Come join Deb Dana, LCSW, for a weekend workshop!

The autonomic nervous system is at the heart of daily living, powerfully shaping experiences of safety and influencing the capacity for connection. How we move through the world—turning toward, backing away, sometimes attaching and other times isolating—is guided by this system. We now understand how in response to traumatic experiences, autonomic pathways of connection are replaced with patterns of protection and the drive to survive operates in opposition to the need for connection. With the development of Polyvagal Theory, therapists have a guide to the neurophysiological processes of mobilization, collapse, and social engagement and can reliably help clients reshape their autonomic responses and rewrite the stories that are carried in their autonomic pathways. With an updated map of the autonomic circuits that underlie behaviors and beliefs, we can lead our clients out of adaptive survival responses into the autonomically regulated state of safety that sets the stage for connection and is necessary for successful treatment.

A Polyvagal Theory guided approach to therapy begins with helping clients map their autonomic profiles and track their moment-to-moment movement along the autonomic hierarchy. With this foundation, the essential clinical questions address how to help clients interrupt habitual response patterns and find safety in a state of engagement. Working from a foundation of Polyvagal Theory, therapists have a guide to becoming a regulated and co-regulating resource, practical ways to effectively help clients identify and interrupt their familiar response patterns, and strategies to shape their autonomic nervous systems toward safety and connection.