54: Deb Dana - How to manage our nervous systems, and find safety and connection for better mental health

Deb Dana, LCSW, is a world-renowned clinician, consultant, author and speaker who has successfully put into practice Dr. Stephen Porges’ Polyvagal Theory (PVT), making it accessible and beneficial to hundreds of thousands of people around the world by developing therapeutic practices based on PVT. Deb has a busy career training therapists around the world on how to bring a Polyvagal approach into their clinical practice, and also works with agencies and larger systems to explore how to incorporate a Polyvagal perspective into organisational culture to make them safer, happier, and healthier places to learn, work and function. She is a founding member of The Polyvagal Institute, a consultant to Khiron Clinics, and an advisor to Unyte. She is the author of several books, including her latest Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory and Polyvagal Practices: Anchoring the Self in Safety.

In this fascinating interview for The MindHealth360 Show, Deb discusses how the state of our nervous systems is essential to our mental and physical health and our daily energy regulation, and how we can understand and manage this state throughout the day using tools and techniques based on Polyvagal Theory. She talks about the hierarchy of the nervous system – from the ventral vagal state (social engagement, which is essential to health, growth and restoration), to the sympathetic state (fight-flight), and finally to the dorsal state (freeze, collapse) and how each one relates to different adaptive behaviours and pathways of neuroception, further influencing our nervous systems. She tells us of different strategies to move more quickly and easily from dorsal or sympathetic to ventral states so we can find calm, connection and healing in our lives. She also discusses the impact of loneliness; her “glimmers” of ventral activation (gone viral on Tik Tok) that we can use to self-regulate; and tells us how different peoples’ nervous systems require different interventions to find their way back to the ventral pathway which is essential to healing; as well as the importance of following the “intuition” of our nervous system. If we could all put Deb’s healing work into daily practice and better manage our nervous systems, our inner and outer worlds would be happier, healthier and safer places to live.