhelmed with the neurochemistry, and we trick our body into feeling accessible… And then we may not like the person. So the issue is we may, in a sense, love the person, but not trust the person. So we get confused with the word “love”, so we have these relationships where people can’t live without a person, but they can’t live with a person, so they often are serially monogamous with a person, but they’re really not nice stories; they really don’t get along, but their bodies are bonded.
So in the paper I said we should be careful whom we sleep with, because the chemistry that starts creating is bonding, when the bodies are in a state of acquiescence. So the act of engagement in sexuality isn’t the real issue; the issue is intimacy, when the body is now immobilized without fear. And that’s a very special state. That’s what young infants have with their mothers; you can see them conforming… And that’s what well-matched lovers have; their bodies feel safe in the presence of each other.
But you have other people who have relationships where they crave the sexuality and the physical activity, but their bodies can’t relax and feel safe and calm in the presence of another. So the hormones can be our friend, or they can be a mask of relationship. And what I used to say is if we break it apart and think about the two really major components of creating relationships, one is a social engagement, which is in the psychological space, where we navigate in a room, we smile, we talk, we get closer, and the second one has to deal with proximity and bodily contact. And the proximity and bodily contact has a neurochemistry to it. The social engagement system is much more, in a sense, neural and reversible. So we are in a sense working in the psychological space, sending out cues, smiling at that person across the room…
I always like to think about when I met my wife – I was at a party, and I came to the party and I left with the person who was going to be my wife… And I saw her from across the room. It’s not one of these where you fall in love; in my mind, this looks like “Someone interesting. I’d like to get to know her”, and we started our dialogue, and that was it. Because she had this reciprocity.
Now, that was 50 years ago. The journey has been very interesting, because you’re never the same person. It’s almost the philosophical statement of Heraclides, “You can’t step into the same river twice.” Relationships change, and in our case, fortunately, we were on parallel career tracks of being academics… And that was very interesting for me, because it was like our life and our work became interphased, and it worked well for who we were. It may not work well for other people, but it was, and we had it parallel, meaning there was no competition for success. She’s a very successful scientist. My wife is Sue Carter, and she is the one who discovered the link between oxytocine and social behavior. And I would say she’s the one that got me thinking about social behavior, which is really not where my initial work came from.
Now, I would say that what polyvagal theory teaches us is how the nervous system adapted through evolution to be social if we turn off our defenses. And if you deconstruct that into the formation of couples, that’s how people couple. They’re turning off their defenses, or they’re using drugs to dampen their defenses. The issue is they’re not trusting that their body can make that evaluation, so they get themselves numbed out, and then they’re accessible… But it’s not a state that promotes a relationship.
But coming back to this issue – we test the waters in the psychological space before we go and give someone a hug. So the issue is we know that if we go up to a random person and give them a hug, their body (hopefully) should adaptively retract and say “Why are you in my social space? Why are you touching me?” But if you have a preamble of the person getting to know you through the psychological space, then sometimes these things are just natural. “Good to know you”, kind of.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes… So building the trust in the psychological space so that you can actually see who someone is through multiple seasons, how they deal with conflict, how they deal with threat and fear, and then hopefully from there, with that established rapport and bond, that you can open up to that physical space to deepen in the intimacy.
Dr. Stephen Porges: And underneath that is really reciprocity; there’s reciprocal behaviors where it’s not just me working in the psychological space. There’s a reciprocal one. Someone’s smiling back at me, someone interested in me. So there’s this dynamic that — people talk about rhythms, but our body… We don’t just wanna talk; we wanna listen as well, we wanna have that reciprocity, and that’s how bonding occurs. It occurs through the feedback loops of the dialogue, whether the dialogue is with words or behaviors, in which two bodies feel safe with each other.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah. Steve, it almost sounds like we’re a little ambitious, and I wonder, when it comes to love, whether or not it’s partly our romantic notions, or social media or media in general informing… But we do have this longing, as we’re talking about this paradox of love… So if we’re ambitious, we’re fueling it by either drugs, alcohol, or even the neurochemical initial state of being close, the oxytocine and all of that, but we don’t actually know the person or know if we like them.
Dr. Stephen Porges: That’s right.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: So we’re ambitious around “Love will conquer all” perhaps. But then I’m also thinking, polyvagal has been so key in the world of trauma, and so many people, whether or not we’re talking about little t or big T, little traumas and big traumas, that might not even be in touch with the level of activation in their system, and then we had relationship to that that might even activate… Like I was saying, those attachment insecurities.
Dr. Stephen Porges: They’re misdirections. I was just part of a conference – it was a virtual conference, but it was a conference – The Evolution in Psychotherapy. And I was discussing with a good friend of mine, Peter Levine, who developed somatic experiencing, and he was working with a client; that was the video [unintelligible 00:24:20.27] The interesting part – the client, by being cute, is a misdirection. You’re not looking at the vulnerabilities. And what we’re really saying is that people who are “attractive” in the world that we’re in become targets without understanding their vulnerabilities or the history of their vulnerabilities. So if we think about the supermodels – look at their faces; those are faces of trauma. They’re flat faces. There’s no exuberance. And this is idealized as being beauty, not being literally a pathetic situation where exploitation is written all over their faces. So our culture is being disrespectful. We talk about it as being disrespectful to women, but it’s disrespectful to the traumatic history that people bring into the world.
The other part is the percentage of people – let’s start off with women – who have been sexually abused by the time they’re adults, it’s over 25% of a degree of sexual abuse, and it’s similar in terms of emotional abuse. To me the shock was to see the percentage of males. It’s over 10%. And we start learning that behind the face is a history, and that history we haven’t really respected. We look at what we call “cute” or we look at perkiness, or people with lots of energy, and we say “Oh, that’s just wonderful.” But maybe they’re just very anxious and can’t sit still because the history of trauma is “Don’t sit still, because if you immobilize, vulnerability will come in.” So you see this highly active personalities coming out, and we re-label that; we call it perky, or energetic… And we’re really not honoring what the actual physiological state is truly telling us.
The point I think that most males — being a male, I talk for at least one male… And that is this misunderstanding of the projection of physiological state in the face of and in the voice of women. Once I became polyvagal-informed, once I was able to put it together and realize that the projection of physiological state in facial expressivity and in voice was telling me who they were and how safe they were… And what I started learning over the years – as people start to read my materials – many people with trauma histories would come up to me at conferences, because I started to play a role as an iconic person to them… Not because of who I really am, but because I became a male that they have an image of that was not going to hurt them. Because I was a male that literally had an understanding of their experiences.
At conferences, people may come up to me and say “I’m one of the people that you talk about. I’ve had this traumatic history.” I’ll look at them and I’ll say “You look like you’re really doing well.” I’ll smile and I’ll hold their hand a little bit… It’s like a hug. And they will say “Yes.” And I’ll give them a hug. And then I’ll get an email back, and the email will say “You’re the first male that I allowed to hug me.” Because what you’re seeing is the fact that their intentionality was yes, they want this, but who is their safe male in the world? And they chose this person they don’t know. They in a sense gave me these wonderful attributions. It’s one of those feelings of gratitude where you can move into someone’s world and allow them to access who they are… To me, those are the transformative moments in my own personal journey.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you for sharing that, it’s deeply moving to see the power of this, and how to be able to really transform through the power of safety and human connection and contact of just what significance lies here.
Dr. Stephen Porges: It really tells you that the narrative (or the program) is relatively simple – cues of safety beget cues of safety. Reciprocity. And this is who we are; it’s like taming another mammal. It’s like convincing your puppy that you’re going to be a good puppy parent. Or your child that you’re a loving person.
I think in our culture we make gross mistakes with the language we use. We use the word “love” as if love is an abstract concept not linked to our bodily responses or not linked to our proximity, our ability to make other people feel supported and safe. So if we talk more in terms of the function of the human relationship, and throw out the world love for a while, and say “Can we build trust?” and then “Does trust lead to love?”, I think we’d be on a different path.
My wife and I, about a decade ago, we had a book agent to write a book called “The neural love code.” It’s never been published, in part because of the agent. Because the agent, who was a single parent, tightly wrapped, anxious, had her own preconceived concept of what love was. It was something mystical. And polyvagal theory and Sue’s work on oxytocine was talking about it as a derivative of trust. A different type of love. A love that has permanence, a love that has support, and not merely a sexual energy.
Now, this is not saying that sexual activity isn’t important, but you want that, plus you wanna feel safe and trust the other person.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes… Steve, when we were talking, we were talking about trauma, and then also perhaps not being fully aware of the drug-induced state of what we imagine to be love, that initial stage, I was feeling really overwhelmed, like “How does anybody –” I mean, thank God my husband and I have been practicing these principles; we’ve been together 15 years, and I can attest to what you’re describing… But prior to that, my dissertation was on couplehood, just kind of trying to understand this. But what you’re talking about — when you were describing, I was just like “So many couples are confronted with the activity, the reactivity, the trigger, and are overwhelmed by the interaction.” It feels so unsafe, be it their previous history or the cues that they’re sending and how they’re reading each other… Because you help people understand, if you’re in that reactive state, then you’re gonna read things incorrectly; you’re gonna see cues as more threatening…
But if I can say, as I listened a little longer, that what you were describing is a real clear path around how to trust the nervous system, have respect for the nervous system, be polyvagal informed to be able to utilize this to create safety and rapport and reciprocity.
Dr. Stephen Porges: Yeah. I’m reminded of a Seinfeld episode…
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Okay… [laughs]
Dr. Stephen Porges: One of the rules when he was getting back with Elaine was “Don’t spend the night.” So what that really meant was that the sexual acts were in a sense more like gameplay; they were exuberant, but they weren’t bonding. And our culture gets confused, and it makes permissiveness for sexuality linked to love and permanent relationships… And maybe that’s not what it is to be a human. I’m just basically gonna throw that out there. But basically, for our own heritage, those concepts have become very important, because they’re linked to institutions, meaning religions and legality. So can we take those structure and can we optimize that in the world that we’re in?
From a polyvagal perspective, you optimize by saying “I’m gonna love someone I like.” That becomes the mantra, “Like the person that you love.” Don’t love a person and say “I don’t like that person.” Make sure that your body feels safe enough with that person to be both vulnerable and accessible. Because that dialogue of our body being vulnerable is to be defensive. But if we are truly loving and trusting, that vulnerability is really another level of accessibility. It’s where that person’s support for us is there.
So there’s a journey here of learning what it is to be a social mammal and what it is to be a human. The first part is that we’re not islets; we need other people in our lives. But what types of people do we need? We need people that we trust. And if we think about, again, the evolution or the sequencing of civilization, it was to build physical buildings or rooms where we could give up our vigilance. So we have bathrooms, bedrooms and kitchens; we do personal things in bedrooms and bathrooms, and we ingest food, which is also a diversion from being defensive, in a defined space. So we manipulate the needs of our nervous system through structure. And that’s the start – we need to be safe in the presence of others. And unfortunately, what we have is we work in social environments that don’t support being safe.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah… So Stephen, as we’re talking, I’m recognizing that someone who’s contemplating relationship and in the dating phase would be really well-served by incorporating these principles in polyvagal perspective and the insights you’re sharing… But for couples that have already established, perhaps married, have families and are contending with the interactions that are feeling unsafe or threatening, from a polyvagal perspective is there anything that you wanna share to help them maybe try to earn that safety and reestablish or maybe establish for the first time some of this trust and reciprocity, if they have such a history of–
Dr. Stephen Porges: Let’s backtrack a little bit… Because in couples issues people tend to blame each other.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes…
Dr. Stephen Porges: And they stop seeing it as a reciprocal reactivity. So that if I am not happy, or let’s say dissociated today, daydreaming, or worried about something, my face will not be present to my wife’s. So my wife is going to read those — her body reads those cues as this. Or she may be distracted and she won’t socially reference. She’ll just walk away. And my body will react as if I’m being insulted.
I use terms like “biologically rude.” Within marriages or couples, biological rudeness is a trigger. Someone does something that destabilizes the other and doesn’t repair it. So the first part of this is really this embodiment, this degree of embodiment and awareness that behaviors that may appear to be trivial to you may be triggers to someone else… And you should never say “Oh, that was nothing.” You say “Well, I’m sorry you feel that way. How can I help?” Or “I will be more mindful that if I do that — and please tell me if I do that, because my intention is to be supportive of you.”
Instead, a person who is criticized is saying “I did this because I needed to do this, and it was for you all the time.” So they create these narratives that they can’t get out of. And each time they get into this fighting, or this blocking, and hitting, and defending, they break down this ability to support each other, the co-regulation. So it becomes 1) the awareness that we’re going to create ruptures in our interactions… But ruptures aren’t bad onto themselves, because they can always be repaired. And repairing a rupture builds a stronger relationship. But if the rupture gets justified – and this is what we end up with, is “There was a reason why I was upset. It was you.” These narratives really create greater problems.
So the bottom line from this polyvagal perspective is take a deep breath, exhale slowly. Allow that vagus to come back on, and look at it and listen to it from alternative perspectives. If the features of your face and your voice are really that something outside of the room has happened, and you brought that into the room, of course the person is gonna react to you, because they don’t know where it came from.
There’s an actually interesting email — well, it’s not an email, it’s part of a colleague’s book on teachers. The question was “Why are so many kids in this classroom having meltdowns and tantrums?” And it was because the teacher would come in, and come from her home and have an argument at home, walk into the classroom, and the teacher’s face would no longer be welcoming or accessible. So the teacher was like a parent who gives a child a still face. No smile, no interaction. Or a couple where the face is blank, and it triggers in the body a sense of frantic panic, and those became the tantrums in the kids, because they needed the teacher as a co-regulator. And what I’m saying is couples need each other as co-regulators, and that is the responsibility of being a social mammal, is co-regulation.
We forget about that, we think it’s all up there in the intentionality mode, and that if we need someone to be supportive, it’s a weakness, as opposed to an invitation to have a relationship. So it’s really part of the strength of being a social mammal, is supporting another person.
I still am kind of caught in my own life’s history and observations of how much of the social grooming of who we are is not to acknowledge our body reactions to these disruptions, and not to ask anyone or explain to them that they need this social reciprocal feelings, because it’s a sign of weakness within our culture, where it’s you’re acting like a baby. But you’re acting like a social mammal, and the social mammal wants strong relationships of trust, which means the awareness that I’m in the room as well.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love this importance that you’re really naming around to be responsible and aware of our somatic and nervous system responses and how important that is, and also as we’re relating socially with others, and the responsibility of what cues we’re perhaps sending, or how people are perceiving us… And I almost feel like, Steve, you’re debunking a myth, and I feel like sometimes people in marriages expect “We’ve been together for so long, I expect you to just know, or this should just be easy.” My husband and I are constantly checking things out around “Your face is this… I don’t wanna assume, or make up a narrative that’s gonna get us into trouble.” People feel exasperated, like “Oh, that’s so much work…” but it sounds like it’s tending to the importance of what is so primal to our existence.
Dr. Stephen Porges: I would ask people “How do you treat your dog?” if you have a dog?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah… [laughs]
Dr. Stephen Porges: In polyvagal theory we use the word neuroception, which is the nervous system’s detections of risk or safety without awareness… And if you really wanna see neuroception work, work with your dog. If you shift your voice and go to a lower pitch without modulation, the dog may literally hunker down to the ground. If you talk with a prosodic, motherese-type voice, you would start feeling really happy, or appear to be happy, being accessible. And sometimes, the dog will go on their back, so you can rub their belly. Totally accessible, totally trusting.
So with dogs we can see the cues going back and forth, and we can see how rapidly a dog can change through a state if they misread a cue. And if you watch dogs play, they chase each other, and the dog chasing the one in the front will put a bite on the rear leg; the one that’s being bit will turn face-to-face with the dog to see if it’s an aggressive move, or is it play? The dog in the back will release the bite and run, and then the dog that was being chased chases the dog. So they have their game of reciprocity that’s co-regulated by their social engagement system. The cues that it’s not aggressive.
What we have in couples relationships is that cues can get aggressive. It can spiral, because the cues of safety are not being put back in. So the real issue is disruptions occur. We acknowledge that. How do we repair them…?
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yeah, and I missed when I was reflecting the importance of that we do need this – not only do we need it individually, but we’re also responsible to what we’re co-creating with our significant other, or any other person, for that matter, that we wanna be intentional with… But that we’re not needy. That it actually is a primal need, and an essential need.
Dr. Stephen Porges: It’s a beautiful distinction between need and being needy. We need to be who we are. We’re not needy in the sense that we shouldn’t need it. So it’s like, do you like playing with your dog? Do you like sitting with your significant other? Do you like embracing? Do you like to sit down across at the table and talk and eat at the same time? Do you like to be in the presence of another? And that’s really what we’re saying.
The issue is if you don’t like being in the presence of the other, you have a lot of work to do… And the part that you brought up a few minutes ago was the histories that people bring into the setting. I have a psychiatrist friend who is visiting, and she is from a different country, she was over… And we were sitting on the deck and having a nice conversation, and suddenly, her physiological state shifted. And she was aware enough to say “Your voice is reminding me of my father.” And the point was my pitch went lower, and now her body was reacting to a traumatic event with her father.
I’m bringing that up because I have no real deep relationship with this person, but people who have relationships – sometimes their voices may be triggers to their significant others of historical traumas. And we have to understand. For this woman, being a psychiatrist and also interested in polyvagal theory, she was aware what was happening, and it was a very interesting experience for me to be a trigger of a traumatic event in someone I didn’t really have a deep relationship with.
So you start understanding that their cues can be dropped anytime, anywhere. You don’t know the history. And in part, this is the beginning of building relationships or dating, this is in part what that’s for – to see if the cues that you are using your behavior, your history, is a trigger to the other person. It’s a really interesting strategy of how we self-select.
Having gone through self-select procedures, I’m going to juxtapose that to later in life I visited a colleague in India, and he was showing me the pictures — it was someone in his family who got married in Tennessee… And I said to them, “Are they people from India? Where did she meet this person?” because it was a very classical Indian wedding… And he says “Oh, it was a structured, made wedding by the family.” And he also told me that that’s how he got married. And I started to understand this whole history… If they do this correctly, meaning that they vet the prospective mates for their family, they’re going through the family histories, and it may or may not be better.
There’s often issues of, again, aggressiveness and trauma that gets unloaded in some of these fixed marriages… But the idea that a family’s responsibility as the mature part is to find functionally appropriate mates for your children. It’s an interesting discussion, especially for those of us who grew up/came of age in the ’60s, when the world was opening up… And the message was “We are who we enable ourselves to be.” We still have a big commitment to this ability of the emergence of who we can be. But as a parent, I was also thinking about the mismatches that your kids make along the way, and you want to intervene, but you really don’t know how and really can’t. So you go through this whole awareness of what it is that people are selecting.
So I’m saying on one side the emergence of self-selecting, I would say, tends to be reasonable if it’s patient, and it’s not done too early, so it enables a few missteps before true commitments are made; learning experiences. And then I can see that if the families are structured to, in a sense, create a knack to find appropriate types, it may work as well. It’s just that we as Americans tend to be very uncomfortable with someone telling us who we should or shouldn’t marry.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: I love your discussion around that, because I just think it’s so helpful, especially in light of — you know, I have clients that are on the online dating sites, and overwhelmed, and just the idea that you would have a network of support in vetting a partner, and the significance of that… And I think in American media there’s also “Find the one” and then “Happily ever after”, which takes to the point of your book, the more spiritual, mystical, fate or just destiny type of thing… But I love what you’re speaking to.
So I know we’re winding down… Is there anything you wanna say in closing?
Dr. Stephen Porges: No, other than the fact that we are social mammals, and relationships are part of our — it’s not just behavior; sociality is biological. So our relationships are in part supportive of our physiology. So we have to think about this notion of connection and relationship as being a biological imperative. We don’t survive without it.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes… And Stephen, how do people listening get in touch with learning more, or engaging more in these principles?
Dr. Stephen Porges: We just launched a not-for-profit called The Polyvagal Institute, and it has its web page – polyvagalinstitute.org. I have a web page, it’s stephenporges.com. That has materials on it as well.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Wonderful. And you have articles, you have books, videos… Are there any other ways that people can get support in the way of programs, or…?
Dr. Stephen Porges: There is an intervention that I’ve developed called The Safe and Sound Protocol, and there’s a link on my web page… And there’s also links to my publisher, Norton, on the book son polyvagal theory.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Nice. And I didn’t look at the Safe and Sound… Can you help people understand what that is?
Dr. Stephen Porges: Sure. The metaphor is — the Safe and Sound protocol takes from focal music; it literally gives you the distilled essence of safety. So if we think about modulated voices, and a mother’s lullaby coming to a crying baby, I basically processed vocal music to emphasize the intonations, and it becomes a trigger to our physiology to calm down and be accessible.
If you carry a trauma history, the therapists have learned that they have to be slower and [unintelligible 00:50:24.25] this, because with a trauma history the feelings of being accessible are really translated by the upper brain as being vulnerable… So it’s really interesting to watch the trauma-informed therapists use a polyvagal-informed intervention to move people in and out of different physiological states in which they become more embodied, more aware of themselves.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: In a paced way… Nice. Well, wonderful. Thank you again for spending your such valuable time with us. I’ll encourage everybody to check out the show notes, with all the links that you’ve mentioned… And again, thank you for the work you’re doing.
Dr. Stephen Porges: You’re welcome, Jessica. You have a safe and healthy day, and for all of us, during these challenging times. I wish everyone the best. Thank you.
I hope you have enjoyed today’s interview, again, with Dr. Stephen Porges. Again, I feel so thrilled and grateful that he appeared on the Empowered Relationship podcast, supporting us in deepening our understanding of how we are wired physiologically, how we are relating as social animals, and what we can do to strengthen the bond in our couplehood, and how to use this information to assist us in this journey of navigating long-lasting intimacy.
Again, if you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com, you can click on Podcast there in the top navigation bar, and again, you’ll find today’s episode, which is 261, “How to strengthen your relationship from a polyvagal perspective”, an interview with Dr. Stephen Porges.
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Until next time, I hope you take great care.
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