Safety First: It’s your (neuro)biological requirement!
Safety is a primitive, biological prerequisite for humans to access their higher order capabilities. What this means is that part of our brains instinctively scan the landscape for danger constantly seeking ways to maintain our safety. Once we became good at keeping ourselves safe, we freed up the capacity to concentrate on other things. You see, human beings are unique from other species by our incredible higher brain structures.
This ‘higher order’ thinking allowed us to be innovative, enabling us to create vast spaces and structures that further ensured our safety. Most of us in the developed world do not have to worry about wild animals attacking us during the night or where our next meal may come from. This is thanks to our higher brains that developed stronger housing materials, better defense weapons, irrigation, propagation, and more.
But when our safety is threatened, be it real or perceived, our ability to access this area of the brain is restricted and our energy is once again spent maintaining our safety. We are unable to think as clearly and logically as we did when we felt safe. I remember when my son was little, he stepped off a pool step onto a much deeper pool step. The discovery of the new, unexpected depth frightened him, and he started to flail his limbs around in panic. He did not realise that if he only put his feet down, he could stand in the shallow water, or reach out and grab hold of the pool side. However, in his panic and fear for his safety he simply could not think to do this. In that moment, his higher brain simply did not kick into gear. His energy was directed to his limbs to try and keep himself above water. Luckily, we were there to restore his sense of safety.
In today’s world we may feel threatened by events and situations which are not necessarily tangible or real. Our safety systems are dialing up and our higher order thinking is dimming down. Polyvagal Theory (a theory introduced by Dr. Stephen Porges in 1994) explains this phenomenon in more detail describing a part of our nervous system called the social engagement system which helps us to navigate relationships and respond to the nuances which come with maintaining our safety in today’s environment. It is this social engagement system which I tapped into when I pulled my son out of the water and comforted him back to a feeling of safety. My presence helped him move out of the natural fight or flight response and into the social engagement response. This is also something which can be achieved during therapy. Clients may become stuck in seemingly perpetual flight or fight response patterns, or they might be stuck in freeze mode – shutdown, withdrawn, feeling trapped and unable to respond. Therapy can help clients move through the responses from frozen to fight or flight and finally to social engagement.
This has been a very rudimentary explanation of what is a complex theory. There is a lot more to each stage then what I have been able to cover here but stay tuned because I will be revisiting this theory again soon. In the meantime, keep calm and stay safe 😊
