We read this quote in a “scholarly” psychiatric article: “Polyvagal theory in psychotherapy offers co-regulation as an interactive process that engages the social nervous systems of both therapist and client.”
We call it “psychobabble”, which means “the language that psychiatrists and psychologists use that sounds very scientific but really has little meaning.”
So not only does it use words that no one else will likely understand, but aside from that it has little or no real meaning. The main point of such tangled terms is that anyone can be said to have some form of insanity just by saying a big word. The psychiatrist is the “authority” who sounds impressive but cannot cure anyone’s emotional turmoil.
Well, let’s look at it more closely.
Polyvagal: relating to a theory that specifies two functionally distinct branches of the vagus, or tenth cranial nerve.
Co-regulation: when two people are interacting they continuously affect each other emotionally.
So somehow, when a psychiatrist or psychologist is conversing with a patient, their vagus nerves interact.
The vagus (Latin for “wandering”) nerve stretches from the head, through the neck and chest, to the abdomen. Besides connecting to the various organs in the body (heart, lungs, stomach, intestines, etc.), it conveys sensory information about the state of the body’s organs to the central nervous system. This means that the vagus nerve is responsible for such varied tasks as heart rate, intestinal contractions, sweating, keeping the larynx open for breathing, and so on.
Psychiatry targets the vagus nerve, as part of an “it’s all in the brain” strategy to make their pseudoscience seem more scientific.
But if you buy in to the cry that “it’s all brain” then you have abandoned your humanity, and your spirit, in favor of chemistry; you have bought into the reductio ad absurdum argument that there is no objective reality, it’s all in your brain. And thus we get one psychiatric brain theory after another, in the futile hope that shocking the brain and the nervous system can put some sense into the mentally disturbed.
Of course, once the psychopharmaceutical industry gives all its attention to the brain, then the brain is miraculously transformed into the seat of consciousness, and altering consciousness with drugs becomes commonplace. And we get the disastrous psychedelic psychiatric movement, where magic mushrooms will lead you to a better life; or we get an antidepressant that makes the bad feelings go away for a time (it makes ALL feelings go away, the good and the bad.)
And you can be sure your psychiatrist isn’t really communicating with you, except to hear for which symptom he can prescribe a drug and bill your insurance.
It isn’t, however, the brain. It’s Life. Don’t fall for the psychobabble!
