You Cannot Heal Alone: Vagus Nerve And Co-Regulation

This talk explores the vagus nerve, co-regulation and the relational nature of nervous system safety. Abi Beri offers psychoeducation and a gentle guided inner journey into support, connection and the parts of us that learned to survive alone.

Transcript

So welcome everyone and thank you. Thank you for listening. So I want to start with something I hope is going to land for some of you the way it landed for me when I first really understood it because it changed something fundamental about how I work, How I live, How I understand my own nervous system and how I help other people work with theirs. So here it is. The vagus nerve, The famous wanderer that everyone is talking about now, That you probably already know is connected to anxiety and digestion and sleep and a hundred other things. That vagus nerve was not designed for solo regulation. It evolved fundamentally for connection. It is at its deepest level the nerve of safe relationship, Of being met by another nervous system, Of knowing in your body that you are not alone in here. Now if you have been anywhere near the wellness world in the last five years, You will have noticed that almost everything we are told about the vagus nerve points us in the opposite direction. Hum, Splash cold water on your face, Do this breathing exercise, Try this app, Buy this device, Stimulate the nerve yourself, Get yourself regulated, Self-regulate, Self-care, Self-everything. And I want to be clear before I go any further that these tools are real and they work. I use them, I teach them, So I'm not throwing any of that out. But this is what I want to explore today, That they are not the whole story. They are not even the main story. They are the supporting cast. The main story, The thing that the vagus nerve was actually built for and that no amount of solo regulation can fully substitute for, Is connection with another safe regulated human being. Which I admit is slightly inconvenient because it would be so much easier if the answer was a gadget. So here is what we are going to do in this talk. I will explain in plain holistic language, Without too much science speak, Why the vagus nerve cannot heal in isolation. I will tell you what co-regulation actually is, Really, In your body, Not as a buzzword. And I will tell you why solo nervous system work has hard limits and what those limits are. I will name some of the cultural reasons we have ended up trying to do this work alone. And towards the end, I will offer you a gentle practice that you can do quietly by yourself, That begins to open the door towards letting another system meet yours, When you find one that is safe enough. So if that sounds like the right kind of conversation for the time you have right now, Settle in and welcome. Take what serves, Leave what doesn't. So let me start by something simple that I think many people miss when they encounter the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve does not just run between your brain and your body, It also runs through your face. Specifically, It links through a network of cranial nerves that operate together, To the muscles around your eyes, The muscles around your mouth, The small muscles in your inner ear that tune what frequencies of sound you can hear, And also the muscles of your voice box. So the vagus nerve, Working with its neighbors, Is connected to your eyes, Your smile, Your hearing, And also your voice. So why on earth would a nerve connected with calming your body also control your facial expressions and your hearing? Because, And this is the move that Stephen made in his polyvagal theory, Which I'll come back to without making it too academic, The vagus nerve, In its newest, Most evolved branch now, Is the system that lets you communicate with another human being and figure out in real time whether you are safe or not. Think about it. When you meet someone, What do you do? You look at their face, You read their eyes, You listen to the tone of their voice, Not just the words but the music underneath. You watch their shoulders, Their breathing, The way they hold themselves. And in the first few seconds before you have processed anything cognitively, Your body is doing a complete safety assessment of theirs. And depending on what it finds, Your nervous system either softens, Opens up, Becomes available for connection, Or it tightens, And it prepares and it gets ready to defend or escape. All that scanning, All that reading, All of that softening or tightening runs through the vagus nerve and the cranial nerves that it works with. This is why a kind face calms you in a way that no breath work can. This is why a soothing voice settles your system before your mind is caught up. And this is why a hand on your shoulder, In the right moment from the right person, Can reach a place inside you that 10 years of solo work has not been able to touch. So this is not metaphor, This is anatomy. The vagus nerve evolved primarily as a social regulation system. Its job is to help you tell through facial expression and voice and presence whether the human being in front of you is someone whose nervous system can safely meet yours. And when it concludes yes, When it finds the right person in front of you, Is regulated, Warm, Present, Attuned, It shifts your entire physiology into a state that we might simply call home. Your own heart rate softens, Your breathing deepens, Your digestion comes back online, Your immune system calms down, Your facial muscles relax. So you feel in your body a particular quality of okayness that no solo practice can reproduce. So this state has a name in the polyvagal world, The ventral vagal state. The state of social engagement and felt safety. But just forget the technical names for a moment. Just note what it actually is. It is what happens in your body when you're sitting across from someone who cares about you, Who is not in a hurry, Who is not performing and who is not trying to fix you. They are just present. So your body recognizes that and it responds by shifting into a state that in some deep evolutionary sense is the state that we were built for. And most of modern life pulls us out of this state most of the time. Most of our nervous system work is about getting back to it and the most direct route, The one our biology is actually wired for is through other people. So let me talk about what co-regulation actually is because the word has started getting thrown around in wellness spaces and I'm just sharing this from my experience. I am not an expert. So co-regulation is the simple ancient biologically essential process by which one nervous system helps another nervous system find its way back to a regulated state. It is in most literal sense two bodies doing the work together that one body cannot quite do alone. So you have experienced co-regulation thousands of time even if you have never used the word. Think about it now. The friend whose voice on the phone settle something in you that you could not settle yourself. The grandparent whose presence as a child made you feel safe in a way nothing else did. The therapist who's simply being in the room with you brings down your heart rate even before you have started talking. The partner whose body next to you in bed allowed you to fall asleep and you could not on your own. The animal, The dog, The cat, The horse, The whatever whose breathing slows your breathing. So all of that is co-regulation. It is your nervous system borrowing regulation from another nervous system and here is what is remarkable about it. Your body recognizes a regulated nervous system without having to think about it. It picks up the cues in microseconds, The relaxed face, The slow breath, The unhurried voice. So the body that is not bracing, The eyes that are not scanning for threat, Your system reads all of that often before you are consciously aware of it and then it starts to match, To settle, To come into the same rhythm. So your nervous system in the presence of a regulated one becomes more regulated with no technique whatsoever required. This is why being held when you are upset works. Not because the person is doing anything clever, Because their body is communicating to your body through every cue you cannot consciously track that you are safe now. You are safe now. And this is also why an anxious person makes you anxious. Because nervous systems do not only co-regulate upward, They co-regulate in whichever direction the dominant signal is. So in a room with one regulated and one dysregulated person, The regulated nervous system tends to settle the dysregulated one but not always. Because sometimes the dysregulation is louder, Sometimes the field becomes activated. You walk into a meeting, A family dinner, A busy office and your body is already tightened before you sat down. So that is co-regulation working in the harder direction. Your system is reading a field and it's matching what is present. That is the insight that once you understand it in your body, Changes how you think almost about everything. Why do some people exhaust me and why do some people restore me? Why certain rooms feel safe and other fields charged? Why being alone too much hurts after a while? And why being with the wrong people for too long is also its own kind of damage? So none of this is a mystery. It is literally your nervous system doing what it was built to do. Read other systems, Synchronize for better or for worse. So it also means by the way that if you have ever felt totally fine until you walked into your in-laws house and suddenly felt unwell, You were not imagining it. You were just doing physiology. Now I want to say something that might be uncomfortable but I think it's important. The current wellness conversation has placed enormous emphasis on all the tools you can use by yourself to regulate your nervous system. Cold plunges, Breath work, Vagal exercises, Apps that track your heart rate variability, Devices that vibrate against your ear, Endless yoga, Trauma-informed yoga, Meditation, Timer, Journaling, Protocols, Self-massage. The list is very long so I'll stop here. And most of it is marketed to people who are exhausted, Anxious, Lonely and they are just looking for something that will fix them on their own. And some of these tools are extremely useful. Some of them used in the right amounts do meaningful work. I am not against them but I want to name something honestly that there is a limit to what any solo practice can do for any nervous system whose deepest wiring is for connection. So if you've been doing solo nervous system work for a long time, Perhaps you have noticed that you keep returning to a certain baseline of low-grade anxiety and you can manage but not fully resolve a certain underlying ache. That your symptoms come back as soon as you stop the daily practice. That you're working harder and harder for diminishing returns. So please air this, You're not failing, You're running into the actual ceiling of solo regulation. There is a kind of plateau that almost everyone hits at some point. So the early gains from any solo practice are real. The breath work, The cold water, The meditation, The body scan, The movement, They bring you a long way. Especially if you have started from a place of significant dysregulation. But there comes a point where further progress requires something that solo work cannot give you. And that something is the slow repeated embodied experience of being safely met by another regulated nervous system. That is not because solo work is fake. It is because the deepest wiring of your nervous system, The part that learned very early, Whether the world was a place where it was safe to fully relax, Was learned in a relationship. And it can only be relearned fundamentally in a relationship. So this is what therapy actually is by the way. For people who do not yet know, Not the talking, The talking is the surface. What is happening underneath. So when therapy is working well, Whatever that means for you, Is that your nervous system is being met week after week by another nervous system who is regulated, Present, Unhurried and they are not asking anything of you. And over time your body starts to update its baseline expectation about what is available in the world. So the therapist regulation met repeatedly becomes an experience your body can carry into the rest of your life. So this is also what good friendship does. What partnership at its best does. What being with the right teacher, The right community, The right elder. The form is different but the mechanism is the same if you understand it. Another nervous system regulated and available slowly teaches your nervous system that the world contains the kind of safety you may not have grown up with. You cannot give yourself this experience alone. You can give yourself many things. You cannot give yourself the experience of being received by another. Even listening to something can do that for you. The other has to be there and the other has to be regulated enough to receive. So now I want to spend a few minutes on why we as a culture have ended up trying to do this work in isolation because I think it's worth naming and because I think the naming itself is part of the medicine. So first reason, We live in an unusually individualistic culture now. The script most of us absorbed without realizing is that the well person is the self-sufficient person. Need is weakness. Asking for help is failure. Being a burden is the worst thing you can be. So when we are unwell our first instinct is to fix it ourselves and the wellness industry has brilliantly monetized this. There is now a product, An app, A course, A device for almost any nervous system problem you might have. All of them sold on the promise that you can solve this on your own. So you cannot because the biology does not allow it but it is a very profitable lie. Second reason, Many of us did not grow up with people whose nervous systems were regulated. Now this is very true coming from a adult conscious place that our parents were doing their best with what they had and often what they had was not much. Their own nervous systems were carrying material from their own childhoods and from generations behind them also. So when you grow up in a household where co-regulation was inconsistent or even absent, You do not learn what it feels like to be properly met by another nervous system. So in adulthood you may not even know it is missing. You think this background hum of low-grade alarm is normal. You assume that self-soothing is what regulation looks like because it is the only kind you've ever practiced. Third reason, We are isolated in ways human beings have never been isolated before. Now across history most people lived in extended family groups, Tight communities, In physical proximity to many other bodies all the time. So nervous systems were constantly co-regulating often without anybody noticing. Now we have largely lost this. Now many of us adults, We live alone, We work alone, We scroll alone, We eat alone, We regulate alone and our nervous systems are operating in conditions they were not designed for. So the loneliness is itself a nervous system problem. And the fourth reason is that connection has become genuinely complicated. For people who grew up in households where closeness was unsafe, The very thing that would help them being met by another regulated nervous system is also the thing that triggers them. So the body remembers that closeness was where the harm came from. So it both craves connection and retreats from it at the same time. This is one of the most painful patterns in adult life and it is why doing this work alone often feels safer in the short term even though it's the long-term obstacle. Now naming all of this is part of the medicine because if you've been working very hard on your nervous system or yourself and finding the progress slower than you hoped, None of these reasons are personal failures. They are the conditions of the world we live in. So working with them rather than against them is the actual move. So let me describe or try to describe what it actually looks like to work with co-regulation because I do not want this to stay abstract. It looks first like learning to recognize a regulated nervous system when you encounter one and it is a skill. Most of us who grew up in dysregulated households do not have this well-developed skill. We mistake intensity for connection and again we mistake intensity for connection. We mistake performed warmth for genuine warmth. We mistake busyness for care. The regulated nervous system is often quieter than we expect, Slower, Less impressive. The person whose presence settles you is rarely the loudest person in the room. They're often the one you almost did not notice at first. So spend time when you can around people whose nervous systems are regulated. Notice how your body feels in their presence. Notice that you are not having to brace, That you're breathing more deeply without trying and that your shoulders have dropped. So this is not woo-woo stuff, This is information from your body. So it looks like noticing which relationships in your life regulate you and which relationships dysregulate you and gently rebalancing the proportions. Not in a dramatic way, You do not need to cut anybody off but over time you can shift where you spend most of your time. Most of the people who restore you, Less with the ones who deplete you and this is one of the most underrated nervous system practices available and you don't need a nap, It costs nothing. And it looks like being willing to ask and receive co-regulation when you need it. This is the hardest one for many of us. The capacity to say even silently, I am not okay right now and I need to be near you. To let yourself actually be near them without performing to be okay, Without making conversation to fill the space. Just being in the field of another regulated body for a while, This is one of the most basic things human beings do for each other and many of us have lost the practice of it. It also looks like working with a therapist, A practitioner. If you're carrying a significant unprocessed material from your earlier life, Not because healing and therapy is the only way but for the material that lives below the level of words, The kind of relational work that happens in a therapeutic relationship is the only thing that can reach it sometimes. So your nervous system needs to be met by a nervous system that knows how to be met by yours. And simplest one, Spending time with animals, With the natural world, With elders, Anything, Going for a walk, Rounding, Putting your hand on your chest. All of these non-human or non-verbal forms of presence offer co-regulation that bypasses the complicated parts of adult human relating. A dog asleep next to you on a sofa is doing real work for your nervous system. A walk is doing the real work. So these are not lesser forms of co-regulation, They are more available than the humankind also. Now I want to offer you a gentle practice and remember this is not co-regulation directly that requires another body and you are alone with this recording. So this is a practice for opening the door inside yourself towards the possibility of being met, For warming up the part of your system that knows how to receive and when receiving becomes available. Now just begin by letting your body settle. Notice what is beneath you, The chair, The couch, The floor and the bed and just take a few slow breaths. Don't make them special, Just the next breath. Now bring to mind one person, One being in your life, Past or present, Alive or dead, Human or animal, Who when you are near them your body felt safe. Not safe in the sense that nothing bad ever happened, Safe in the sense that something in you could relax by just being in their presence. Take a moment to find them now. Now it does not have to be a parent, It often is not. Sometimes it is a grandparent, An aunt, An uncle, A teacher, A friend, A partner, A child, A dog, A cat, A horse and sometimes it is only a person you've known briefly. Sometimes it is a fictional character whose presence spent enough hours with your body. Whoever comes first, That is the one, Don't second-guess. Now with that image being held in your inner image, Notice what happens in your body. Where do you feel them? Often it is somewhere in the chest or the belly or the face. There may be a small softening, A warmth, A tear sometimes or sometimes nothing recognizable, Just a quality. Whatever is here, Just notice it. Now imagine gently that this being is here with you now. In whatever may make sense to you, Sitting next to you, Standing behind you, Lying near you, Their presence in the room. You do not need to picture them, Just sense their presence. The way you can sometimes feel someone has come into a room behind you before you turn around. Now notice what your body does when you imagine them present. Often there is a settling, Sometimes a small grief, Sometimes a sense of peace. Whatever is there, Just let it be there. And now silently, In whatever words come naturally to you, Allow yourself to receive, Not to give, To receive. I let you be here. I let your presence reach me and I let myself be met. And just notice if any part of you is resisting. Notice if any part of you wants to deflect, Minimize or to perform okayness. That's alright too. Just let those parts be there too and just continue gently to receive. Now place a hand on your heart if that feels right and let the warmth of your hand meet whatever is there. Imagine that this hand is also a small representative of the presence you have called in. The body of another meeting you, Even for a moment, Even imagined. Notice that your body knows how to do this. Even if you grew up without enough of this, The capacity is there. It is buried perhaps under years of learning to regulate alone, But it is there. It just needs invitation. Now stay here as long as you wish, As long as it feels right for you. This practice is not in the doing, It's in the staying, Letting your body have this even briefly. Now when you're ready, Gently slowly bring your awareness back. The being you called in does not have to leave. They can stay with you. They are in some sense a part of you now. They always were. You just remembered this state for a moment. Now if you take one thing from this talk, Let it be this. The vagus nerve was built for connection, Not for solo regulation, Not for life hacks, Not for apps. The deepest wiring of your nervous system is for the experience of being safely met by another. This is good news even though it sounds inconvenient. It means that you have long been longing for the quality of okayness in the body that solo work has not quite given you. Now, I will be honest, This is harder than buying another supplement. The supplement does not require you to be vulnerable. The cold plunge does not require you to risk being seen. The breathwork app will never disappoint you. Other people are messier, Less reliable, More complicated. So they will sometimes not be regulated when you need them to be. They will sometimes hurt you. They will sometimes be unavailable. And the risk of relationship is real. The only thing that fully heals what your nervous system most deeply needs is the very risk is asking of you. There's no way around this. The body will not regulate fully in isolation. It can manage, It can cope, It can survive. But the deeper work, The actual restoration of the system to its full capacity, That requires the slow patient practice of letting other regulated nervous system meet yours again and again until your body remembers what it was built for. So this I think is the actual frontier of this work. Not the next gadget, Not the next technique, Not the next protocol. The slow, Unglamorous, Ancient practice of letting yourself be in regulated company, Of choosing it, Of building it into your life and of valuing it as the medicine it actually is. Now in no way this means that you have to go out and now start to seek people who are regulated. Only if you just start to be aware now, Who is it in my life right now that regulates me and what people, Places, Things, Situations in my life right now dysregulate me. Even that small conscious choice of spending time with people, Places, Things that regulate you, Is you doing the work. So thank you for being with me today and thank you for being willing to consider that the solution might not be more solo effort. So if this talk has landed, Share it with someone whose body has been working too hard on their own. Thank you for joining me again. Take care of the wanderer and remember the wanderer never wanted to wander alone. So until next time, Namaste.