Polyvagal Therapy Quotes

“lack of agenda is the primary essence of safety, giving our people implicit permission to bring forward any aspect of themselves that needs attention.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“How do we be with the paradoxes our people bring? We can align with one side of the conundrum and dismiss the other in an effort to relieve the unsettling experience that the logically unresolvable contradiction brings to us and our people. However, if we do this, we are stepping away from our person's experience because he or she is living inside the paradox and can't move away. Staying present asks us to hold the full paradox within our own minds and bodies, to enter the suffering that entails. If we are able to do this and remain in a ventral state, it seems that something happens and we may be able to enter a state in which the paradox begins to reveal its value a little differently than ever before ... As we settled into this broader acceptance together, I believe we made room for the possibility of the arrival of a resolving third thing in its own time.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“... we might be drawn into a more left-centric way of hearing ... and experience the promotion of safety as a somewhat mechanical process in which A inevitably leads to B-- [ie: the belief that 'my being in a ventral state will automatically draw you into one, and if it doesn't then there is something wrong with one of us'.]

Viewing it that way encourages us to turn social engagement into a technique, even a manipulation of the other person's nervous system toward what we view as a more desirable state. Ironically, when the left hemisphere is dominant rather than supportive of right-centric attending, we have already moved out of social engagement and thus are in no position to offer safe space to another. When we make an effort to return to it, we have forgotten that neuroception is continually arising automatically and not under the control of our will.

The very pressure to activate ventral makes the space between us unsafe.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Connection is the antidote to the isolation that trauma creates. Through connection, we find safety, support, and the possibility of healing.”
― Deb Dana

“The tensions that accompany the impulse to control subside, and the energies of our mental/emotional life are more directed and devoted to listening rather than speaking...

We may be able to more easily attend to our people's communications that often remain below conscious awareness: subtle changes in breath, coloring, eye tension, prosody of voice, small movements towards or away, changes in the quality of eye contact.

Receptivity means that we don't grasp what we notice for assessment.

Instead, we are simply present to those implicit communications in the spirit of holding a tender space in which they can reveal themselves to whatever extent our 'patient's' system feels safe to be vulnerable in the moment.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“We were holding this together, and our joined windows of tolerance seemed able to contain the physical and emotional intensity. Witnessing and empathizing at the same time, it seemed we were able to bring some ventral presence to this world.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“The seminal work of Stephen Porges ... suggests that presence becomes possible when there is a felt sense of safety ...

When we are in the role of practitioner, if our autonomic nervous system is receiving what it needs to have a neuroception of safety (our system's felt sense, below the level of conscious awareness, that we are safe) then our social engagement system (the ventral vagal parasympathetic) will be alive in the room as our patients arrive.

In this state, we become a potentially safe landing strip for them. When we are able to offer this safe haven, the possibility of the other person moving toward a similar felt sense of safety awakens the healing space between us through resonance.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships

“Embodiment of any of these principles is likely a lifetime's work, and it is also true that the small steps we take in that direction often yield substantial increases in connection.”
― Bonnie Badenoch, The Interpersonal Neurobiology of Play: Brain-Building Interventions for Emotional Well-Being

“Connection is the antidote to the isolation that trauma creates. Through connection, we find safety, support, and the possibility of healing.,”
― Deb Dana