Polyvagal counseling is an approach that is used to treat symptoms of depression, anxiety, panic, trauma, attachment, chronic stress and emotion dysregulation. It works by decreasing fight, flight or freeze responses that can occur when feeling threatened, scared, overwhelmed, attacked, unwanted, stressed and alone. At Willow Tree Counseling, we often think of polyvagal as a way of building up our endurance to help us feel safe, calm and social.

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When learning about polyvagal counseling, you will learn to recognize different indicators or ‘check engine’ signals that let you know if you are primarily functioning in a fight, flight or freeze response. The activation of the fight, flight and freeze responses are regulated involuntarily by our brain as it is analyzing information it receives through our five senses and comparing it to memories to determine how it is going to influence us to respond. And it does this at lightning speed. Ok, it’s not actually occurring at the speed of lightning (186,000 mph). Nerve signals can travel up to 275mph in our brain, or about 1/100th of a second. Once we recognize that our fight, flight or freeze response has been activated we can then apply coping skills to train our brain to move out of these states.​

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For example, have you ever driven a vehicle that has the safety feature that alerts you that you are too close to the vehicle in front of you resulting in your car engaging the brakes? Have you ever observed the vehicle’s sensor to misread the proximity of the next vehicle because the sensor was dirty and caused your vehicle to engage the brakes at the wrong time? This is similar to how the fight, flight or freeze response may engage at the wrong time. Polyvagal counseling can help train your brain to engage these systems at more appropriate times.

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Please reach out to schedule an appointment if you are experiencing your fight, flight or freeze response to be responding at the incorrect times or responding disproportionately and would like to explore polyvagal counseling.