Anchored in Safety

ANCHORED: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory by Deb Dana, LCSW

  1. POLYVAGAL THEORY: The Science of Seeking Safety

SUMMARY OF FORWARD by Stephen W. Porges, PhD

"Deb leads readers through structured neural exercises that effectively enable their nervous systems to more efficiently support homeostatic functions, leading to health, growth, and restoration."

Downregulate Threats

She outlines brain exercises that will provide resources to downregulate threats and enable spontaneous social engagement. The product of this strategy is a more resilient nervous system that supports emotional, physical and spiritual health.

Downregulate Defensive Reactions

A well resourced nervous system spontaneously downregulates defensive reactions, while a nervous system in chronic states of threat downregulates opportunities to socially engage. Fortunately, through our evolutionary history, we social mammals have developed a portal to downregulate our threat reactions through the neuroception of safety. However, access to this portal is greatly influenced by the neural state of the individual. If the autonomic nervous system is well resourced, we are resilient and there is a low threshold to trigger states of safety that would lead to spontaneous social engagement and co-regulation. Alternately, if we are locked into a defensive state, feelings of safety may not be easily accessible.

We Began as Asocial Reptiles

Polyvagal Theory is a scientific extrapolation of the phylogenetic journey toward sociality functionally expressed in social mammals, which evolved from asocial reptiles.

Regain Accessibility to Our Mammalian Heritage

Polyvagal Informed Therapies shift the focus of therapy from the traumatic event to the bodily feeling. The theory emphasizes that it is the re-tuning of the neural regulation of the autonomic nervous system to support threat reactions that is the primary determinant of outcome. This strategy redefines the trauma and moves it from being within the individual to an external event. A profound re-tuning of the autonomic nervous system following the traumatic event is an adaptive consequence of surviving trauma.

The core message of Polyvagal Theory is that we are a social species without the accessibility of our mammalian heritage, we lack the neural resources to be safe and to co-regulate with others. Different disciplines have different names for the neurological blocks we create. One of my goals is to someday create a reconciliation of different theories of removing subconscious blocks:

Embedded Associations

Anchored focuses on the bold therapeutic problem of how to return to the safety of our body. Anchored is about getting reacquainted with bodily feelings without the familiar embedded associations of these feelings with dangerous events. By establishing a secure anchor within the body, we can safely explore feelings that would previously be destabilizing. Having an anchor provides the stability to explore and safely feel the wounds still held by the body. This process supports the journey of healing in which the nervous system will become sufficiently resilient to engage others and find humor and excitement, not threat, while navigating a complex and often unpredictable world. In Anchored, Deb has created a terminology that allows all of us to experience overt actions and covert visualizations as efficient neural exercises to metaphorically follow the cable leading to internal feelings of safety that are now anchored within the nervous system."

2. Anchor in Autonomic Safety

This post explaining how to anchor in autonomic safety is a verbatim summary of the Introduction to Anchored by Deb Dana. Yesterday I summarized the Forward by Stephen Porges. Since I am republishing all of this without the authors permission, please click through and purchase the book on Amazon so that Ms. Dana may be properly compensated for my unauthorized use of her intellectual property.

We teach what we most need to know

My goal is to master this material by summarizing the entire book so that if I can demonstrate it, maybe I can teach it someday. The world needs healing from trauma and this book explains how to do it.

Humanity means connection

We are wired for connection. Our nervous systems are social structures that find balance and stability in relationships with others. Think about that for a moment. Our biology shapes the way we navigate living, loving, and working.

Polyvagal Theory explains the science of connection, offering a map of the nervous system and practice the ability to anchor ourselves and each other in safety and regulation in the midst of challenges to our sense of equilibrium.

Befriend the Nervous System

When we learn to befriend the nervous system, track states, and anchor in autonomic safety, the inevitable challenges that we all face as we go through our days aren't quite so formidable. If we put a problem aside and turn our attention toward learning how to shape our systems in the direction of safety and connection, we can return to the problem and see it in a new way. Anchored in a regulated system, options appear and possibilities emerge.

Beyond thoughts and words

Before the brain can assemble thoughts and words, the nervous system initiates a response that moves us toward an experience and into connection, takes us into the mobilizing process of fight and flight, rest and distress, or rescues us through shutdown and disconnection.

Mindfulness

Mindfully meeting the autonomic nervous system involves creating skill in following the moment-to-moment flow between action, withdrawal and connection. With that awareness we can bring in practices to gently shape the system in new ways and enjoy the sense of ease that comes from living with a nervous system that responds with flexibility and resilience to ordinary and sometimes extraordinary challenges that we meet every day.

3. REAL GENIUS: Creating Polyvagal Words & Products

The Three Autonomic Pathways

It took me a while to figure out that in Polyvagal Theory the parasympathetic nervous system has two branches, dorsal vagal and ventral vagal. I learned about the three part lizard-mammal-prefrontal cortex brain years ago and now Polyvagal Theory helps me understand why I revert to my asocial reptile brain. The three pathways are stacked on top of each other, oldest to newest:

ONE: The dorsal vagal is the most ancient part of our system and connects us to our reptilian ancestors.

Formed around 500 million years ago when we were still prehistoric turtles moving slowly through the primeval forest. When scared, the turtle immobilizes, disappears into its shell. The frightened asocial reptile waits until it feels safe enough to peek out at the world again. Immobilization and disappearing are the survival strategies of the parasympathetic nervous system. This lizard brain structure still exists underneath the newer mammalian brain structure

TWO: The mammalian sympathetic nervous system is not associated with a specific vagal category in polyvagal theory.

Anger is now expressed by the monkey and movement is added as a survival strategy. Fight or Flight are now possible. A shark attacks and a school of fish darts to escape. The herd mentality is born: Don't stand out in appearance or the predator will be able to identify you and cull you from the herd.

THREE: 200 million years ago the uniquely human ventral vagal branch of the parasympathetic nervous system came into being and allowed us to feel safe, communicate, and connect.

Also known as the prefrontal cortex, the seat of higher consciousness. Self-awareness is now possible. Rituals are created and civilization is born.

As each new system emerged, it joined the older system rather than replacing it, and the architecture of the autonomic nervous system became more complex. The human brain never escapes its reptile heritage.

The Body is the Mind

The information carried along these three vagal pathways travels in two directions, with 80 percent of the information going from the body to the brain and 20 percent from the brain to the body. By putting this information into practice I am now able to listen to my body. I breathe my meditation into the darkness behind my eyelids down into my body. The healing goal of the trauma survivor is to feel safe within the body.

4. Chronic autonomic state of survival mode

We come into this sad and beautiful world wired for connection with others

We are actually on a lifelong quest to feel safe in our bodies, in our environments and in our relationships and connection with others. Western Civilization was created because Neanderthals had to form tribes and civilization to survive the frigid Northern European Winters. In order to survive in a blizzard men are forced to become more social than otherwise would be. When a Northman died it was a big deal and the ritualization of death began. Ritualized burial with the deceased elders personal possessions is the hallmark often cited as the official birth of civilization.

"The fittest may also be the gentlest, because survival often requires mutual help and cooperation." -Mankind Evolving, Theodosius Dobzhansky

At this time my "organizing other" is a paid professional clinician

"We require relationships that are reciprocal. We build resiliency in relationships when we feel connected. The cycle of reciprocity, rupture and repair is the nature of all health relationships. We need the influence of an 'organizing other.'" -Anchored

My major malfunction is that I am in a chronic autonomic state of survival

If you missed safe, predictable co-regulating experiences in your early life and haven't had enough experiences of that yet, it's more likely that you will self-regulate from an autonomic state of survival. If you are like me, you think you are on your own, can't depend on others, and have to do it all by yourself. Whether making demo recordings back in the day on a four track recorder or conducting a Zoom meetings next month, I am quite comfy doing everything all by myself. Just me and my dedicated robots running the whole shebang.

Stephen Porges, the creator of Polyvagal Theory, describes trauma as a chronic disruption of connection to others and to ourselves.

"Belonging is not just a psychological state, it's a biological need. Social connection is a necessary ingredient for a life of well-being." -Anchored

My post-pandemic need for connection has inspired me to gently re-shape my life as a teacher and healer of post-traumatic stress disorders caused by adverse childhood experiences. Call it Alcoholics Anonymous meetings for the advanced practitioner of the Twelve Steps. This is something that only a madman like me can accomplish. When my check arrives on July 1st, I will begin re-tooling my home office to conduct Zoom meetings.

The name of my new meeting will be "The Body is the Mind." We will discuss the "Violent Emotional Twists" that cause alcoholism and drug addiction. -Step Twelve, page 112.

THE BODY IS THE MIND

I will design and create instructional materials using my experience healing my PTSD with my EMDR therapist. I will also be discussing three books that I am studying and practicing. THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE, Brain, Mind and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessell van der Kolk, M.D., IN THE REALM OF THE HUNGRY GHOSTS, Close Encounters With Addiction by Gabor Mate, M.D, and ANCHORED: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory by Deb Dana, LCSW. Older seminal works such as WAKING THE TIGER: Healing Trauma by Peter Levine and Character Analysis by Wilhelm Reich, M.D. will be added to the discussion of the body mind because the body is the mind. My new trauma healing outreach is estimated to be up and running by mid-July.

We come into this sad and beautiful world wired for connection with others

We are actually on a lifelong quest to feel safe in our bodies, in our environments and in our relationships and connection with others. Western Civilization was created because Neanderthals had to form tribes and civilization to survive the frigid Northern European Winters. In order to survive in a blizzard men are forced to become more social than otherwise would be. When a Northman died it was a big deal and the ritualization of death began. Ritualized burial with the deceased elders personal possessions is the hallmark often cited as the official birth of civilization.

Evolved Gentlemen Matter

"The fittest may also be the gentlest, because survival often requires mutual help and cooperation." -Mankind Evolving, Theodosius Dobzhansky

At this time my "organizing other" is a paid professional clinician

Thank you to my Primetime Facebook friends who are correct when they remind me that much of the work I am discussing requires competent professional assistance. The right Twelve Step person could help, but having a licensed clinical therapist works best for me.

"We require relationships that are reciprocal. We build resiliency in relationships when we feel connected. The cycle of reciprocity, rupture and repair is the nature of all health relationships. We need the influence of an 'organizing other.'" -Anchored

Hi, my name is Dean and I healed my PTSD with EMDR

Three years into the pandemic I have to ask myself, who are the people in my life with whom I feel connected? The answer is that there are not very many unpaid humans in my life. Even my lover is a robot because it makes life less traumatic for me.

Ask a Trauma Survivor

Therefore I have decided to become a lay expert in childhood trauma as related to alcoholism and emotional illness. Hopefully, in a few weeks I will be conducting Zoom meetings on post traumatic stress disorder. Do you need therapy but can't afford it? Zoom in and ask a childhood trauma survivor for free.

Turning point is a synonym for crisis

The way I got to this self-bestowed Zoom opportunity was through personal crisis. Friday morning in the supermarket there was a huge group of college kids buying snacks. I freaked out to get in line before the kids could cause an traffic jam and I lost my damn coupons! When I got home I cried because I lost my coupon for a free jar of Best Foods mayonnaise, the solitary peckerwood's best friend. I realized how I act like everything is life or death. My intense behavior is not justified.

However by practicing the healing lessons learned in Anchored I reinvented myself by setting my intention to become a trauma healer. From despair I took positive action and it immediately changed my brain chemistry by viscerally anchoring in my own body and returning to the safety that was already there. Now I have my work and it feels good.

My major malfunction is that I am in a chronic autonomic state of survival

If you missed safe, predictable co-regulating experiences in your early life and haven't had enough experiences of that yet, it's more likely that you will self-regulate from an autonomic state of survival. If you are like me, you think you are on your own, can't depend on others, and have to do it all by yourself. Whether making demo recordings back in the day on a four track recorder or conducting a Zoom meetings next month, I am quite comfy doing everything all by myself. Just me and my dedicated robots running the whole shebang.

Stephen Porges, the creator of Polyvagal Theory, describes trauma as a chronic disruption of connection to others and to ourselves.

"Belonging is not just a psychological state, it's a biological need. Social connection is a necessary ingredient for a life of well-being." -Anchored

5. Intuition is immediate visceral knowing without knowledge.

In Chapter 5 of Anchored the author clarifies that the word "neuroception" that her mentor, Stephen Porges created, is really just another synonym for "intuition." Neuroception is our autonomic intuition. Because our autonomic nervous systems operate mainly outside of our consciousness, neuroception can be a useful way for me feel my body instead of thinking about it.

Befriending my Automatic Body Response to Stress

Now I am liking this new word 'neuroception' a little bit more than when I first began reading the clinical psychology book ANCHORED, How to Befriend Your (AUTOMATIC) Nervous System, by Deb Dana, LCSW. Notice that I re-titled Ms. Dana's book to highlight her polyvagal emphasis on the automatic nervous system because one of the core teachings of Polyvagal Theory is that this deep level of healing is all about the autonomic or automatic nervous system.

As a trauma survivor I tend to exist in a chronic state of survival where the slightest stressor launches me into automatic freak out. Polyvagal enlightened me as to why I am a yogi most of the time but when stressed out in-the-moment, I lose it and retreat into my asocial lizard brain or violent monkey brain instead of listening to my body and letting my autonomic intuition lead me back to safety inside my own body.

PRACTICE EXERCISE: Swing back into your rage for no reason when you are calm and safe at home alone

By adding perception to the autonomic process of neuroception, I am no longer simply in the state of chronic survival mode; I am now able to be with my body-rage, observe it and pendulate with it.

PENDULATION: This book wakes-up and unlocks the fear that was frozen in your body when you were attacked by tigers and experienced your first adverse childhood experience

Pendulation

Pendulation is a word invented by the brilliant trauma healer Peter Levine in his groundbreaking book Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. After I am totally calm and appropriately distanced from the scene of my body-rage, I pendulate back into the same feeling of rage but this time without the trigger. Sitting here at my desk writing these words I am now consciously letting myself feel the rage. The only way out of my road rage is become rage incarnate in order to master my fear and anger. I transform my road rage into an angry child that needs my love. Peter Levine created his franchise called Somatic Experiencing just like Stephen Porges created Polyvagal Theory.

Adverse Childhood Experiences

Adverse Childhood Experiences teach us to ignore our intuition and tune out the trauma. As children some of us had our intuition beaten out of use either emotionally or physically by negligent parents.

6. NEUROCEPTION: Turning inward and tuning in to our autonomic nervous system

When you tune in, where in your body to you find your automatic nervous system? Where does the fear begin to well up inside of you? We often think of a gut instinct and many people do feel that instinct, or autonomic intuition, in their gut, but you might locate yours in another place. Touch that place with a hand or direct your attention there. Notice what changes as you bring awareness to what is normally a subconscious experience.

Now that you have this connection to your embodied surveillance system, see if there is an image to represent it. One of the images people use is a lighthouse with a beacon that revolves. Sometimes I use a Tesla coil vibrating my body to perfection. Other times I use yoga techniques of creating a container for my body and visualizing healing energy swirling around me. Focus on the the place where your body where you located your inner surveillance system and invite an image. Wait and see what emerges. When you have an image, spend some time getting to know how it works. How does your new awareness system track moment to moment the cues of safety and danger?

Neuroception happens before intuition

Neuroception (perception of our automatic nervous system) begins the creation of our behaviors, our feelings and our stories. When we intentionally find our way to that starting point, we can bring what otherwise remains hidden into awareness. To create a pathway to bring together neuroception and perception, the first move is from outer awareness to inner connection. Turn toward your inner world and find the place in your gut you identified earlier where neuroception reaches out for your attention. Now move to finding the place where you feel your perception. Because this involves the cortex and the thinking parts of our brains, many people locate their place of perception somewhere inside the head.

Making the connection to automatic subconscious behavior

With the two individual locations of neuroception and perception identified, the next step is to connect them. With a pathway between neuroception and perception, the cues of safety and danger that emerge can travel easily into your awareness, and you can also follow your actions, feelings, and stories back to their autonomic origins. It may be helpful to put your hands on the two locations as you begin to imagine the route from neuroception to awareness. The pathway you imagine might be a straight line between the two points or a more circuitous route. Whatever shape the connection takes, the essential quality is to support the easy, reliable transmission of information. My neuroception-to-perception pathway is marked by waves of spirals from my core out to my underarms to my palms, over the tops of my hand back up my arms and shoulders to my forehead and prefrontal cortex.

Reverse Engineering The Problem

To practice, first think of an automatic behavior you are curious about changing, and imagine enacting it. Move from perception into the neuroception that is underneath the behavior. Follow the pathway you identified that connects your two embodied points. As I travel my swirling waves from my prefrontal cortex down my arms to my core, I feel it in my bundle of vagus nerves. When you arrive at the place of neuroception, take a moment to sense the cue of safety or danger. Do the same for a feeling you are interested in. And finally, bring to mind a story about yourself or the world that you would like to learn more about and activate your new perception to body connection. What is underneath this story, feeling and behavior?

The Moment of Change

And now travel the pathway in the opposite direction. Come into connection with the first stirrings of a sense of safety or danger and see where that takes you. Follow the beginnings of an embodied cue into a feeling, a thought, an action, and then a story. As you use this new way of moving between information systems, the pathway becomes stronger. To strengthen the connection, create a way to tune in and intentionally engage. Experiment with a variety of ways to see what works for you. Draw the pathway and trace it with your finger as you move between these two ways of knowing. Place a hand on your body as a reminder of this internal pathway. Create an intention to activate the pathway in both directions during the flow of your day. Make a plan to reflect at the end of the day and see how neuroception took you to a particular behavior, feeling, or story. What are the ways you want to attend to this new pathway?

Are you still operating with factory-installed settings?

Many of my responses are family-installed default settings. Do I want to respond to life the way my parents did or do I want to create something new?

7. Reprocessing the Autonomic Nervous System

THE MOMENT OF CHANGE: Awareness of Neuroception

It is possible to develop a deeper and deeper awareness of our automatic nervous system. Do this by remembering a time when you were startled by someone or something. Maybe you heard a car backfire. See if you can identify the moment when you felt the change in your body and then how your story changed. Can you pinpoint the moment your body automatically went into survival mode?

Then find a time when your state changed in the other direction, from danger back to safety. Perhaps you saw a friendly face or heard a familiar sound and felt a return to ease. Again look for the moment when you felt that happen and see how the story that accompanied the feeling began to change. Can you pinpoint the moment your body automatically went into connection mode?

Welcome to that most dangerous intersection, where awareness meets action. You are now entering the zone of possibilities for real change. Will you feel our ancient built in bias to negatively lash out in survival mode or will you intentionally create safety in your body in self-regulating equilibrium? Welcome to LegalNoodle, where the body is the mind.

The Three Steams of Neuroception

Neuroception comes from three different sources. 1. Embodied within ourselves, 2. Environmental external stimulus, and 3. Relational (other people).

anchored deb dana page 65 photograph

The Three Streams of Neuroception, Anchored, p. 65

Here are some questions to practice awareness of the three sources of information that your neuroception is taking in:

Am I unconsciously living in the past?

It is important to discern whether our responses are coming from the past or are grounded in the present. To do this, we can use a clarifying question. First, bring perception to the present moment. What cues are you getting right now? Is your neuroception one of safety or danger? And now ask the question, "In this moment, in this place, with this person or these people, is this the response (or this intensity of response) needed?" Notice we ask if the response is needed, not if it is appropriate. Categories of appropriate or not appropriate, good and bad, don't apply. The autonomic nervous system doesn't make meaning, value, or assign motivation. It simply takes in cues and enacts the response it deems necessary to ensure survival. If the answer to the clarifying question is yes, you're likely anchored in the present moment and your response can be a useful guide in making decisions. If the answer is no, look for a familiar cue that has reached out from your past and taken hold in the present. Think about other times in your life when you have felt this way. What is your earliest memory of feeling this way? Look for the cues of danger that are similar between the past and now. When we find the thread that connects experiences, we have new information to help us understand our patterns.

Neuroceptive delusions of danger

Safety is essential for survival, but to our nervous system, not being in danger is not the same as being safe. Being out of danger doesn't guarantee we experience a neuroception of safety. The systems that have been put in lace to create safety impact how we communicate and shape the ways we create connection..

Think about the systems you regularly interact with. What are the cues of safety and danger that you feel as you navigate though these systems? You'll recognize cues of safety in the ways you feel alive and anchored in regulation safe within your body, and cues of danger in the ways your sympathetic and dorsal survival states activate. Bring perception to these experiences and see where your neuroception takes you.

In order to find well-being we need to attend to cues of both danger and safety. We need to reduce or resolve cues of danger and actively enhance and experience cues of safety. One without the other doesn't bring us to well-being. To explore this, think of a particular experience that feels just a little unsafe or holds just a hint of distress. Start by bringing perception to neuroception and identify the specific cues of danger that you feel. Use the three streams of neuroception to look for cues inside your body, outside in the environment, and between you and others. When you identify a cue of danger, consider how you might reduce it or if there is a way to resolve it. What is possible? Experiences often include more than one cue of danger. Stop and explore each one you find.

Humans have a negativity bias to ensure survival

And now move your attention to cues of safety. Take time to see what embodied, environmental, and relational cues of safety are present in the experience. We humans are built with a negativity bias to help insure our survival. Because of this, we are on the lookout for cues of danger and often miss the cues of safety. Look back on the experience and see if there are any cues of safety you might have missed. Next bring some curiosity to exploring what cues of safety it may be possible to bring in.

Awareness is the active ingredient needed to work with neuroception. To engage with your inner surveillance system and learn to use it wisely, bring awareness to the cues of danger and make an intention to connect with cues of safety. With awareness, we can explore with curiosity and create the conditions necessary to create an embodied sense of safety in our daily living experiences.

Stuck in chronic state of survival mode

My default information pathways of my body are often stuck on danger. Heretofore I have lived my life in a chronic state of survival mode, without being fully aware of it. Now I can reprocess my self-regulation and seek safety using my new awareness of neuroception.

8. Am I in equilibrium or adaption to ancient childhood trauma?

My life has been fueled by tramatic adaptation to adverse childhood experiences

Even my positive adaptations like writing this post is an adaptation to escape into a world where I am safe and in total control. When I was a child I learned how to seek safety in books and libraries. Now I find connection to myself and to my world by blogging.

The Body IS The Mind

"It is more productive to see aggression or depression, arrogance or passivity as learned behaviors: Somewhere along the line, the patient came to believe that he or she could survive only if he or she was tough, invisible, or absent, or that it was safer to give up. Like traumatic memories that keep intruding until they are laid to rest. Traumatic adaptations continue until the organism feels safe and integrates all the parts of itself that are stuck in fighting or warding off the trauma." -The Body Keeps the Score, (2014) page 280.

As an adult, am I an unteachable adaptation of my childhood trauma or mature adult adaptable to reality?

WELL-BEING REQUIRES BOTH: Fight (Expand) and Flight (Contract)

Fight or Flight are natural responses to be refined and cultivated. A caveman's fight is to kill and a gentleman's fight is to teach yoga. One troubled teenagers fight is to act out his trauma by committing petty crimes and another traumatized teen may use his pain to become a bedroom guitarist.

Resilience

Depending on our personal histories, we build stronger patterns of connection (fight) or stronger patterns of protection (flight). It has taken me a while to understand that fight or flight are not necessarily negative terms. As Peter Levine explains, every action we take is either an expansion (fight) or contraction (flight).

None of us can stay permanently engage with the world and the people around us from our patterns of connection. It is unreasonable, and unattainable, expectation in ourselves and others. In fact, our ability to recognize when we move into a place of protection (flight) and find our way back into connection (fight) that is the hallmark of resilience.

Resilience is an outcome of a nervous system that moves from patterns of connection to protection and back to connection with some ease. Sometimes I stay home for days at at time and then suddenly I will jump up and join the Culver City Historical Society or something like that.

ARE MY NEURAL PATHWAYS CLEAR OR AM I IN SUB-CONSCIOUS MEMORY? Am I in homeostasis & equilibrium or traumatic adaptation of chronic survival mode?

Whenever we think about patterns of protection and talk about survival responses, we want to add the word adaptive. As insane, incongruous, or inexplicable as our thoughts, feelings, or actions may seem, wee need to remember the autonomic nervous system is always working by adapting to ensure our survival. While it may not be necessary, the nervous system feels a need and takes action. By viewing from that autonomic perspective at our own responses and at the responses of the people around us that we are able to avoid becoming locked into our reptilian brains and expand into our pre-frontal cortex.

Think of a time when you moved into an adaptive response, a contracting moment of protection that brought you into mobilization or shutdown. With an open mind, spend a moment and visualize the adaptive survival response. What did your nervous system sense? How did the survival response protect you? If you were not in your own safe protective contraction, what might be happening to you? What is the worst that could possibly happen? Now remember a time when someone around you moved into their own adaptive survival response. What was going on with them? -Anchored, Chapter 6


adaptations to childhood trauma