Rethinking Polyvagal Theory?
Maybe it’s not wrong. Maybe we’re seeing it more clearly.
A client asked me recently if Polyvagal theory was suddenly all wrong, and that what had felt like settled understanding was now being questioned, and what I thought.
I told him I’ve been keeping an eye on the research coming out over the last few years. Reading, listening, noticing what’s changing and what still holds up in real life with the people I work with. Because that’s where it matters most.
Polyvagal theory, developed by Stephen Porges, was widely adopted by trauma therapists, coaches, and wellness practitioners for a reason. It gave us a way to understand something that had been hard to explain.
It helped people connect their emotional experience with what was happening in their body. For many clients, things started to make sense.
Instead of seeing themselves as overreactive or broken, they began to see their own patterns. They began to understand that their nervous system was doing its job, responding to life, trying to keep them safe. Seeing that shift in understanding can be huge.
Of course, research is ongoing, That’s how any field evolves, and Porges’s work is being considered more closely.
Questions about how some aspects of the theory were interpreted or applied. A sense that parts of it may have been taken more literally than the science supports.
There’s a discussion going on over here from the Polyvagal Institute if you’d like to dive in.
What hasn’t changed for me is what I’ve learned from the concepts in the theory and how I’ve used it as a framework. A way to help people begin to notice the connection between what they feel emotionally and what’s happening physically in their body.
That connection is still very real.
When someone learns to recognize responses like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, something softens. There’s often a moment of relief when they realize, “Oh, this isn’t me failing. This is my body trying to protect me.”
Think of these responses in the body like a check engine light.
It’s not telling you something is wrong with you. It’s telling you something needs attention.
Once you can see it that way, you’re no longer just reacting. You’re in a position to respond.
From there, our work becomes more practical.
Clients start to notice the early signals in their body. A tightening in the chest, a shift in breathing, a sense of urgency or withdrawal. They begin to understand their own patterns before they escalate.
Awareness of these responses opens the door to regulation. Not control. Not shutting things down. But having the ability to shift, even slightly, in the moment. To pause. To choose a different response. To stay present a little longer.
Over time, we can build resilience, and that supports clearer, more grounded thinking. It strengthens executive function in ways that feel very tangible in everyday life.
And then there’s co-regulation. We don’t talk about this enough.
When I’m working with someone who is highly reactive, my focus isn’t on fixing their reaction. It’s on how I’m showing up with them.
If I can stay grounded, steady, and present, that has an effect. Because our nervous systems are constantly interacting.
So when my client asked about “the polyvagal story,” I didn’t dismiss it, and I didn’t defend it. I told him I’m continuing to learn.
I’m paying attention to the research. I’m interested in the critiques. I’m fascinated by how much more we’re discovering about the brain, the body, and the way they work together.
And I’m also paying attention to what actually helps people. Because at the end of the day, that’s the measure that matters to me.
The frameworks we use will continue to evolve, and at its core, it’s all about connecting in a real way, understanding how self-awareness can help us regulate and co-regulate.
Helping people understand themselves with more clarity. Helping them recognize what’s happening in their body. Helping them respond with more awareness and less judgment.
I’ve been fine-tuning my toolkit for years, and I’ll continue to use it as a way to support people in becoming more aware, steadier, and more connected to themselves and others.
There’s so much we’re still learning. If you’re exploring this too, I’d be interested to hear what you’re noticing.
What’s been helpful for you? Have you changed how you work with clients?
Jane, thanks for your article. This is my attempt at opening the conversation, while at the same time being clear about the existing lack of physiological underpinning of the Polyvagal Theory (PVT). There is overwhelming evidence that PVT is untenable. This is made crystal clear by the latest paper authored by 38 luminaries of vagal physiology and evolution, as as well as by me, a psychologist and psychophysiologist busy with the autonomic nervous system and vagus nerve for the last 45 years (and also with mindfulness, by the way).
The defensive and diversionary responses of Steve Porges in no way soften the above conclusions. He is defenseless directly to answer any of the critical rebuttals of our papers to his verbatim statements in his 2025 overview of PVT, 1) claiming we misconstrue his major tenets of his theory. However, how can that be, when we disconfirm his very own words of his article, in which he articulates the major PVT elements? That makes no sense. 2) He continues to misrepresent the physiological papers of major physiologists that he cites in his latest reply, just as he did in his 2025 paper (several of those misrepresented in both papers are ironically coauthors of our publication and are not pleased), which we called out in our own paper. 3) He also misrepresents the state of knowledge, regarding measurement and meaning of respiratory sinus arrhythmia, never presenting the substantial published evidence that contradicts what he writes. 4) He formulates whole sections of his response in such a vague and obscure manner that even we cannot understand what he is often talking about. So how could psychologists and therapists ever comprehend them with their very limited understanding of physiology (no fault of their own). 5) Importantly, please notice that not a single vagal expert of physiology or evolution has come to his support, and his papers are very predominantly self-referential.
So the verdict seems very clear. Still, you and others feel that the PVT framework has been helpful in your work and in reducing suffering among your patients. I believe you, but ask: what does the healing have to do with the PVT. If it relates to the fact that co-regulation is helpful, co-regulation (called, since 50 years by other names) is not a PV concept, perhaps first pointed out by Bowlby in the 1960's. Sense of safety derives from Maslow's hierarchy of needs (1943). So-called "neuroception" is already detailed in the Buddhist literature about "Vedana", it's elegantly detailed as L. Feldman Barrett's definition of "affect." Mindfulness has also been around for millennia, integrally including awareness of bodily states. Etc. etc.
So all these processes and concepts are not PV, but have been appropriated into the PV enterprise. They now hang together in PVT because of their supposed relationships to dorsal and ventral vagus, that are demonstrably fallacious.
On the other hand, we do have a nervous system, and it is useful for some people, at least, to know that these psychological states, characteristics or processes do have physiological underpinnings. We can feel that in our body when we are mindfully aware. We may become aware of the regularity or irregularity of our breathing, how fast and deep it is, how smooth or choppy it feels, the tension of the auxiliary muscles supporting breathing. Likewise, we may notice our hearts beating, tightness or relaxation of our muscles, whether we sweating, any gut discomfort we may have.
These are all consequences of nervous system activity interacting with our behavior and actions in the world. BUT!!: we can't feel our vagus, and we cannot be sure exactly what the actual physiological mechanisms are they cause these perceptions. And neither can the expert scientists yet at this point in time. We know a bit about general autonomic and central nervous system contributions to different emotional states, but even that is based on normative statistical findings: the average response of a group of people in a situation or state, but there is generally huge variation from one person to another, and any value similar to the average response is shared by, say, 20-25 percent of the participants in a study (think a bell-shaped curve of responses, with the average being the peak of the bell, and the 20-25% hovering around the peak, mean value).
So what to do, what to say or what to believe? I think we have to tell the truth and not fill our patients' minds with fables about 'dorsal vagal shutdown' or the mammalian ventral vagus having been "refigured'" or "repurposed" for affiliative social responses. Those ideas must now be considered pure fictions, and explaining them as facts, is unethical and potentially harmful.
But there is an alternative, and that is to tell the truth: Yes, your emotional states have a physiological basis, but that varies from person to person, and that response is a consequence of complicated physiological processes, even when one just considers the nervous system. There are changes in the different parts of the cortex, the middle brain and the brainstem. When it comes to the autonomic nervous system, there are not only the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves. There are, indeed, different areas of the brainstem that exert very different functions on almost all organ systems (the vagal dorsal and ventral areas just 2 of them and with very different different functions that PVT claims). Still additionally, the organs themselves, at least the heart and the gut, have their own local nervous systems that can inhibit or exaggerate the extent of discharge coming down from the brainstem. And these are just some of the physiological factors underlying emotions and behavior: a lot more complicated than dorsal vs. ventral vagus—also…..a lot richer and more fascinating.
But what to tell your patients: First, nothing about the ventral vs dorsal vagus. That would be complete fiction. Also not reducing things to the vagus in any state, like positive social interactions, emotional freezing, dissociation, sense of safety, love, fight or flight.
However, you can tell them that their emotional experiences are grounded in physiological changes, which involve all the above elements. Why not just keep the states’ names that are accurately descriptive —e.g. freezing: fear-related immobility, feeling frozen, paralyzed; dissociation: emotional numbing, “going offline,” “going blank,” feeling “spaced out” or “checked out.” Offering such options for each state might also give the patient and you better insight into precisely what they are feeling and allow for further discussion. “Dorsal vagal shutdown” is not only a erroneous explanation, it reifies the experience into a concrete physiological state, inhibiting further exploration: that’s it, a pathological state of the vagus nerve that makes me feel that way—not only untrue, but in its own way paralyzing, especially when one hears that this state can easily lead to “lethal massive” slowing of heart rate, which is also absolutely untrue.
So why not tell patients that they have these states and they are very real both psychologically and physiologically. The psychological lived experiences are parsed out in exploring exactly what occurs for the pattern. The physiological explanation briefly enumerates what the body does and briefly clarifies the level of complexity. Please forget the word “polyvagal.”