The One State Where Healing Really Happens | Understanding the Nervous System in Light of Trauma #2

Ajouté : 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Well, welcome to another Friday night.

[00:00:02]Last time we started a new little series that we're going to do on our nervous system, which to me it's such an essential part to understand if we want to understand trauma, if we un want to understand why we respond the way that we do, and if we want to understand how to heal. And I hope just getting going last week was helpful to you. What we saw is that there's two parts to our nervous system. There's the sympathetic and parasympathetic.

[00:00:33]The energy and the rest and repair part.

[00:00:36]Those function differently depending on the state.

[00:00:41]And the state is determined by whether we feel safe and connected. So if we're feeling safe and connected, we're in that ventagago state. If we're feeling in danger, we first go to our 100% sympathetic state. But if fight or flight doesn't work, which is what happens there, then we go to the next state, which is our dorsal veagal, which is 100% parasympathetic, which is dissociation and shutdown. All of that the nervous system is trying to protect us. So what I want to do today is look at what am I capable of or not capable of in those states because in certain states I might want to be able to do something but I won't be able to do something. Hopefully this is just going to be fascinating and give you a whole bunch of insight into things. So let's begin with connection. So, do you realize that you can only truly connect with people in a meaningful, intimate, vulnerable, open way when you're in your ventroagal system, when you feel safe.

[00:01:51]When you're in your sympathetic system, your fight or flight or in your dorsal veagal, you are in dissociation freeze, you can't connect because you're trying to survive. So connection is only possible when you are in your vententral veagal system. Now that's significant to me because I find so many people in our culture who are in survival mode who are wanting relationships, wanting to connect but they can't truly connect.

[00:02:19]They can develop fake connections but not healthy connections. And so they get very frustrated in their relationships and tend to blame the other person for why they can't connect. But you can only connect when you feel safe. And that means it has to be safe people. You've got to have done work on yourself so that you feel safe within your own body and safe with yourself. So take that farther. Deep listening being truly present to the other person. That can only happen when you're in your ventro veagal state. When you are in your sympathetic state, fight flight or dorsal veagal freeze dissociation, you cannot truly do deep listening, truly be present because you're in survival mode. You do not want to be present in the present. You want to be anywhere but the present. So your ability then to have a meaningful healthy relationship requires being truly present to the other person and deep listening to the other person.

[00:03:26]Not possible if you're in your sympathetic or in your dorso veagal state. So important to understand. The next one is self-compassion.

[00:03:38]So when we're in our vententral veagal state, we are capable of being kind to oursel having compassion. But when we're in our sympathetic state or our dorsal veagal state, self-compassion is not possible. We become very negative towards ourel which we saw last week. We beat oursel up. We're critical of ourself. We think that to survive, we can't go be nice to oursel. We got to be hard on oursel. And so all of a sudden, we see all our flaws. We see our helplessness. We see how angry we are.

[00:04:12]We feel anxiety. So there's all kinds of stuff now that causes self-compassion to not be possible. And so to really heal in recovery, we have to get to a point of self-compassion.

[00:04:27]That means we got to get out of that sympathetic state and dors or dorsov state and live within that ventrogo state to really develop selfcompassion.

[00:04:40]How about relapse? Do you realize that when you are in your ventagal state, when you're feeling connected, loved, safe, when you're open, vulnerable, there you're meeting your 12 needs, relapse is not possible.

[00:04:57]Relapse only happens when you are in your sympathetic state or your dorsal veagal state. When you are trying to escape the pain, when you are trying to survive, that's when your brain goes to what can I do to escape this? What can I connect to that's going to make me feel safe? So relapse doesn't happen when you're in your vententral veagal state. So important to understand. So if you relapsed, it's so important to go back and go, okay, I must have been in my dorsal veagal state or my sympathetic state. What caused me to be there? Must be an increase in stress or danger. That felt too overwhelming. And so my brain went to we have to get out of here. We have to escape. We have to medicate the pain. That's what the relapse was about.

[00:05:54]How about being negative? having a negative bias about everything. Do you realize that when you're in your vententral veagal state that you're you see stuff accurately? Yeah, you can see negative, but it's not there's not a bias there. You're not looking for negative. You're not trying to make something negative. That's not you're just seeing positive negative. You're seeing life as life is. It's only when you're in survival mode in your sympathetic state or your dorso state that all of a sudden you see negative everywhere because now you're looking for danger. Now you are reading danger in just to be safe. You're reading danger into situations.

[00:06:41]So your whole approach now is you become more negative towards yourself, towards others, towards the world. Negative, negative, negative. And so if you see negativity growing in you, it's a good warning sign that something in you is causing you to want to switch from your ventrogo state to your sympathetic state or your dorsovag.

[00:07:06]And so it's starting to look for more and more negative to justify switching to those states. It's feeling overwhelmed. It's feeling stressed out or unsafe.

[00:07:17]How about empathy and compassion to other people? Again, when you're in your vententral veagal state, it's possible to love others, to have empathy and compassion, you feel safe, you want to connect, you care about people. But when you're in your sympathetic or your dorso state, empathy and compassion is not possible. You now I got to protect me. I don't care about you right now. Now I have to qualify that by saying fawning can happen in your dorsal veagal sympathetic hybrid state where now I feel in so much danger I got to look like I'm compassionate to you and have empathy to you and take care of you. But that's not genuine. It's not coming from an open heart. It's coming from a survival place where I am performing so that you don't hurt me. It's not a genuine empathy and compassion that only happens in the vententral veagal state.

[00:08:18]How about rupture and repair? So every relationship will have times where the relationship is ruptured. And so the next thing is we need to repair the damage. We need to understand what went wrong, why this rupture took place. We need to make changes. We need to clarify, clear up misunderstandings, and we need to say sorry. We need to change our behavior. All of that is part of rupture and repair. Do you realize that's only possible in your vententral veagal state where you're able to connect? You're able to feel safe to assert your needs to respect them to have them respect you. Then you can explore without attacking, without getting defensive. Rupture and repair is possible. But with if you're in your sympathetic or your dorsal veagal states, rupture repair is not possible because now I must win or I must avoid.

[00:09:19]I can't confront without getting aggressive or defensive or just giving in. Now again, some people can fawn and it looks like there's repair. They just give in and they act so understanding, but it's not true repair. It's I'm letting you get whatever you want. I'm going along with it, but I'm suppressing my needs. I'm suppressing what I think is the right way to go just so we get peace. I'm conforming to you by not expressing me. That's not true repair, though it looks like it, but it's fawning.

[00:10:02]How about doing recovery? You can only do recovery well when you are in your ventro veagal state because then you're connecting with others with yourself.

[00:10:15]Then you're able to feel all your emotions. Then you're able to be vulnerable. Then you're able to meet your 12 needs. Then you're open to change. Then you can be consistent.

[00:10:27]True recovery only happens when you're in your vententral veagal state. It can happen when you're in your sympathetic or your dorsal veagal state. You can do a little bit of growth, but you're only going to get so far. So, what happens when a person is in their sympathetic state? Often, they begin recovery because they got scared by their last bottom. There's a crisis that happened.

[00:10:51]Their marriage almost fell apart. Their addiction got really bad. So, now they're in fear that things are going to get worse. They need to smarten up. They need to change some stuff. So they come into recovery motivated in crisis mode, driven by fear and they can do recovery it looks like so diligently every day and work really hard. The problem is as soon as the crisis begins to pass, things start to improve. All of a sudden their limbic brain isn't in fear mode anymore. They're not in their sympathetic state anymore and they lose motivation to keep going in recovery.

[00:11:31]They I don't feel like doing it today.

[00:11:34]Let's just take a break. And so they they do the motions of recovery only as long as they feel the crisis in their dorsal state. They can come into recovery and go through the motions, but their heart's not in it. They're not fully in. They're not fully believing this is going to help. They're still feeling just very much a helpless victim.

[00:11:59]So again, to do recovery, you can try to do recovery in all the states, but the only one that's really going to work is in that ventilago state. So take that f far further. Part of recovery is healthy rituals where you learn to meet your 12 needs. So you learn to eat well, sleep well, exercise, take care of your emotions, take care of relationships. So you develop habits and rituals that you do every day. When you're in your vententral state, you can do those where you are fe it feels like you're feeding your soul because your heart's open.

[00:12:40]You're vulnerable.

[00:12:42]It feels natural. It it you walk away and it's was a meaningful experience and you do them in very balanced ways, not just extreme 150% go. There's a balance between work and rest and all of that.

[00:13:00]When you're in a sympathetic state, you can do those rituals and you do them because you should. You do them and you beat yourself up. You drive yourself.

[00:13:11]There's a sense of urgency. There's a sense of got to do this perfectly and you do it 150%. When you're in your ventrogo state, you can do them, but you're just again going through the motions.

[00:13:26]Often they don't feel meaningful. They feel kind of empty. And so both your sympathetic state and your dorsal veaggo state, you're still doing the rituals, but they're not feeding your soul.

[00:13:41]They're coming from a different place that is getting old, is burning you out, is leaving you feeling empty. So important to understand. Next one connected to that is self-disipline.

[00:13:55]Self-discipline is when my limbic brain says, "I don't feel like doing that today." The cortex comes in and says, "We're going to do it today because it's the right thing to do. It's healthy. And so, we're going to do it regardless of whether we feel like it or not." So, we consistently carry out healthy rituals regardless of how we feel. That's self-discipline.

[00:14:19]We're only capable of doing that well in our vententral veagal state because then we're doing we're disciplining oursel with self-compassion with consistent boundaries. We have a purpose in mind. We have we're future oriented. We're thinking of what is healthy. There's a flexibility. We're very connected to our values and what is best. And so we're able to say, "No, we're going to keep doing this." But when we're in our sympathetic state, we're operating out of fear of failure, out of competition, out of urgency because we're in a crisis mode. There's an anxiety and so we're very hard on oursel. We drive oursel. We don't have self-compassion. We push oursel as long as there's a crisis. And so again, we do self-disipline military style. There's a cruelty to it.

[00:15:19]There's a harshness to it, but man, it feeds shame. We burn oursel out. There's a negativity that's depressing. And then when we're in our dorsal ego system, we just don't have much energy. And so self-discipline. Oh, I just don't feel like it today. I just can't bring myself to do it. It feels so hopeless, so futile, and so I just can't get motivated. So self-discipline again for many people sadly in recovery, they're doing self-discipline from their sympathetic system. They're still in survival mode, and it's not healthy self-discipline. It's beating themsel up in a harsh way. Couple more. How about joy and contentment? Do you realize that you only experience joy, contentment when you're in your vententral veagos system? When you're connected with people, when you're open, vulnerable, you feel safe, you can trust, then you you feel joy and contentment.

[00:16:24]But when you are in your sympathetic state or your dorsal veagal state, you can feel some pleasure, you can feel adrenaline rushes, you can feel opioids, but you don't feel contentment. So you can still get some dopamine hits. You can get some opioids, you can get adrenaline rushes. That's just superficial pleasure. There's not a deep sense of satisfaction and contentment and love. Very different. And that's because the brain chemicals are different in your ventro veagal state.

[00:17:01]This is the only place your brain is producing serotonin, oxytocin, dopamine because of connection, because of safety. All of that is what makes you feel love, connected, trust, all of that positive chemicals. When you are in your sympathetic state, your brain is producing cortisol and adrenaline. Now, you may still get a shot of dopamine, but those are mainly negative chemicals.

[00:17:31]When you are in your dorsal veagal state, your brain is producing mainly opioids. So, you're not getting oxytocin. You're not getting dopamine and serotonin in the mix that you should be. So the state of your nervous system determines so much. It determines whether you can do healthy relationships. It determines whether you can do healthy recovery. It determines your emotional world. And so our goal in recovery is to be able to begin to identify what state we're in. Am I in my ventrogo? Am I sympathetic state? Am I dorsovaggo state? If I can identify that, then how do I get back to my vententral veagal? Because that's the only place where I'm capable of doing the stuff I need to do to be a healthy person. Well, again, I hope this is helpful to you and I just wish you the best as you go on this journey of developing a healthier and healthier nervous system.