6. Patterns of Protection and Connection (Anchored Book Club)
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The world runs on patterns. Reruns, repeats, and rhythms. They give concrete meaning to abstractions and provide definable boundaries within life’s uncertainty. Humans are pattern-seeking beings. We gravitate towards what we know and understand.
Patterns are the foundation of innovation and creativity. We can build, grow, and explore through the development of expectation and familiarity that give us the fantastic ability to hypothesise and apply something we’ve learned in one area to another area we’ve never experienced before.
This has obvious benefits, but it can also leave us frustrated and stuck, especially when working with our nervous system.
Deb Dana writes about the patterns of protection and connection the autonomic nervous system uses to ensure survival. In the sixth chapter of Anchored, she explores how these patterns develop and how our protection profile turns adaptive behaviours into a “home away from home”—distinguishing between an authentic connection that brings us home to ourselves in ventral vagal safety and protection, which takes us to our familiar home away from home in sympathetic mobilisation or dorsal shutdown. This can help us understand that even when there is no obvious or immediate threat, we might find it hard to get home to ventral vagal safety.
The Protection Profile
We create a “protection profile” through our habitual survival response, which leans towards flight, fight, or disconnection and shutdown. We are easily transported to this “home away from home”. Familiar but dysregulated.
My home away from home is sometimes like a tunnel I keep digging. It says, “Everything requires urgent attention, and you can’t relax until it’s solved”. This is a tricky place because more problems always need solving right now. This comfortable pattern leaves me in a stuck state of dysregulation and with a loss of focus on what truly matters once any immediate threat is gone.
Dana says when we identify what moves us into protection, we can explore how to reduce those experiences and create more moments of connection. This means we can reshape the patterns over time and deepen them towards connection. We can become curious about our patterns to bring a flexible rather than fixed approach. This is where she encourages using the word “yet” if such a curiosity doesn’t feel accessible right now. Maybe you can’t be curious about the story you’re telling yourself…yet. Things will shift in time with patience and gentleness.
Feeling, Receiving, and Understanding Cues
Simply put, we might consider that “when the cues of safety outweigh the cues of danger, we move to connect, and when the cues of danger outweigh the cues of safety, we take actions to protect.”
So, we can use this foundation to create and find more safety cues wherever possible. What points of safety can become anchors when navigating an uncomfortable or scary situation?
Where ARE Cues of Safety?
What is it in the experience that brings this move into protection/connection? Is there a sound? Is there something in particular you see, a tone of voice or a look on someone’s face? What are the words you hear as you move into protection/connection? Is there a belief that arises? Stop here and take time to document what you’ve discovered.
Dana suggests thinking of an experience that makes you wish to move closer, engage and connect.
What happens in your body, what are your feelings, and what do you want to do here?
What is the story that you hear?
- The world is fascinating to me
- I’m ready to engage and explore
- I am creative, playful, and open to possibilities
Next, explore an experience that fills you with anger or anxiety and makes you want to argue or run away. Get to know these cues of danger.
What happens in your body, what are your feelings, and what do you want to do here?
What is the story that you hear?
- My body is tense, and I’m filled with worry
- I am full of a need to control and manage everything
- The world feels chaotic and imprisoning
And finally, explore an experience that overwhelms you and brings the need to shut down and disconnect.
What happens in your body, what are your feelings, and what do you want to do here?
What is the story that you hear?
- My energy is draining, and my body becomes inactive
- I need someone else to tell me what to do
- The world feels hopeless, and action seems futile
Patterns of Protection: Getting Unstuck
The retreat into a home away from home can leave us stuck, unable to come home in connection to the path we want to be on. Dana suggests a four-part exploration to begin releasing the pattern of protection and shaping a pattern of connection instead.
Listen
- Think of a situation that’s activated a survival response
- See where you’re stuck and unable to move out of a place of mobilisation or shutdown even though you want to.
- Listen to the story you’re telling yourself (the brain makes sense of what is happening to your body by telling you a story filled with motive and meaning) – it is often a story about blame, criticism, and judgement of ourselves or others
- Explore and Listen – this is about information gathering; it’s not a time to make changes
Be Curious
- Notice the survival state and name it (mobilised or shut down? – what is this state?)
- Remind yourself that this has been activated because the connection/protection equation is out of balance (biology has reacted to a “neuroception” of danger) – remembering this can help let go of blame and judgement and make room for curiosity
- What story is the nervous system telling? Listen for similarities and differences in the brain’s story
Change The Equation
- Identify the danger cues – can you reduce or resolve any of them?
- Explore adding safety cues – what might be possible to bring into the experience?
- Play with combinations to begin moving your system out of protection and back into connection with enough safety to get unstuck.
See What Emerges
An emergent property of being anchored in safety and regulation is the ability to move ahead, find options, and creatively solve problems. What happens as you shift the balance in your equation? What changes when the cues of safety outweigh the cues of danger?
Resilience and The Nervous System
Dana highlights that we can’t remain constantly connected to the world and the people around us. This expectation of ourselves and others is unattainable. Instead, our ability to identify when we retreat into a protective mode and then navigate back to a place of connection characterises our resilience.
So, in this sense, a resilient nervous system can recognise patterns of protection, navigate the autonomic landscapes, and move from a state of survival to one of connection once the threat has passed.
Check out the latest Book Club Discussions in the Forum.
Anchored Chapter Summaries
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12. Creating Community (Anchored Book Club)
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11. Caring For The Nervous System (Anchored Book Club)
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10. Self-Transcendent Experiences (Anchored Book Club)
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9. Re-Storying (Anchored Book Club)
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8. Reshaping The Autonomic Nervous System (Anchored Book Club)
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7. Sensing Glimmers of Home (Anchored Book Club)
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6. Patterns of Protection and Connection (Anchored Book Club)
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5. Neuroception and The Highly Sensitive Nervous System (Anchored Book Club)
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4. Longing For Connection (Anchored Book Club)
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3. Learning To Listen To The Autonomic Nervous System (Anchored Book Club)
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2. Describing Autonomic Landscapes In Our Own Words (Anchored Book Club)
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1. Befriending Your Highly Sensitive Nervous System (Anchored Book Club)