Tanya (00:00.142)
Hey, hello everybody. Excuse my bed head. Let me invite Tanya.

and

Tanya (00:17.934)
Alright, my little balloons.

Tanya (00:38.346)
And what happened was she's over there. Well done. And Tanya's here. Let me see. Let me get Tanya around.

There we go. think she'll be on in a second. Hi everybody, welcome. Hi Heidi. Let me just try and get a turn here again. So there's a bit finicky to these things at the beginning. Let's help me get there. I'm if I to join. I'll try again.

Tanya (01:23.445)
I'm saying Tony can't join. Just doing my very best. Bye! Bye Jenny! So good to see you.

So cool. So we're going to be talking about, I'm just going to wait for Teddy to come on, but we're to be talking about the hoo-ha that has been going on in the wellness industry around the polyvagal nervous system research and the debunking or apparent debunking of Stephen Porgess' work.

And we're just going to go through that in a bit more detail and analyze it a little bit. Hi, Heidi. Yeah, I'm just going to try again to get Tanya on. I'm wondering, Tanya, I'm just checking that you're not going on through your, that you're on other than your phone. So let me just see if I can message Tanya quickly. I'm going give you one second.

There we go. New request. Go live for Tanya.

Let's see. So menopause, not the magic has joined. I can't see. This is very strange. Give us a second guys while we sort out the next stuff. It's really nice to see you all. So we're going to have a chat through. It's always a bit of a problem when we can't get people on. It's one of the annoying things about doing live. So just give me two seconds.

Tanya (03:16.334)
I'm just going to send Tanya a little message.

Tanya (03:39.84)
and is unable to germinate.

long, a bit finicky these lives. So bear with us one second, I'll just try and get Tanya again.

Tanya (04:02.35)
But it often takes two or three times for us to get going. Yeah. Sorry. My Instagram is just so weird. Like I haven't been getting people's DMs. It's just been like, I don't know, really weird today. Don't worry about it. Oh, it's really lovely. You're here. I always I find with Instagram live. I look like comb over.

Tanya (04:31.567)
I haven't looked at myself in the mirror yet today so I was like, that's the... Anyway sorry that's not what we're here to talk about. Well on the subject of hair, it's been raining here. My grey roots are showing up so it looks like I'm going bald at the top of my head so... Not to me, Tanya. Not to me. I'm wearing my pajamas so... Perfectly perfect today.

Yeah, well glad we're here, glad we made it. Me too, me too. Can I hand over to you to introduce our subject for today because I am, I just need a second to breathe. No problem. So today we're going to be talking about polyvagal theory and I have made some notes so if I look down I'm just referring to my notes because I want to get it right. So for those of you who are unfamiliar about polyvagal theory it was

It's a theory proposed by Stephen Porges. basically what it does is it offers us an understanding of the nervous system's response to safety and threat. So according to Stephen Porges model, according to him, it's kind of like a ladder. So we have ventral vagal at the top, which is you're safe and social. And then

according to polyvagal theory, we then, if we have threat, our neuroception, which is our sense of what's safe or what's dangerous, will alert us and then we will go down the ladder to the parasympathetic response, which is like activation, which is generally your fight flight. And then, you know,

Sometimes we have that response, but then sometimes we will go into more of a shut down response, which is your dorsal vagal response. the thing about this theory and why I think it has been so instrumental, but really popular with many coaches, therapists, even psychologists is that

Tanya (06:58.543)
It has given us language like to help us to understand what's going on in the nervous system. It gave us ideas like neuroception, co-regulation, and it just really helps us to understand what might be going on for ourselves and for our children in a nervous system level so that we're not just like looking at a child who's having a meltdown or

an autistic child who is just, you know, trying to elope and think that it's bad behavior, we can understand that it's actually a nervous system response and that it is our children's response to threat. So that in a nutshell is what polyvagal theory is about. And the big debate is that there is another author

and scientist slash researcher, Paul Grossman, and he wrote a

an argument or a critique on polyvagal theory. And there's quite a bit of stuff going on in the background. But because of that article, which was peer reviewed by about 36 other of Paul Grossman's colleagues, there has been a lot of debate recently about polyvagal theory, about if it's still relevant.

You know, there's been a lot of headlines about it being debunked. And so this theory is a very important theory, I think, to many, many people in the neurodivergent space, because it really helps us to explain and to have a framework to help us to articulate our lived experience. And so we just really wanted to have a conversation about it today, about

Tanya (08:59.521)
What was the things that we critiqued? What are the things that's still relevant? And how things might be evolving in the nervous system space in our understanding about the nervous system. Because, you know, theories are theories. We're constantly evolving as our understanding of the brain, of the nervous system evolves and...

And we need to adapt our understanding along with that as well. So I don't know, I've rambled a little bit there, but have I sort of put it in a nutshell? Yeah. you'd like to add? No, I mean, I think for a lot of us, I remember learning polyvagal theory first when I was at uni studying to be a counsellor, and it was quite controversial.

One of the lectures was like, I'm going to touch you.

But it was explained really well and it was a really useful tool for me in terms of safety responses. And I listened a lot to Deb Dana work on it. She did a beautiful book, audio book that I listened to that was all about befriending your nervous system. That was really great. And then

When I was training, because at the same time as I was training to be a counselor psychotherapist, I was training to be an alcohol coach too. And I did six months with a lady called Joleen Park, who's written a really good piece on this as well, around the nervous system and Polyvagal was very much part of that as well. She was a functional medicine practitioner. And so for me, it's fascinating. And I think what's even more fascinating actually is watching the internet response.

Tanya (10:56.56)
through it all and just everybody's different take and you know, for me personally, I found it fascinating but also, you know, really feeling the anxiousness of people around what does this mean and you know, lot of they people we don't even like most people don't even know that polyvagal means nothing to most people. We use a lot in our, I think in neurodivergent world, we use a lot of nervous system talk and safety response talk, don't we? And I think, you know,

this theory, whether or not you define it as the ventral sympathetic dorsal ladder, is part of that discussion around nervous system and safety responses and things that are reframed like you said Tanya, know, behaviour. And I find that you talk about it from children perspective, but for me, I work with adults and for me, just reframing this stuff for adults.

is taking the shame and blame out of our behavior and framing them as a safety response has been, I think, is invaluable for bringing compassion, self-compassion and compassion for others into our narrative around behavior. Yeah. If I think about how this series helped in my own life with understanding myself,

It's really helped me to understand my tendency to people please or to fawn or to be in a situation where I felt really under threat and to agree with somebody even though I don't necessarily agree with them or to say yes to things that I don't really want to say yes to or even

you know, earlier on in my journey, freezing up and not being able to advocate for my child because I just felt like I was just under so much threat. And then walking away from situations like that and, you know, being really mean to myself, saying things like, look, you've got no backbone. You need to be more courageous.

Tanya (13:22.595)
don't let people walk all over you and seeing that as like faults in me and my personality rather than seeing it as like, well, this is a response that your nervous system has learned over and over again from when I was a child on how to keep myself safe. that's exactly right. It's a very resourceful response in many ways, right? And this is the, like, is the reframe, I think, that these theories give us.

the possibility of. And I think when we take the shame away from so many of these things, both for children and for adults, that's

Yeah, yeah. You know, I did my initial teacher training in behaviorist stuff. There was all around, you know, how to reinforce or, you know, discourage behaviors from that sort of Pavlovian viewpoint. Yeah. And

This has really helped me to be able to see my child in a totally different light. And it's also been something that's been very important for the parents that I work with, whose children are neurodivergent, whose children are in burnout. So that parents aren't thinking, my goodness, my child's lazy or my child's defiant, or we should just push them through and make them go to school.

Because when we understand what's actually happening for our children, you know, we can be compassionate with ourselves, but we can also understand and be compassionate to our children. And so understanding the brain, the nervous system is such an important tool for us to be able to have. Yeah, I agree. And it's so interesting.

Tanya (15:30.606)
I was just thinking about what you were talking about. I was thinking about the horrendous time that I went through with my youngest kid when the, even from people who should have known better, like people who called themselves neuroaffirming, know, OTs and practitioners and pediatricians and da, da, da, da, da, were all preaching what I call exposure therapy. And exposure therapy for me is horrific.

because you're assuming in this situation, and it's fair enough if you are scared of something irrational, but if you're scared of something that feels terribly unsafe to your nervous system, and then you're being forced to go in to be in that unsafe environment, that is just trauma. It's not. It doesn't make things better. And that's where we talk about school trauma, you know, because it's...

you know, for so many reasons, but forcing a child to be somewhere that feels unsafe, to override their nervous system response actually makes our children incredibly vulnerable. And I think for our generation, we know that because we did that. And you listen to our generation and the generation before us, you know, and, know, there's still a lot of misunderstanding around it, but I feel that the fact that our

For those of us who walk the neurodivergent family path and have changed our parenting to encourage achievement to nervous system dysregulation rather than compliance-based parenting, which is what most of us were brought up with. And for me, like I always say, I see the spit outs at the other end.

because all my clients, myself included, and you know that I work in alcohol, the primary reason why people are drinking is because of compliance-based parenting in some way, shape or form. And the shame associated with having emotions, the shame associated with not adhering to the mask, know. So what our society expects us to be. And it's very sad, really, when you think of us all as poor little children.

Tanya (17:49.104)
And for our children as well, know, people just go, well, tough luck, you know, you feel unsafe, well, you know, in you go. Yeah, know, I think this really has like, you know, that compliance based parenting or even just the way things are in schools and.

Even just in a lot, I see a lot of like medical systems as well. You know, when we don't bring this nervous system lens to it, a lot of people feel extremely vulnerable. They feel extremely invalidated. They struggle to ask for help because there is just this push of like, well, you know,

You've just got to get over yourself. You've just got to get through. So, yeah, I think that the people that were, you know, really panicking perhaps about the potential loss of this theory, know, and the reason why is because it is such an important theory to us and it does help us to explain so much of

what's going on for us in these different systems in different areas of our life. It's really interesting what you say there, Tanya, as well, where you're referencing, you know, that sort of like medical model, the school model, this sort of like academic model as well. And I think what I really noticed in the... ..on the internet around it was this is our desperate need to kind of hang on to something.

you know, as many of us, and I would say, I don't know anybody who's neurodivergent and doesn't run anxious. And we know that anxiety is all about trying to control the future so we feel safe. Yeah, so we're trying to hold on to things to make us feel safe. you know, holding so much compassion for

Tanya (20:08.048)
you know, us not liking change, us finding change scary because it's uncertain. And if we've got this thing that we've held onto and suddenly we've got to, you know, maybe that's not true. Maybe the ladder isn't the way it works. It's like, you know, that kind of way. Oh, totally, totally. You know, and I think it just, it comes down to like, we have to reshape our understanding around things. And so,

What I'd like to say to people who are stressing out about this is that polyvagal has not been debunked, but there are certain aspects of the theory that are not well supported by evidence and ways that we might need to

just relook at things or maybe just allow ourselves to broaden our perspective on it. before we move into like what that is, I really want to just chat a little bit about the idea of regulation. Because I know you and I were having a little bit of an off air discussion via DMs yesterday about it and

I think there's a lot of misconception about a lot of people thinking that regulation means that you're constantly calm, that you're constantly in control of yourself, that you're never allowed to be activated. And that really isn't the way that the nervous system works and really isn't the way that regulation works.

Can we just unpack this a little bit? Yeah, 100%. And one of the things that I really noticed in the dialogue on the internet, I'm just going to call it the internet. But you know what I mean, like the furore everywhere. There was one time where people were kind of really interested, because of course, mean, Tanya and I are autistic ADHD. We in our community, we love a deep dive. We love to get really into

Tanya (22:26.034)
stuff. love a monotropic flow state of investigation. so there'll be some people were going off and it's really interesting, fascinating kind of journeys around, you know, colonizing and the female side of things in relation to it. And that was, to me, was absolutely fascinating and had so much depth in there. then

There was another area which was, and I feel it's very aligned to masking and very aligned to a lot of the work that I do with adults because there's so much in our culture and it's almost like people have taken a polyvagal theory and slipped it into this kind of idea of destination happiness, destination regulation, destination calmness, which to my mind, in everything that I was taught, and I've had lots of different polyvagal teams.

to us was never the point. was always about moving. The ladder, I think, is one of the areas that's a controversy. So should we talk a little bit about that quickly? So the ladder basically was that you have to go up and down the ladder. And that's how the nervous system works. And when we're talking about this, we're talking about the ventral vagus nerve. And there's other systems in the body. And there's other systems in the body that all interact.

So this is kind of like one area and very complex actually in and of itself that we've kind of reduced to this very simple idea. But this idea that basically you go from sort of social, what they call ventral, which is like the kind of social area, then you're able to communicate with other people and you're having a lovely time. And then you get kind of like more anxious, sympathetic.

where you're like on an invite or flight and then you go down as Tanya said down to the door so we can shut down a breeze place and then the idea is that you get out of the door so through the sympathetic and then back up to the ventral and then with the way I was taught was that the idea was that you the idea wasn't just to stay up in happy happy la la land the idea was to move between them all because that's part of normal living you know we

Tanya (24:47.077)
we move from shutdown, sometimes we need some shutdown, sometimes we need time to sort of really process stuff and be in that kind of more shutdown state. And then other times we need to be, you know, we need to be in fight or flight, you know, if we are actually kind of like fighting for something which often is neurodivergent bumps, we are.

You need to be there as well, you know, and then we can also be in the social. idea was, it, that we'd look like the movie flex would be through it. the idea, the whole idea of the lad has been kind of the function. think Stephen Borgess has even said that he's like, the whole point of the rebuscles come from Stephen Borgess saying, you know, I'm revising this. And then this same guy who, you know, has worked particularly, my understanding is on sort of arrhythmia. So it's like heart, you know, the sort of

I'm going to use the wrong word, Tanya. But like the heart and the way that the heartbeat affects our nervous system and the way that I won't use the right technical terms. So please forgive me. Stephen Portis has kind of like made a load of amends to it. This guy's come back and kind of rebutted it. All of these people have perspectives and points of view that are valid. But this concept of the

of the ladder and the moving through my understanding is what the most the thing that's been most debunked is that the biology of the nervous system itself doesn't work in that way. And so, you know, and I find this to be true, you'll be the same Tanner, I'm sure. And I'll give you an example for me. And I'm sure you can give an example for you. For when my youngest was in my youngest was in burnout, bedbound burnout for two years and still recovering from that. And

And at the same time as being in burnout, she could be incredibly anxious and be in fires of light as well. Like we'd come into the room and have a conversation at regular voice pitch and she'd be like, stop shouting at me, stop shouting at me. And that would be like, there was two things. So that was a fight of like, get away from me ass. And then at the same time being completely unable to sort of get out of bed, lift the head off the, those two things were happening at the same time. And I think that's kind of like what the revolution is, is that

Tanya (27:04.368)
It's not to say that we can't, it's not this sort of ladder that we simply go up and down. There's all sorts of things and different kind of expressions of unsafe, feeling unsafe can happen at the same time. That's my take. What's yours, Tanya? Yeah. So just on what Paul Grossman sort of specialises in is the heart rate and what he

He was his main critique was around how the breath affects the heart rate. So one of Stephen Porges claims was polyvagal was that like the breath can slow down or speed up the heart rate. So like with the heart rate variability, that's from from what I understand. yeah.

Yeah. And but yeah, I totally agree with you in the fact that, you know, we're complicated human beings, like we're still finding out things about about our brains. And. Yeah, it's not as simple as going up and down a ladder. 100 percent, you know, there can be times. And I think that's why perhaps our kids in school.

often go into burnout because they're kind of occupying all these states sort of like all at once really, you know. You've got like certain parts of your body that on your face that are looking like you're in ventral vagal, like you're having a good time, but inside you're like you're freaking out. And then there are parts of you that are kind of like shut down because you're just like, I can't actually

concentration in the space, it's too loud. So we are sort of in all of these states at once. And I think the thing that you sent me that was quite interesting too, Emma, was around women and we can be in different, predominantly in different areas or our regulation can look different.

Tanya (29:30.545)
depending on our cycles as well and like our hormones. So those play a huge part as well. Yeah, and I think we don't, often forget the neglect and I think particularly for female assigned at birth humans, the intergenerational trauma that we have suffered for, you know, it's only been however many years since we've been able to have mortgages, bank accounts, things in our own rights. And so in order to survive in the world, female assigned at birth humans have

I've had to be able to mask and I've had to be able to pretend everything's okay when it's not. And it's one of the reasons I think that it's taken so long for females to get identified as being autistic because we can do the eye contact and we can do the, some of us can do the eye contact and we can do the appearing to be fine when we're not because we've suppressed ourselves, needs for eons. mean, humans have, know, because

coming from compliance-based parenting, we've had to because you'd be shamed for having these. You'd be shamed for, you know, for voicing them. And so therefore they then, so there's so much involved in the reasons why we have safety responses and how safety responses appear differently. And then adding in, and again, not, I feel like it's probably not for me to talk to, but also, you know, people coming from different cultures,

and people coming from the West colonizing indigenous cultures, people of color, all of that. Everyone's going to have a different experience because we're not all, we all have the same lineage and we've not all had the same experience. So of course we're going to have those different experiences. And I think there's a lot of talk at the moment around people like Bessel van der Kolk and

Stephen Porges and all of those guys kind of coming from the bro world and bringing into question a more varied understanding. But again, it's like you say, we start with these things. They gave us so much. I know the first time I read the body kit score, it gave me so much as a frame of reference. And then we learn new stuff and so we evolve. But that can be scary, I think.

Tanya (31:57.779)
for a lot of us, it's like, I had this thing and I thought it was true. And it's holding nuances so hard. Yeah. Yeah. And yeah, that nuance, I think, is a really important word, you know, because I think when we're working in this space, and if we think about neuroscience as a science, it's only really been around for a very short period of time, you know.

we really started to understand the brain and the nervous system more sort of in the eighties. But our understanding of other parts of the body have been around for a lot longer. And so of course, it's going to change. Of course, there's going to have to be nuance. And I think, you know, even just what's been happening in the neurodiversion space in the last five years, right?

There was this very narrow idea of what autistic looked like, what ADHD looked like. And then all of a sudden people started talking about their lived experience. And then, you know, we've just had this explosion of new understandings, people being able to share what things are like for them. And so I think that, yes, you know, part of being autistic is like we like to like lock into things and deal in absolutes.

But when it comes to this stuff, I don't think we can. know, we need to maybe come into this with more of a learner mind or a adventure of mind, know, like, OK, I understand that this is the theory or this is what is true now in this particular day. But this much

be different tomorrow and that's okay. totally. It's difficult though, isn't it? Because I think our because again coming to it from a nervous system perspective, if our safety response is threatened by it, you know, again, it's really like, well, I guess that's probably our thing is how do we make it safe enough for us to be open to a different idea? And you know, it's not really

Tanya (34:21.811)
We've got to take into account, and this is the other thing, we've got to take into account the systems that we are living in, the family homes that we're living in. So all of our experiences around safety are going to be different because of our lived experience. Yeah. It's isn't it? I see what you were saying. Sorry, I was just thinking about the gut. was just thinking about, you know when everyone started to learn about the gut being like the second brain? And I was thinking...

you know, that was a revelation. And, and so all of these things change all the time. And as we know more, we it's helpful to us, right? It's interesting. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I, I was astounded when I found out like the heart has neurons, the gut has neurons. Tell me what neuron means. me what neuron means. Um, like

the cells that connect and... like the neurotransmitters go into neurons. Neurotransmitters. You know, people previously thought the only place that we had those neurons was in our brain to make sense of our world and the environment and to send signals to other body parts to regulate. But we actually have those same cells in our gut and our heart. And so...

The brain isn't the only. didn't know it was in the heart as well. That's interesting. It doesn't make sense, right? Yeah, absolutely. The brain isn't the only information center of the brain. Of the body is what I'm trying to say. I also, and I can be corrected on this, but I'm pretty sure that this is true because I did look it up afterwards. That, you know, your different hormones like your oxytocin and your serotonin.

Saratones get made more in the gout. Yeah, and oxytocin gets made more in the heart. so, you know, I love the idea of, yes, we're constantly getting this inflammation and these safety signals from our body, and, you know, which really feeds into that somatic experiencing. But I also think we can't

Tanya (36:42.535)
discount the like the the top down sort of processing as well because I think if you if you're something makes sense to your brain or you have some information or a framework or some language around your experience from your brain that's also highly you know regulating as well. So I think I think

for me, and this is kind of what's come out for me as well when I was like really diving deep into what was happening with Polyvagal, is that like, yes, our vagus nerve is important, but so are like our other senses, so are the other parts of our body as well. It isn't just about the vagus respiratory system, you know, all of these things for sure. Yeah. And I think there are some other senses that

are really important as well for helping us to feel safe like our proprioception, our interoception. Do you want to explain proprioception because people might not know what that means? So proprioception is the information that we get through our senses, through our joints and our muscles about where we are in a space.

You know, like if you push down, like say for example, you're standing and you kind of push down into a wall, you're getting information from that, from the wall, from your body of like how you fit in that sort of space. And interestingly, for a lot of our children, like especially really young children who are neurodivergent, proprioception can be a sense that can be

either, you know, hyper, which is like intense, but can also be something that is hypo and we don't have enough of. And you often see it with like young children who perhaps like squeeze like a baby too hard or don't recognize where they are. So, yeah, we we might interpret that as like bad behavior or someone being rough.

Tanya (39:06.483)
But actually what's happening is their sense of proprioception is off. Yeah. And I'll give you a really good example as an adult version of that, because I am very much in the hypo, the most thing, is parking. Yeah. And until I got my diagnosis, I would get in so much trouble. It's funny when I drive and I've got to go through something narrow, I'm like, what's happening?

I just got no idea. Should probably not be on the road. But you know, it's just fascinating, isn't it? And I always used to bump into things because I just had no idea where I was in space. And I always found like catching so hard because I just had no idea where my hands were in relation to. But I used to think, you know, again, we think we're faulty until we find I'm like, my God, what's wrong with me? Why can't I bark? my God, what's wrong with me? Why can't I catch?

You know, and then you're like, because I have a different, my body's, that's something I need to kind of like work on, like interception, same thing. Something I need to work on to improve because it's something that naturally is low for me. know? Yeah. Yeah. And yeah. So I think with just for the audience too, this, that also explains why things can feel so comforting, like weighted stuff or like,

squeezing a blanket around you or those of us who really like like massage or. Havening. Havening or like a big squeezy cuddle. Why they can feel really regulating it is because it's because of that sense. I know for some people they can't tolerate that and that's absolutely okay too. But that is one of the reasons some of these things are highly regulating for

certain people. Exactly. They give us a sense of safety, don't they? Because it's like I'm being held, I'm being, I'm being cuddled, know, I'm being held closely. And equally, the nervous system response, you know, the opposite is, you know, ah, too much cuddling, too vulnerable, too tight, too, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Fascinating. Fascinating. Yeah. So I'm wondering if we just finish off with just

Tanya (41:31.386)
giving a little, I've got a little, my notes here, a little summary of what is well established and then also what is sort of under dispute a little bit and or partially supported just so that people have like a clear idea in their brain of, okay, what can I actually trust here?

Tanya (41:58.248)
So.

Some of the things that are well established about polyvagal theory is that the vagus nerve regulates the body. So that's not disputed. HRV, which is your heart rate variability, reflects your nervous system health. those of us, like if you've got a high heart rate variability, generally, your nervous system might be

slightly more like.

Tanya (42:37.17)
I don't want to say healthy, but you know what I mean? You have a better, you have more flexibility in your nervous system to if you have a- you a question about that Tanya? Yeah. So when you were talking about the heart rate, can you just re-explain that bit about the heart rate? Cause I'm interested in this and I don't really understand it. The heart rate variability. if our heart rate, do you mean if our heart rate varies a lot, then that means that we have more

another system flexibility, is that what you're saying? Yeah, so I always, I have a thing on my, I'm not an expert on this. No, I don't. I don't claim to be it. But my understanding is that if the variability in your heart rate, so I think that's also to do with like, like our response to stress. Yeah. So if you're really like stressed out,

then it becomes elevated. If you're calmer or you're more regulated, it has the opposite effect. And I will maybe just do a little bit more investigating and we can talk about this more another time. So the other thing that's well established is our body state. So the state that we are in.

like so if we're in flight flight or freeze or whatever yeah does determine how we think feel and perceive others 100 % yeah safety is psychological so changes in the heart the muscle and the inner ear or the middle ear will help us to have a sense of safety

interesting.

Tanya (44:29.62)
So that's a lot to do with that vestibular sense as well, know, that our sense in our middle ear. Sorry? don't know what vestibular means. feel like it's... vestibular is the sense of like your sense of balance, but it has a lot to do with the inner ear. Yeah. And it can also like, if you're, if you are hypo in your vestibular sense,

you get more things like vertigo or dizzy or motion sickness. didn't know that. Yeah. Yeah. And also like it affects how stable you feel like in your balance. we regulate each other. So co-regulation is psychologically real.

According to Stephen Porgers' theory, and we didn't really go into the nidigridic here, but there are two vagal branches. Yes. And these are structurally and functionally different. OK. Is that the one that goes between the base of the head down to the tummy and then the base of the head to the heart? Is that right? That's correct.

No, no, no, no. So there's like these two distinct main sort of. Yeah, and they do different things and they are structurally, if you like, do a cross section of them, they are different. Interesting. And interoception is central to emotional regulation and mental health. So, yeah.

So those are the things that are well established. And just to explain, interception. So interception is the ability to be able to identify the thing that's happening inside our body and make sense of it with our brain. So for example, being hungry or needing to pee or having a dead leg. Those are examples I would give just for anyone who doesn't know about interception. But my understanding on it as well is it isn't just like our conscious sense.

Tanya (46:47.548)
So like our body is getting information, our brain is getting information from our body about heart rate, about our breathing, about what's going on in the gut. And lot of that is actually not conscious. Yes. But the information that it's getting from our organs through the vagus nerve tells our brain I'm safe or this is a dangerous situation. Yeah.

And that's interoceptive as well, right? That's interoceptive. That's interoceptive as well. yeah. Which is again, because so many of us have our interceptive ability quashed by not being allowed to have needs. So eventually we kind of shut down the ability to be able to feel them as well, which is such an important part. absolutely. And I think this also shows variations and why certain, like why sometimes many neurodivergent people have, might have a delayed reaction.

of something that happened to them, you know, like we might have been in a dangerous situation or something that affected us greatly, but in the moment, we didn't like, we weren't able to process it or we might have a delayed reaction to something or delayed emotions about something because

there are these differences in the information that our brain is getting from our body or our brains able to process those signals. As once again, not a scientist, not a neuroscientist, but that's my understanding of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. So what is like partly supported is that, I'm just seeing what I've written here.

Dorsal vagal and the freeze response. So there is a some dispute about that. And it basically is it's it's

Tanya (48:56.873)
there's more elements to dorsal vagal rather than just like a shut down response. That there is some levels of activation and you know other things in dorsal vagal. It's not just a pure like totally shut down response which you know you would say.

the, you know, what's what happened with your daughter, with her being sort of shut down, but still being able to kind of have that activation. And then partially supported is that sort of RSA, which is the what Paul Grosman was saying about like our heart rate affecting our breathing and vice versa.

And what's kind of partially supported or they say here it's clinically useful is the hierarchical sort of letter that they've noticed that it's not like it's partially supported or it's not well supported, but it can still be a useful framework.

for clinical settings to help people to understand the different things. Yes. Can I interrupt something there just quickly? Because there's one thing I was just thinking about. And one of the things that I think is so challenging when you have a child in burnout is because we have this idea in psychology, a lot of psychiatrists that we worked with have this belief that the way out of shutdown is to be active.

You know, and here I often have when I'm in burnout, which I've stopped in and out of quite recently at the moment, people are like, go out for a walk, get some exercise, go out in the, because we have this idea that that's the kind of, I guess, cure. And I guess this is one of the issues with pathologizing and all of this kind of like research stuff as opposed to lived experience is, you know, for my child, that is absolutely harmful.

Tanya (51:07.902)
And for me, when I'm in burnout, that's absolutely harmful. For some people, it might work and it depends what's happening for you at the time. But we've got this kind of like idea of what, you know, we have to almost jumpstart people out of dorsal. actually, do you know what dorsal is somewhere for repair? You know, sometimes it's not for repair. It's got a lot of other reasons, like you're saying, you know, when we get the other thing I was going to mention was situational mutism, you know, and things like you were talking about.

when we smile, like my kid used to get into so much trouble at school, he was such a beautiful kid, but whenever he was getting told off, he would smile because, or the past was getting told off because it made him deeply uncomfortable and that was his facial response to it. And he used to end up outside the principal's office the time, but just having an inappropriate response. But that was his breeze, if you know what I mean. So anyway, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt, but I was just like, I think it was important to kind of add these things. Yeah.

And I totally agree with you around, you know, like...

Tanya (52:10.41)
the narrative around like you've just got to get over it, you've just got to push through, you've just got to go do something active to help your body because not everybody heals that way. And I honestly feel like that's one of the big differences. can't be, you know, I'm open to having a conversation about it, but I believe that's one of the big differences between burnout and depression. You know, with depression.

We're often told, you know, go and do something active, go, you know, but that's very different to burnout where your nervous system is just like, I need to rest. I need to do as little as possible here. And that's sort of the way that I believe is the way out of burnout. Not like, let's just push ourselves to do more things. I have no frame of reference for other types of burnout, but being an autistic person.

But I know that when I'm in burnout, the last thing I need is to be being forced to mask with self care. Yeah. You know what I mean? Absolutely. Sorry. So carry on. It's interesting what you're saying. No, so that's just, you know, what I've sort of gathered as, you know, sort of the things that are under debate and well supported.

I will also just say from my perspective around supporting ourselves through this is rather than trying to force ourselves to self care, is to just help ourselves to experience small moments of safety throughout the day, to just remind our body that we okay in this moment.

Tanya (54:09.159)
And I had this coach ages ago and she would say something, she said something about self care that I've always just taken with me. And she said, self care is like doing the laundry. You can't do it once and expect clean clothes for life. You know, it's rather small little things that you do that are going to be very specific to me.

it's going to be look different to you Lisa about what looking after yourself looks like or what care feels like for you, right? Yeah. And that's just my understanding of this. I just want to, like while I was saying this, I just had this sort of like sort like the subject Lisa and I are talking about here is through the lens of our own understanding, right? And so if you're listening to this podcast or watching this video and you feel like

you have a different opinion or a different lived experience to us, we would really love for you to let us know. We're not above reproach in what we're saying here, and this is just through our own means here. Yeah. And I think that's so important, what you're saying, because I think that is the crux of this. And some of the other stuff that's going on on the internet at the moment, which we'll talk about as well. But is it...

really our lived experience as individual and we cannot put frameworks, yeah they're useful, they're useful guidelines, they're useful you know ideas but they you know we cannot put frameworks from researchers and above the individual experience of human beings. absolutely you know I think that's where we've gotten into trouble in the past it's like we've gone like

Even just in parenting, this is the way you're supposed to do it and you have to fit into these boxes and if you don't, then there's something wrong with you or you're doing it wrong. And I really don't want people to come away from this conversation and think that if your experience is different, that there's something wrong with you because as you say, everybody's different and everybody will have their own

Tanya (56:33.545)
experience or their own leans on this. Yeah. And there's so much shaming in this world around, know, our responses, our behavioral responses and a lot of the individualistic kind of set, you know, self improvement world as well. It's so easy for us to fall into that. I'm different. I'm wrong. I'm bad. And I think what Tanya and I both really hope to bring is the opposite of that. Like,

that really that you're not. You really are a gorgeous, beautiful human being and we're all different and we've all got this amazing, amazingness inside us. And it's about kind of, for me, it feels like it's, it's letting ourselves get access to that and releasing ourselves from some of these shackles and ideas that we've been brought up with and that we bring into our families as well, you know, with, with respect.

to the help that they have given all of us at some point or another getting us to where we are now. But knowing that some of this stuff, it's not certain.

Tanya (57:48.733)
Absolutely.

So I see we're kind of going on the hour here. we want to just finish with our magic moment? Is there something that...

Tanya (58:04.406)
came up for you this week, so it felt magical? I had a magic moment last night. Oh! Yeah, so was having a really tough day, as you know, because I had to cancel all my lives together. And just a few other things happened. I was really triggered. I had to sit in my bedroom and have a little meltdown, just making that normal. And then I did, I wasn't going to go on it, and I went on a call with a group I've been working on. And we did some havening.

And we did some, which if anyone doesn't know Havening, it's like, it's a beautiful way of, you know, kind of like rubbing your body and you do with your hands and you can also do it with a heart shape on your face and kind of going back to some inner child work and really just being, becoming the adult you needed, which I think a lot of us, that's kind of what we're here doing, becoming the adult that we needed as children and offering ourselves that compassion.

And at the end of it, was lying on the floor in my office and I was like, listen, it was all warm and cosy and I was like, oh, that's so lovely. And my nervous system was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, like jelly and just delicious warm jelly. That sounds really disgusting, but that's my distress. It was lovely. was ready to go to bed and release all of that stuff that had been building up for me during the day. How about yourself, Tanya? What's your magical moment?

I just saw the most amazing double rainbow this morning. Rainbows have always been like a symbol of hope for me and we've been having a lot of rain here which is, you know, not the best experience sometimes but the thing I love about rain is, especially in our home, is that we have a lot of rain.

This morning when I took my son to the bus and I drove back, it was pouring down with rain, but there in the distance, in the black clouds, I saw this beautiful double rainbow. And it just really brought a smile to my face this morning. I love that so much. Thank you so much for sharing that. are such an amazing thing, aren't they? They bring everybody together. Like you get truck drivers at petrol stations kind of like, did you see the double rainbow?

Tanya (01:00:25.055)
I'll do it, you know.

absolutely. Love that. Yeah, and you know, I would really love it if people who are watching this, if you had a magic moment this week that you'd like to share. We'd love to hear about it either in the comments on the podcast platforms or either here or here on Instagram as well. Thank you. Thank you so much, Tanya. It's been so lovely just to you today.

same with you Emma and I look forward to chatting with you next week. next week we're going to be talking about the article that has been circling the internet by Dr. Butter Firth and the debate that's currently going on about whether the autism spectrum has collapsed and just all the

the feelings and the thoughts that we might be having as to like diagnosed or DHD people with some of the stuff that has been sort of circulating and said about that. So if that is something that you've been interested in as well, please join us for that. And we'd love to hear people's thoughts or things that maybe you'd like us to talk about in that episode about

about their article. Yeah, I agree. I think it's going to be very interesting to do as well. Lots of pretty good stuff came out today, actually, I've been reading. So I look forward to talking about that with you next week. And we'll just determine what day we're going to do, aren't we? Because I've just had a bit of an issue with my school conch, so I need to make sure that I do these on a day that works, but she's not trying to be at school, because otherwise it doesn't work. So Tanya and I will discuss that, and we'll come back and let you know what day and time we're going to do next week and going forward.

Tanya (01:02:25.079)
Thank you so much. everyone. Thank you. Bye.