Polyvagal theory
A model describing three states of the nervous system: safe connection, mobilisation and freeze.
What it says
According to this theory the body continuously assesses whether the environment is safe and switches between states accordingly: connection (contact is possible), fight or flight (mobilisation) and shutdown (numbness, freeze). The model is partly contested scientifically, but clinically it has proved a useful map.
What we do with it in therapy
It helps explain why conversation doesn’t take hold in certain states — and why we have to go to the body first and to words only after.
See also
Dual relationship
A situation in which therapist and client are also connected in some other way — through business, friendship or family.
Shame
The feeling that something is wrong with you — as distinct from guilt, which says something is wrong with what you did.
Procrastination
Turning away from a task, arising not from laziness but from the unpleasant feeling the task triggers.
