The Essential Vagus Nerve

By Winden S. Rowe, LPC, with Caroline Vasquez, M.A., M.Ed.

My nervous system is humming. And not in a good way. The irony is that just moments before I sat down to write this piece, a piece on how critical the vagus nerve is to understanding our human biology, I went from a completely calm—what can be called a “parasympathetic” state—to a momentarily overwhelming state of fight-flight, despite knowing exactly what and why was going on. This is the power of the stress response. This is the power of our biology.

A beloved friend of mine had given my number to a person in crisis, knowing that I am a trauma therapist. The person contacted me just as I was sitting down to write—not the first time I have received this kind of phone call and surely not the last. This can be frustrating for people in my role because, despite being well trained, we are not in a position to do first-response work. That is the work of systems and agencies designed to help those in states of acute and dangerous moments of overwhelm, panic, and danger to themselves. My work is to help them heal once the distressing event has passed. These two things do not ever overlap, despite the common misconception that they do.

But that’s the thing about stress: We don’t ask for our traumas nor our stressors, and as in this case, we don’t ask for the misdirection of crisis calls. But once it’s in our laps or on our phones, there is no turning back. The distressing event maintains a strong grip on the nervous system, creating trauma. The work of healing and neural recalibration must begin. I had found myself in my heightened state, knowing that my nervous system— my vagus nerve, to be exact—had reacted to that crisis call. My body was responding accordingly, whether I liked it or not.

A few helpful facts about the vagus nerve:

The vagus nerve is a cranial nerve that is the longest cranial nerve of the body. It is a major conduit of the autonomic nervous system, and it is extremely powerful, branching off to every major organ system in the body and influencing their function. It is the taproot between your brain and body systems.

Polyvagal theory (developed by Dr. Stephen Porges) identifies three whole-body states our nervous system continually moves between, depending on activation of the vagus nerve:

• Ventral vagal—a state of being socially receptive, calm, productive, and feeling safe in the world around us and in our own being.\
• Sympathetic—the famous fight-flight response kicked off by the detection of threat, whether it is real or imagined; we respond by either going into rigid defense or getting out of Dodge
• Dorsal vagal—the most intense response to threat, when it is overwhelming—total and complete shutdown, often against our will. We struggle to function at all; we often feel shame as a result of this mode, and experience sensations of numbness, dissociation, and overwhelm.

And this may be the most important point: Your vagus nerve will react whether you like it or not (!) because the safety system of the human body rests on one motto: Better safe than sorry. Even if you don’t want to feel scared, numb, or anxious, you might end up unable to prevent it, at least momentarily.

There I was, in a total and complete sympathetic–to–dorsal-vagal–range response. My muscles were tense, my heart rate felt like it had quadrupled, and my pulse quickened, as did my breath. All our bodies will respond this way, whether we like it or not.

The vagus nerve is designed to keep us safe before we even have a chance to think about it, and that response is here to stay for the duration of our lives. We cannot think our way out of the fight-flight reaction. But what we can do is recognize it, guide it, and work with it rather than against it. We can even practice regulating our nervous system, strengthen its responsiveness—improving our vagal tone, which results in improved ability to recover after a stress response.

In ten years of full-time trauma therapy work, I have found very few clients who know about the vagus nerve, let alone the many ways that this built-in response system works and influences our ability to function. But as GI Joe famously said, “Knowing is half the battle.”

Source: Molly Blackbird/Unsplash

Slowly, the mental health world is gaining understanding of the importance of the autonomic nervous system and how the vagus nerve can critically serve as a braking system to stress and trauma.

Techniques to improve vagal tone—practicing mindfulness, moving your body, singing, laughing, and connecting with others to create caring communities, which helps people co-regulate each other—are making their way into therapy offices like mine.

While we can not stop our autonomic nervous system from reacting and responding to events in our environment, or to stress or trauma, we can make use of polyvagal theory and the powerful vagus nerve.

Winden Rowe, LPC, is director and trauma therapist at The Center for Change at Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. She works in EMDR and ketamine-assisted psychotherapy) and teaches providers at the company she co-founded, Build Your Practice.