I was just about to finish a book about weathering storms — A Good Life Despite Everything — and immediately life handed me one. What happened needs a bit of context. Through arduous therapy, study and self-discovery, I have learned that I live with a hypersensitive nervous system that does not deal with stress adequately. In fact, even normal setbacks in life can create obstacles for me that I do not have the personal resources to overcome. So, I have had to learn to deal with it, and an important part of it has been to shape my only truly safe space, our home, to cater to the needs of my nervous system. Only in a home that is fine-tuned for my needs can I be myself and productive for some hours a day.
Of course life, seemingly equipped with a strong sense of dark humour and irony, would rob me of exactly that to see how I will cope. While finishing the manuscript we learned that there is water damage in our apartment building. Because they had to measure moisture in our apartment, my neuroception was immediately triggered, and I spiraled into ruminating worst-case scenarios. In Polyvagal Theory, neuroception is our sense for detecting danger, and it sets off stress reactions accordingly. Because of my nervous system, these reactions are always severe.
So, I couldn’t relax. For a couple of days I experienced severe hyperarousal, a full on fight-or-flight mode, geared in this case more towards flight than fight; I just needed to escape the situation. When the reaction slightly calmed down and I could think more clearly, I decided that I need to focus on finishing the manuscript, to do something meaningful, rather than concentrate on that which is outside my control.
I spent time between panic and meaningful work. But the uncertainty started to wear me out and I was starting to experience hypoarousal, full shut down of my life. I froze in my arm chair, stopped interacting with people, even my dear wife, and even dissociated a little, as I do under extreme stress.
Here I will pause, because a reader might think: isn’t dissociation a pathological sign, a symptom of a psychiatric disorder? There are people who think so, and the pathologising culture of normal experiences is real. But Polyvagal Theory helps us see this as a normal phenomenon on a continuum that everyone experiences. Dissociation in an everyday form is day dreaming. In extreme situations, dissociation becomes more pronounced, because our nervous system involuntarily starts to shut down in response to what feels overwhelming. Viktor Frankl already taught us that an abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behaviour, in Man’s Search for Meaning.
But I haven’t got stuck in a dissociative state. I can move on, even though in a limited way. I cannot leave the house or take care of errands. But I can engage with meaning, like working towards the publication of my book, which I think is of real value to people who struggle dealing with suffering.
Here and there I feel worse, and then I can think and act more clearly again. And I believe it is fully natural, because I understand how my nervous system works through my Polyvagal Theory studies. My wife knows what I know, and she can understand the necessary limits of my abilities in a situation like this. She doesn’t see me as a failed person. She simply sees me as someone whose nervous system cannot deal with this.
I hope we can extend other people that same grace. But in order to do that, we need to understand how human experience is constituted. I try to convey that in A Good Life Despite Everything. And while things are uncertain, and I only know that I will be robbed of my only safe space for the unforeseeable future, I can only extend myself the same grace my wife gives me, and cling to meaning.
Arctic Search for Meaning 