Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Four Polyvagal-Theory-Grounded Approaches to treating Anxiety & Depression rooted in Complex PTSD from Early Life Trauma... including one that Works Anywhere because it is built on Skills Training

While I don't know if it would do the same for you, Choiceless Awareness for Emotion Processing in Polyvagal Resilience Therapy has proven to be the "magic bullet" for the Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that has driven my anxiety and depression for decades. (Fortunately far less now that 20 years ago; read on.)

As it turns out, Stephen Porges's Polyvagal Theory explains the physiology of both A & D IMOC. Both are products of the old saw that "too much of a good thing may not be." Stressed too greatly and/or for too long, my brain goes into what I called "autonomic dieseling" in my reply to a replier on that Reddit thread. Which I experienced as extreme anxiety, and which continued without letup during waking hours for as long as eight months on three different occasions from 1994 to 2003). "AD" is "propelled" by the sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system.

But because of years of conditioning, in-doctrine-ation, instruction, imprintingsocialization, programming, habituation and normalization of Learned Helplessness & the Victim Identity into a neural network of cognition in my brain as a childdepression ensues, as well, via the dorsal vagal nerves. (A "double whammy" causing the exact symptoms of C-PTSD for sure.)

I had discovered the 10 StEPs + Ogden's SP4T eight years ago well before I knew much about the Polyvagal Theory, but now understand why that combo therapy produced -- and continues to produce -- the results it does: Pat Ogden's SP4T is built on pretty much the same grasp of the operation of the autonomic nervous system as Porges's... and the first eight of those 10 StEPs knock out the resistance to doing the last two (which are SP4T).

But even after reading Porges's book, I didn't understand that at the depth I do now after reading Deb Dana's The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, which is the most accessible description of Porges's concepts I know of. Dana's Polyvagal Resilience Therapy does essentially the same thing as Ogden's SP4T, though in my opinion, Ogden's is more straightforward for those who manage to get to the fourth of the five stages of psychotherapeutic recovery. For those who haven't, however, Dana's longer-way-around-the-block approach is likely to be more effective.

A third psychotherapeutic possibility is Peter Levine's SEPt, which also stimulates the three pathways of the Polyvagal System, albeit without being rooted in Polyvagal Theory per se. But what I like about the 10 StEPs + SP4T is that you don't need to have a therapist there to do them. (In that respect they're similar to Marsha Linehan's widely used DBT, albeit far simpler and easier to master IME.) I have seen examples of people who can acquire the skill set without any professional assistance, but I have to expect that because most patients have Internal Family Systems "parts" that have significant trust issues and/or are not at the fourth of those aforementioned five stages will need professional help to get started. 

Resources & References

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Porges, S.: The polyvagal theory: New insights into adaptive reactions of the autonomic nervous system, in Cleveland Clinical Medical Journal, No. 76, April 2009.

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