Your Nervous System in Recovery: A Primer on Polyvagal Theory

"Why Can’t I Just Calm Down?"

Many people come into my office questioning their inability to relax, their tendency to react in similar, outsized ways to situations that they "should" be able to take in stride, and their feeling that they are either overwhelmed or completely shut down.

From the outside, these can look like problems of attitude or mindset. But more often, they’re not problems of cognition, but of the nervous system. Understanding how your nervous system works can fundamentally change how you approach stress, addiction, and emotional regulation. The framework that’s especially helpful here is polyvagal theory, developed by neuroscientist Stephen Porges.

A Simple Way to Understand Polyvagal Theory

Polyvagal theory describes how your nervous system is constantly scanning the environment for cues of safety or danger and shifting your body into different states in response. This system is evolutionarily ancient—far older than the parts of the brain responsible for conscious thought. It operates automatically, outside of awareness. In other words, this is less about thinking that something is dangerous and more about your body sensing that it is.

At the center of this system is the vagus nerve, a major communication pathway between the brain and the body. It runs from the brainstem down through the face, chest, and abdomen, helping regulate functions like heart rate, breathing, and digestion. Polyvagal theory proposes that this nerve has different branches associated with different states of the nervous system. One branch supports feelings of safety, connection, and social engagement (ventral vagal), while another is associated with shutdown and immobilization (dorsal vagal). These operate alongside the sympathetic nervous system, which mobilizes the body for action. Together, these systems shape how we respond to stress, connection, and perceived threat.

1. Ventral Vagal (Safe and Connected)

This is the state in which you feel grounded, present, and able to engage with other people. You can think clearly, feel emotionally balanced, and you can connect, communicate, and reflect on your experiences with clarity. This is where growth, healing, and meaningful relationships happen.

2. Sympathetic (Activated and Mobilized)

This is your fight-or-flight system. In this state, your body is alerting you that a potential threat is present - you have increased energy and focus, may feel anxiety, urgency, or irritability, or feel driven or productive. To be in this state isn’t inherently bad, and it’s frequently what helps you meet challenges. Many high-performing environments reward this mode - if your job is high-pressure and high-stakes, being able to access this state is essential. However, when you remain in this state chronically, your body continues releasing the stress hormone cortisol, it starts to wear you down cognitively, physically, and emotionally.

3. Dorsal Vagal (Shut Down)

This is the body’s response to total overload. You may feel depressed with low motivation, feel checked out or collapsed, or feel fatigue, numbness, disconnection, and dissociation. If sympathetic activation is too much activation, dorsal shutdown is too little. It is related to the freeze or play dead response in prey animals when they realize escape is no longer possible

Why This Matters for Addiction

When you look at addiction through this lens, we can start to see how the nervous system plays a role in both the development and maintenance of addictive patterns. Substances and behaviors often function as nervous system regulators.

Alcohol, opioids, benzodiazepines, and other "downers" dampen sympathetic over-activation, bringing someone's sense of anxiety down while increasing their feelings of safety and connection.

Stimulants, on the other hand, force our nervous system into sympathetic arousal, allowing us to feel hyper-alert, productive, and capable of reckless and risk-taking behavior. They can be a draw for people who find themselves often shut down in a dorsal vagal state.

In process addictions, gambling and sex addictions often involve high levels of nervous system arousal, while food is often used to bring the nervous system back to a less aroused state. Through this lens, gambling and sex can be seen as the "uppers" of process addictions and food as a "downer."

Addictive behaviors go beyond just getting high; they are also often an attempt to fundamentally change a physiological internal state. This is why willpower alone tends to fail. If your nervous system is dysregulated, the urge to shift your state can feel overwhelming and automatic. I’ve written elsewhere about how learning to identify emotional triggers is a key part of recovery—but underneath those triggers is often a nervous system state that’s already been activated.

The High Performer Trap

This framework also helps explain something I see often, and discussed in my previous post: high-performing individuals who struggle with stress, burnout, or addictive patterns. Many of these individuals spend long periods in a sympathetic state of constant pressure, high expectations, minimal room for error, and little time for recovery. Over time, the nervous system starts to oscillate between overdrive (anxiety, intensity, performance) and collapse (exhaustion, avoidance, numbing out), with little time spent in the optimal ventral state. Addictive behaviors can become a way to manage that cycle.

You Don’t Think Your Way Out of This

One of the most important implications of this model is this: You don’t regulate your nervous system through insight alone, and while understanding your patterns is important, it’s not sufficient. You can know, on an objective, cognitive level, that you don’t need a drink, a substance, or a behavior, yet still feel a powerful urge toward it. At a level deeper than conscious thought, your body is responding as if you are still in danger.

What Regulation Actually Looks Like

Regulation is not about forcing yourself to be calm - there is a reason being told to calm down by someone when we are activated is universally despised! However, we can create conditions where your nervous system can return to safety and connection. Breathing exercises exploit the role of the vagus nerve in respiration and circulation. Movement, particularly forms like yoga and tai chi, can help us feel reconnected to our bodies. And taking a step back and reorganizing your schedule to allow for downtime can help break the momentum of constant activation. These skills allow us to develop emotional sobriety, the ability to sit in and tolerate challenging thoughts and emotions without needing escape.

Working Toward Regulation Through Therapy

Therapy, at its best, isn’t just about analyzing thoughts or understanding your past.

It’s about helping you recognize your internal states, understand what triggers them, and develop the ability to move between them more flexibly. Over time, this creates something many people haven’t experienced before: the sense that you can handle stress, discomfort, and emotional intensity without needing to escape it.

Porges also emphasized the role of ‘co-regulation’—the process of using another person’s calm presence (their language, voice, posture, and other nonverbal and paraverbal presentation) to soothe one's own nervous system, which is exactly what therapy can provide.

A Final Thought

If you’ve ever felt stuck in cycles of stress, burnout, or behaviors that don’t align with how you want to live, it may not be a failure of discipline. It may be that your nervous system has been doing its best to cope with more than it can sustainably handle. Learning to work with that system—rather than against it—is often where real change begins.

If you are interested in exploring this further, you can schedule a consultation through my contact page.