Can Polyvagal Theory offer hope for Valentine’s Day 2017?

By Dee Wagner, LPC, BC-DMT

Here in 2017, most of us are on our last nerve. As nervous system functioning goes, we are using the wrong nerve for a happy Valentine's Day.

According to Stephen Porges' polyvagal theory, mammals have a unique type of nervous system functioning that engages when we feel safe. Porges calls this nervous system functioning our Social Engagement System.

Social Engagement
Social Engagement System sure sounds like the kind of nervous system functioning we would like to access in our bodies for Valentine's Day, right?

Valentine's Day 2017, following so closely after the inauguration of President Donald Trump will see most of us struggling to stay out of nervous system functioning that our bodies have for when we sense life-threatening danger. We humans are social animals and if one pack turns on another, our bodies shoot off flight/flight chemistry. If we see no clear way to fight or flee, our bodies shut down.

Shut-down
The divisions in our country are not new as of Trump's election. Most see his election as representative of the deep divides that were forming in the United States for quite some time. And our collective coffee craze is evidence that we have been sinking into nervous system functioning that creates shut-down for awhile.

The part of our nervous system that creates shut-down is used by reptiles to conserve oxygen. As mammals, we have oxygen-dependent blood. We are only meant to use this shut-down type of nervous system functioning in life-threatening danger.

Like possums, we can use this nervous system functioning to shut down with hope that the danger will pass. We do this when we drift into romance trance. Usually, we jolt awake and shake off the daze, maybe go have a coffee. But, this year our temptation to fantasize our way through Valentine's Day may rival Hans Christian Andersen's Little Match Girl.

Will we be like Match Girls for Valentine's Day 2017?
In the classic story of The Little Match Girl, one particularly bleak winter leads to so few sales of matches that the girl lights a match as a diversion, providing herself a tiny moment of warmth. She disappears briefly into the beauty of the flame. Once the flame is gone, she feels so despondent that she lights another. She continues to light matches and disappears into the fantasies provided by moments of flame until the matches are gone and she dies in the snow.

Not a great Valentine's Day story, huh? Some of you may be saying, "Isn't Valentine's Day hoopla a commercial creation anyway?" Perhaps cynicism is grounding. Whatever we need this Valentine's Day 2017 in order to ground ourselves and stay out of the hopeless fight/flight that leads to shut-down, let's do it!

Let's spend our Valentine's Day dancing and/or doing yoga. Then, we can be present with our lovers and we can be good lovers to ourselves.