Your Nervous System is a Storyteller: Understanding Polyvagal Theory Through Myth

The Bio-Mythology of Safety, Danger, and the Underworld

By Joel Blackstock, LICSW-S, Clinical Director, Taproot Therapy Collective

Long before the emergence of modern neuroscience, human beings understood something profound about the body’s relationship to consciousness. The ancient Greeks spoke of pneuma, the vital breath that animated the soul. Hindu yogis mapped the subtle energy channels of the nadis, describing how life force moved through the body along predictable pathways. Indigenous cultures across every continent developed sophisticated frameworks for understanding the body as a vessel of story, a living archive of experience and wisdom far older than words.

These traditions intuited what contemporary neurophysiology has now confirmed: the body possesses its own intelligence, its own narrative capacity, its own way of interpreting and responding to the world that operates beneath and before conscious awareness. The body tells stories. It reads the environment for plot cues. It knows whether we inhabit a comedy or a tragedy often before the thinking mind has even registered the scene.

This is the essential insight of Polyvagal Theory, developed over three decades by Dr. Stephen Porges. The theory proposes that the autonomic nervous system, that supposedly automatic background system regulating heartbeat and breath and digestion, is in fact a sophisticated storytelling apparatus. It continuously narrates our relationship to the world, casting us in roles of safety or danger, connection or isolation, life or death. The body, through the wandering pathways of the vagus nerve, tells us who we are and what the world means before we have a single conscious thought about the matter.

For those seeking to understand their own psychology at depth, this represents a revolutionary reframing. The body is not merely the stage upon which psychological drama unfolds; the body is an author of that drama. And the stories it tells, the autonomic states it generates, have the power to shape perception, cognition, emotion, and behavior in ways that talking cures alone often cannot reach. This is why somatic approaches to trauma treatment have gained such prominence in contemporary psychotherapy, and why understanding the nervous system’s narrative function has become essential for anyone seeking genuine psychological transformation.

The Vagus Nerve: Wanderer Between Worlds

The vagus nerve takes its name from the Latin word for wandering, the same root that gives us vagrant and vagabond. It is the longest cranial nerve in the body, emerging from the brainstem and meandering downward through the neck, chest, and abdomen, innervating the heart, lungs, and digestive organs along its journey. As Porges describes in his foundational research published in Cleveland Clinic’s Journal of Medicine, the vagus serves as the primary neural pathway through which brain and body communicate bidirectionally, creating what he terms a “face-heart connection” that links our social behaviors with our visceral states.

But the vagus is not a single pathway. It consists of multiple branches with distinct evolutionary histories and functional properties. The older dorsal branch, which humans share with ancient reptilian ancestors, regulates the organs below the diaphragm and mediates metabolic conservation responses. The newer ventral branch, which emerged with the evolution of mammals, regulates the organs above the diaphragm and integrates with the neural circuits controlling facial expression, vocalization, and listening. These two branches tell fundamentally different stories about the nature of existence, and the interplay between them shapes every moment of human experience.

According to recent research published in Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience, Polyvagal Theory emphasizes a hierarchical organization of autonomic states, highlighting the unique role of the ventral vagal complex in facilitating social behavior and physiological flexibility. The theory proposes that when we feel safe, our nervous systems support the homeostatic functions of health, growth, and restoration while simultaneously becoming accessible to others without expressing threat or vulnerability. This ventral vagal state represents the foundation for all higher human capacities: learning, creativity, intimacy, and even spirituality.

When safety is compromised, however, the nervous system shifts into older evolutionary strategies. First comes sympathetic activation, the mobilization of fight or flight. If mobilization fails or is impossible, the system descends further into dorsal vagal shutdown, the ancient reptilian strategy of metabolic conservation and immobilization. These are not choices. They are not failures of character or will. They are the automatic responses of a body doing precisely what evolution designed it to do: keep us alive.

Neuroception: The Story Before the Story

Central to Polyvagal Theory is the concept of neuroception, a term Porges coined to describe the neural process by which the nervous system evaluates risk and safety without conscious awareness. As he elaborated in his landmark paper published in Zero to Three journal, neuroception describes how neural circuits distinguish whether situations or people are safe, dangerous, or life threatening. Because of our heritage as a species, neuroception takes place in primitive parts of the brain, without our conscious awareness.

Neuroception explains phenomena that the thinking mind cannot easily comprehend. Why does a baby coo at a familiar caregiver but cry at a stranger, even when the stranger is smiling and speaking kindly? The infant’s neuroception has read the situation and rendered a verdict before any conscious evaluation occurred. Why does someone freeze in the face of danger, unable to run or fight despite every rational desire to do so? Their neuroception has determined that neither mobilization strategy is viable and has activated the ancient shutdown response. Why do we sometimes feel inexplicably unsafe in situations where nothing visibly threatening is present? Our neuroception has detected cues of danger that the conscious mind cannot identify or articulate.

This is where the mythological dimension of the nervous system becomes apparent. Neuroception functions as a kind of oracle, reading the environment and pronouncing judgment on its meaning. But unlike the oracles of Greek mythology who spoke in riddles that required interpretation, neuroception speaks directly to the body, bypassing language entirely. The body knows before the mind has words. The story is already being told before we become aware that any narrative has begun.

For those who have experienced trauma, neuroception often becomes miscalibrated. The system that evolved to detect genuine threat begins to read danger in safe environments and perceive threat in trustworthy faces. Research on the Neuroception of Psychological Safety Scale confirms that a history of trauma can predispose individuals to perceive heightened levels of threat and danger, with persistent feelings of threat and danger being predictive of PTSD. The oracle, having been betrayed by reality, begins to prophesy danger where none exists. This is not paranoia in the psychiatric sense; it is a body doing its job as best it can with the information trauma has provided.

The Three Realms: An Archetypal Geography of the Nervous System

To understand the lived experience of Polyvagal states, we must move beyond the clinical language of vagal tone and sympathetic activation into a more imaginal register. The three autonomic states described by Polyvagal Theory correspond to three archetypal territories, three mythological landscapes that humans have mapped and remapped across every culture and every era. The body, it turns out, has been telling the same essential stories since the beginning of human time.

The Village: Ventral Vagal Safety and the Lover Archetype

When the ventral vagal system is engaged, we inhabit what might be called the Village, the archetypal space of human belonging, mutual recognition, and social connection. This is the realm of the Lover archetype in its fullest expression: the capacity for intimacy, for seeing and being seen, for the kind of presence that allows two nervous systems to co-regulate each other toward states of greater calm and openness.

In the Village, the body tells a story of fundamental safety. The heart rate slows and becomes rhythmically variable, responsive to the breath. The muscles of the face and middle ear attune to human vocal frequencies, screening out the background noise that might signal danger. The prosody of our speech becomes melodic, our facial expressions animated, our gestures open and welcoming. We become, in the language of Polyvagal Theory, socially accessible.

This state is not merely pleasant; it is physiologically essential. According to Porges, when humans feel safe, their nervous systems support the homeostatic functions of health, growth, and restoration. The ventral vagal state is the foundation upon which immune function, digestion, tissue repair, and cognitive clarity depend. We heal in the Village. We grow in the Village. We become fully ourselves only when the nervous system has determined that we are among our people, in our place, fundamentally safe.

The Lover archetype that governs this realm is not limited to romantic love. It encompasses all forms of genuine connection: the bond between parent and child, the warmth between friends, the solidarity of community, the mysterious intimacy one can feel with nature, with art, with the numinous. When the Lover is online, we experience what Deb Dana, a clinician who has extensively developed the clinical applications of Polyvagal Theory, calls “glimmers,” those micro-moments of safety and connection that the nervous system registers and seeks to repeat.

The work of therapy often involves helping clients recognize that they have ever inhabited this Village, that they possess the capacity for ventral vagal engagement even when their current life circumstances have exiled them to harsher territories. Memory holds the Village even when present experience does not. The body remembers safety even when the mind has forgotten it was ever possible.

The Battlefield: Sympathetic Mobilization and the Warrior Archetype

When neuroception detects danger, the nervous system shifts from the Village into what we might call the Battlefield. This is the realm of sympathetic activation, the territory of fight and flight, where the body mobilizes its resources for survival. Here the Warrior archetype assumes command, and the physiological story transforms entirely.

On the Battlefield, the heart rate accelerates and becomes less variable. Blood pressure rises. Breath becomes rapid and shallow. Blood flow shifts away from the digestive organs and toward the large muscle groups of the limbs. Adrenaline and cortisol flood the system, heightening alertness and suppressing functions that are not immediately relevant to survival. The body prepares to fight or to flee.

This is not a pathological state. The Warrior serves essential functions. Without the capacity for mobilization, we could not respond to genuine threats, could not protect ourselves or those we love, could not rise to challenges that require energy and action. The problem arises when the Battlefield becomes a permanent residence rather than a temporary mobilization, when the Warrior refuses to sheathe the sword because the nervous system cannot confirm that the threat has passed.

Chronic sympathetic activation produces the constellation of symptoms that contemporary culture recognizes as stress: racing thoughts, muscle tension, sleep disturbance, digestive problems, irritability, and difficulty concentrating. The body remains perpetually prepared for a battle that may never come or that has already occurred and cannot be fought again. Research on autonomic dysregulation in ADHD and trauma confirms that the prefrontal cortex, essential for executive function and emotional regulation, is exquisitely sensitive to catecholamine levels, and that even small deviations from optimal ranges produce significant changes in function.

For those whose histories have included actual violence, the Battlefield may feel like the only real territory. The Village seems like a naive fantasy, a luxury for those whose lives have been easier. The Warrior’s hypervigilance becomes a virtue, even when it destroys sleep and relationships and joy. Therapy with such individuals requires honoring the Warrior’s protective function while gradually expanding the window within which the Village becomes accessible again.

The Cave: Dorsal Vagal Shutdown and the Descent to the Underworld

Beneath the Battlefield lies a territory even more ancient and more terrifying: the Cave, the realm of dorsal vagal shutdown, the Underworld of the nervous system. When neuroception determines that neither fight nor flight is possible, when the organism perceives that it faces overwhelming threat with no viable survival strategy, the dorsal vagal system activates what Porges calls the immobilization response.

This is the freeze of the deer in headlights. The collapse of the prey animal playing dead. The shutdown of metabolic function to conserve energy when death seems inevitable. As described in research on dorsal vagal shutdown, this response allows the body to conserve energy and protect itself when neither fight nor flight is possible. It is the oldest survival strategy in the vertebrate repertoire, predating the sympathetic system by millions of years.

In the Cave, the body tells a story of profound helplessness. Heart rate slows dramatically. Blood pressure drops. Digestion stops. Muscles lose tone. Consciousness itself may become cloudy, dissociated, dreamlike. The individual may experience what clinicians call functional freeze, a state in which one appears to be functioning, perhaps even highly productive, while internally experiencing a profound disconnection from feeling, from embodiment, from life itself.

This is the realm of the Underworld in world mythology, the place to which heroes descend and from which they must eventually return. Inanna hanging on the meat hook in the Sumerian netherworld. Orpheus seeking Eurydice in Hades. Christ harrowing Hell before the Resurrection. The mythological intuition is precise: there is a place beneath ordinary life where one enters when disaster overwhelms, and the return from that place constitutes a profound transformation.

For trauma survivors, the Cave often becomes an unwitting home. The nervous system, having once encountered threat from which there was no escape, develops a hair trigger for the shutdown response. Research on chronic dorsal vagal states confirms that chronic exposure to danger or adversity can lead to dysregulation of the vagal system, where the dorsal vagal response becomes a default state, resulting in chronic dissociation, emotional numbness, and depression.

The tragedy of life in the Cave is its invisibility. Unlike the dramatic activation of the Battlefield, which produces recognizable anxiety and stress symptoms, the shutdown of the Cave often looks like laziness, apathy, or depression. The individual themselves may not understand why they cannot seem to engage with life, why even simple tasks feel impossibly overwhelming, why they feel numb when they know they should feel. The body has entered the Underworld, and the thinking mind has no map of that territory.

The Dissolution Hierarchy: Why We Fall and How We Rise

Polyvagal Theory describes a principle called dissolution, borrowed from the nineteenth century neurologist John Hughlings Jackson, which explains the sequence in which the nervous system moves through its states. The most recently evolved system, the ventral vagal, is the most vulnerable to disruption. Under stress, it goes offline first. The older sympathetic system then dominates until it too is overwhelmed, at which point the most ancient dorsal vagal system takes control.

This means that we descend through the realms in a specific order. From the Village to the Battlefield to the Cave. From the Lover to the Warrior to the Descent. From safety to mobilization to shutdown. The body does not skip steps. When we find ourselves frozen, we have necessarily passed through activation on the way down.

The clinical implications are profound. Recovery from dorsal vagal shutdown cannot occur by simply deciding to feel better. The nervous system must traverse the same territory in reverse. From the Cave, one must pass through the Battlefield before the Village can be reached again. This is why trauma recovery often involves a period of increased anxiety, why the thaw feels worse before it feels better, why clients sometimes report feeling more dysregulated as they begin to heal.

According to recent publications on Polyvagal-informed interventions, effective therapeutic approaches focus on restoring access to the ventral vagal complex and supporting adaptive shifts in autonomic state. This requires what Porges calls “bottom-up” approaches, interventions that work directly with the body and nervous system rather than relying solely on cognitive reprocessing.

The Clinical Implications: Reaching the Subcortical Brain

Understanding the bio-mythology of the nervous system transforms how we approach psychological treatment. If autonomic states shape perception, cognition, and emotion, then changing those states must be central to any effective intervention. Talk alone cannot reach the dorsal vagal Cave. Insight alone cannot quiet the sympathetic Battlefield. The body must be involved in any genuine transformation.

This is where advanced clinical modalities demonstrate their unique value. Brainspotting, developed by Dr. David Grand, uses eye positions to access subcortical brain regions where trauma is stored, allowing processing to occur beneath the level of verbal narrative. EMDR, developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro, employs bilateral stimulation to facilitate the integration of traumatic memories that have remained frozen in implicit memory systems. These are not merely cognitive techniques with somatic components; they are direct interventions into the autonomic nervous system’s storytelling apparatus.

qEEG brain mapping provides another essential tool, offering a window into the brain’s electrical activity patterns. Research has demonstrated that ADHD, anxiety, depression, and trauma all produce distinctive brainwave signatures that can be identified and targeted. The brain map reveals which networks are dysregulated, whether the pattern suggests chronic sympathetic activation or dorsal vagal withdrawal, and how intervention might most effectively proceed.

The goal of all these approaches is fundamentally the same: to help the nervous system update its story. The body that learned danger can learn safety. The neuroception that was calibrated by trauma can be recalibrated by experiences of genuine connection and successful coping. The dissolution hierarchy that led to the Cave can be reversed, step by careful step, until the Village becomes accessible once more.

The Return: Glimmers, Co-Regulation, and the Restoration of Safety

If the descent into the Cave represents one great mythological theme, the return to the Village represents another. The hero’s journey is not complete with the descent; it requires the ascent, the return with the boon, the reintegration of what was discovered in the depths. For those recovering from trauma, this return involves the gradual restoration of the ventral vagal capacity for safety and connection.

The concept of “glimmers,” developed by Deb Dana in her clinical application of Polyvagal Theory, offers a practical framework for this restoration. If triggers are cues that activate defense responses, glimmers are cues that activate the social engagement system. They are micro-moments of safety, connection, or joy, often so subtle that they pass unnoticed. A moment of warmth from a friend. The pleasure of morning light. The satisfaction of a task completed. These glimmers are not merely pleasant; they are neurobiologically significant. Each one represents the nervous system accessing the ventral vagal state, even briefly.

The work of recovery involves becoming attuned to glimmers, learning to recognize them when they occur and to let the body savor them rather than rushing past. This is not positive thinking or gratitude practice in the conventional sense. It is the deliberate training of neuroception to recognize safety, the recalibration of an oracle that has been predicting danger too indiscriminately for too long.

Co-regulation plays an essential role in this process. As Porges has emphasized throughout his work, the mammalian nervous system evolved for interdependence. We regulate best in the presence of safe others because their regulated states communicate cues of safety that our neuroception reads and responds to. Research on felt safety confirms that the neuroception of safety is associated with elevated heart rate variability, a marker of autonomic flexibility and resilience. We cannot fully heal in isolation. The Village, by definition, requires other villagers.

This is why the therapeutic relationship matters so profoundly. The therapist’s regulated nervous system becomes a resource for the client’s dysregulated one. Not through instruction or interpretation, but through the raw biological fact of co-presence. Two nervous systems in a room, one offering cues of safety that the other’s neuroception can read and begin to trust. This is the ancient medicine of human connection, now understood through the lens of contemporary neuroscience.

Honoring the Body’s Wisdom

Polyvagal Theory offers more than a neurophysiological model; it offers a restoration of dignity to the body’s experience. The person who freezes in danger is not weak. The person who cannot calm down is not choosing to remain anxious. The person who feels disconnected is not being dramatic. Each is living out a story that the nervous system is telling based on its best assessment of reality, using strategies that evolved over hundreds of millions of years to keep vertebrate life alive on an uncertain planet.

The mythological frame brings this dignity into even sharper focus. We are not machines malfunctioning. We are heroes traversing archetypal landscapes. The Lover who has been exiled from the Village. The Warrior who cannot find peace. The Descended one who must find the way back from the Underworld. These are the great stories of human experience, told not by the mind but by the body itself.

Therapy, from this perspective, becomes a kind of mythological work. We are not merely treating symptoms; we are guiding the nervous system through a transformation of its fundamental narrative. We are helping the oracle of neuroception learn new truths. We are escorting the Descended one back toward the light.

The path is not quick or easy. The nervous system changes slowly, and the body holds its stories with remarkable tenacity. But change is possible. The ventral vagal capacity for safety and connection cannot be destroyed, only obscured. The Village still exists, even when we have forgotten how to find it. And with the right support, the right interventions, and the right co-regulation, we can learn to inhabit it once more.

This is the promise of Polyvagal-informed treatment: not merely symptom reduction, but a fundamental transformation of the body’s story about the world. From danger to safety. From isolation to connection. From the Cave, through the Battlefield, back to the Village where we belong.