How I Use Polyvagal Theory

If you're an overthinker, you've probably already tried to think your way out of overthinking.

You've analyzed why you do it. You've journaled about it. You've caught yourself mid-spiral and told yourself to stop. Maybe you've even built a pretty solid understanding of where it comes from — the childhood, the relationships, the patterns.

And you still can't turn your brain off.

Here's what I want you to know: this is not a willpower problem. It's not an intelligence problem. It's not even really a thinking problem. It's a nervous system problem. And once we start working there — at the level of your actual biology — everything changes.

This is where Polyvagal Theory comes in. And it's one of the most important frameworks I bring into my work as a licensed therapist and SSP facilitator.

What Is Polyvagal Theory — In Plain Language

Dr. Stephen Porges developed Polyvagal Theory over four decades of neuroscience research. At its core, it offers a map of how your autonomic nervous system — the part of you that operates below conscious thought — drives your moment-to-moment experience of the world.

Most of us grew up learning that the nervous system has two states: calm or stressed. On or off. Polyvagal Theory gives us something much more nuanced and, honestly, much more useful.

There are three states:

Ventral Vagal — Safe and Connected
This is your baseline when life feels manageable. You can think clearly. You can be present in a conversation. You sleep. You digest. You feel like yourself. This is the state where growth, healing, and genuine connection happen.

Sympathetic — Fight or Flight
Your body's threat response. Heart racing, muscles braced, mind scanning for danger. In short bursts, this is healthy and adaptive. Chronically? It's exhausting — and it's where most overthinkers live most of the time.

Dorsal Vagal — Shutdown and Freeze
The deepest layer of the defense response. Numbness, disconnection, collapse, fog. Often what people describe as burnout, depression, or that feeling of just going through the motions.

Here's the part that matters most for overthinkers: chronic overthinking is a sympathetic nervous system response. Your brain isn't broken. It's doing exactly what a nervous system in threat mode does — scanning, analyzing, predicting, preparing. It learned that thinking ahead kept you safe. And it got very, very good at it.

The problem isn't your brain. The problem is that your nervous system never got the signal that it's safe to rest.

Why Overthinkers Can't Just "Calm Down"

When you're in sympathetic activation — fight or flight — your prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain responsible for rational thought, perspective, and calm decision-making, goes partially offline. The survival brain takes over.

This means that the harder you try to think your way to calm, the more activated you become. You're using the very system that's dysregulated to try to regulate itself. It's like trying to put out a fire with gasoline and wondering why it isn't working.

This is why affirmations feel hollow when you're anxious. Why breathing exercises feel impossible mid-spiral. Why you can know something isn't worth worrying about — and worry about it anyway.

The path to calm doesn't run through more thinking. It runs through the nervous system.

How I Use Polyvagal Theory in My Work

Understanding Polyvagal Theory completely changed how I show up for my clients. Instead of asking "what are you thinking?" I started asking "what state is your nervous system in right now?" — and building from there.

Here's what that actually looks like in practice:

Mapping Your Nervous System
We start by getting curious about your patterns. When do you feel most regulated? What pulls you into fight-or-flight? What does shutdown feel like in your body? Most overthinkers have never had language for this before — and just naming it creates a profound shift.

Building a State Vocabulary
Rather than "I'm anxious" or "I'm fine," we develop a more nuanced awareness of where you are moment to moment. This isn't just self-awareness for its own sake — it's the foundation of being able to actually move states.

Working with the Body, Not Against It
Polyvagal Theory points us toward the vagus nerve as the primary pathway for shifting states. The vagus nerve connects your brain to your heart, lungs, and gut — and it runs in both directions. This means we can send safety signals up to the brain through the body: through breath, through sound, through movement, through co-regulation with another nervous system.

Co-Regulation as Medicine
One of the most powerful — and most overlooked — concepts in Polyvagal Theory is co-regulation. Your nervous system doesn't regulate in isolation. It regulates in relationship. Being in the presence of a calm, attuned other — a therapist, a partner, a friend — literally helps your nervous system find its way back to safety. This is why the therapeutic relationship itself is healing, not just the techniques.

Introducing the Safe and Sound Protocol
For clients who are ready to go deeper, I use the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) — a nervous system intervention developed by Dr. Porges himself, rooted directly in Polyvagal Theory. SSP uses specially filtered music to retrain the auditory pathway and signal safety to the autonomic nervous system. It's the most direct bottom-up tool I have in my practice, and for overthinkers who've hit a ceiling with traditional talk therapy, it's often the thing that finally breaks the cycle.

What Changes When the Nervous System Feels Safe

When your nervous system finally gets the signal that it's safe — really safe, not just logically convinced — something remarkable happens.

The overthinking quiets. Not because you forced it to, but because it no longer needs to be there.

Here's what I've witnessed in clients who do this work:

• The mental chatter becomes genuinely softer — not suppressed, but no longer running the show

• Decision-making feels easier because the threat response isn't hijacking every choice

• Relationships feel less like performance and more like connection

• The body starts to unclench — shoulders drop, breath deepens, sleep improves

• There's a growing capacity to be present — in conversations, in moments, in their own skin

• The insights from years of therapy finally integrate, because the nervous system is now safe enough to receive them

This is what calm actually feels like. Not the absence of feeling. Not numbness. A genuine, embodied sense of being okay — right now, in this moment.

You're Not Too Much. Your Nervous System Is Working Too Hard.

If you've spent years being told you're too sensitive, too anxious, too in your head — I want to offer you a different frame entirely.

You are not broken. You are not too much. You have a nervous system that learned to work overtime to keep you safe, and it has been doing that job faithfully ever since. It just needs something different now.

Polyvagal Theory doesn't pathologize you. It makes sense of you.

And once things make sense at that level, the work stops feeling like fighting yourself — and starts feeling like coming home.

Working Together

At The Well Sessions, I offer virtual therapy and the Nervous System Reset — a complete 6-week Safe and Sound Protocol program for adults who are ready to work at the level of the nervous system, not just the story.

This work is available virtually to clients across the United States. I bring 15+ years of clinical experience as a Licensed Professional Counselor into every session, along with a deep commitment to meeting you exactly where you are.

If you're an overthinker who is tired of being an overthinker — and ready to try something that works differently — I'd love to talk.

I offer a free 20-minute call to explore whether this work is the right fit for you. No pressure, no commitment. Just a real conversation.

Book your free 20-minute call →

Lorissa Brunk, LPC is a licensed therapist and certified SSP facilitator based in Colorado, offering virtual therapy and nervous system support to clients across the United States. She specializes in anxiety, overthinking, and trauma-informed care through her private practice, The Well Sessions.