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Introduction

Have you ever wondered why two people experience the same relationship and yet behave in completely opposite but predictable ways? It can’t just be basic human difference if the behaviors are predictable, and yet why do some people pull away when others lean in? Or why do some victims of assault fight back and others freeze? Many of us were taught that we have two responses to danger—fight or flight—and yet real-life situations produce reactions that fit into neither category.

If the driving force of behavior is safety, then how we experience safety and danger will deepen our understanding (and, I would hope, our compassion) of seemingly inexplicable behaviors in relationships. Safety is where Attachment Theory and Polyvagal Theory collide. Stephen and Seth Porges in Our Polyvagal World: How Safety and Trauma Change Us, a text I largely draw from here, summarize Polyvagal Theory (PVT) as:

“How safe we feel is crucial to our physical and mental health and happiness.”

Which, ironically, is exactly how you might summarize Attachment Theory in a nutshell. It’s because of this that I keep repeating that emotional safety is integral to attachment healing. It’s not solely a matter of saying, “You’re safe. You can show me your true self. I won’t reject you.” Because it’s not wholly true. You don’t know if something in their true self might trigger you or cause you to react in a way that makes them feel rejected or unsafe. This is because certain experiences trigger automatic, subconscious responses—no logical input or rationalization behind it. Modern thinking declares ‘mind over matter,’ that rational thought trumps instinct. Evolution, and subsequently our nervous systems, drew a much different blueprint for us. That blueprint or template establishes how we react before conscious thought catches up.

Evolution, Instinct, & Connection

The lives we have in the 21^st century are starkly different from how our ancestors experienced life. For a vast majority of the human experience, people had to work to survive. Not just to sit at a computer from 8am – 5pm. They had to build their own dwellings, grow, scavenge, or hunt their own food, protect their own families, and so on. They didn’t have the benefit of weather.com, a Google search engine, a library, or any of our modern convenient amenities to do any of it. Instead, they had two essential tools—their instincts and their relationships.

Our instincts were crucial because our neocortex, i.e. the logical part of our brain that allows us to speak languages, do math, and so on, was slow to develop. Our bodies had to rely on autopilot in the early days. It allowed us to detect environmental cues without conscious effort. Our brains could process the subtle cues around us automatically and alert us to danger. Think of it as if you are walking through the woods, and suddenly you’re hit with a feeling of unease. You become more aware of your surroundings—and then you notice that all the birds have grown silent. Your limbic system, typically associated with mood and instinct, noticed this first and communicated with your nervous system all before your consciousness could catch up. Without those instincts, when would your consciousness have realized the silence and alerted you to potential danger?

Likewise, our limbic systems play a role in the second essential tool for survival: relationships. We subconsciously detect social cues of safety. These cues, based on the incoming data around us, are what Porges calls “neuroception,” the neurological processing of the environment to scan for safety and danger. Cues of safety, in this case, include engaged and open facial expressions, tone of voice, relaxed body language, emotional attunement, eye contact, responsiveness, and predictable behavior. Without this, relationships would be much harder—and we needed relationships to survive.

Why? Because it’s impossible to do everything by yourself. Today’s society still relies on others— to build your house, purify your water, grow your food, etc. It’s become a depersonalized process which is mediated via money in exchange for goods and services. Yet early communities were much smaller and emphasized relational connection to get things done. Collaboration meant success. You kind of needed to get along.

Because these were essential to our survival, evolution adapted by wiring our bodies with templates that dictate a set of behaviors. These are behavioral systems that humans do not need to be taught. They are innate, like breathing or walking. The template of seeking out primary attachment figures when in distress is the very basis of Attachment Theory. As infants, we cannot feed, clean, shelter, or soothe ourselves. Therefore, we cry for our parents when we have a need or are met with distress. But our need for our parents does not stop here.

Enter the Failure to Thrive study René Spitz conducted in the 1940s. He studied infants in orphanages or hospitals where nurses and attendants provided the bare minimum care—fed them, washed them, sheltered them, etc. but had little time to emotionally bond with them. The infants received very little coddling, cooing, nonsensical chatter, or even being embraced by their caretakers. What Spitz discovered, here, was that despite having their basic needs met, these infants “failed to thrive.” They ceased crying and became reserved and withdrawn, they lost weight, they were often sickly, and a staggering number of them died.

That study emphasized that emotional bonding, or co-regulation, isn’t simply being goofy or spoiling a child but is a biological need. And it doesn’t magically go away in adulthood. Consider the phenomenon called “the widowhood effect.” This is where the risk of death increases for the surviving spouse. This is the loss of a primary attachment figure, and if a person cannot replace their primary attachment figure with another, then they can quite literally die of a broken heart.

Why? Because they’ve lost their main source of co-regulation. Someone whose presence and shared activity helps regulate your own and vice versa. Safety—that’s eye contact, tone, expression, etc.—and togetherness harmonize to create this phenomenon. It can take the form of play, learning together, sharing an experience, touch, or even being silent together. All of these promote co-regulation. And co-regulation promotes longer lives, emotional and physical resilience, and higher defenses of disease like cancer and diabetes; lowers cortisol and overall stress; and engenders stronger relationships.

Red, Yellow, and Green: The Autonomic Nervous Systems & PVT

Co-regulation is the key to unlocking PVT. At its very core, co-regulation serves a singular purpose: to establish and maintain a sense of internal equilibrium, or homeostasis. This is a state where we are relaxed and can recharge from stressful or highly charged situations. Our bodily systems can optimize here. Our health soars here. Our moods are balanced here. Our decision-making is at its peak. Porges calls this the Ventral Vagal State or Green State. This is where we want to be most of the time. Here we feel safe.

This leads us back to our instincts because they are what cue us in to whether we feel safe or in danger. In the earlier example of walking through the woods, you felt the unease before you consciously realized the birds were no longer chirping. But how did you get from silence to danger to feeling uneasy? That’s thanks to the nervous system. The autonomic nervous system, to be exact.

Traditionally, it was believed that the autonomic nervous system had two branches: the sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system. The sympathetic nervous system is what we call the “fight or flight” instinct when we sense danger. This system prioritizes running away or fighting, so it powers down unnecessary functions to reroute energy to survival. If you’re in fight or flight mode, for example, you are not currently digesting your lunch because it’s not useful in fighting off a saber-toothed tiger. You are flooded with cortisol and adrenaline. This gives you hyper-awareness, energy, strength, and the essentials for superlative physicality. It is a temporary state. It lasts only as long as it takes to flee danger. Porges calls this the Sympathetic State or Yellow State. You’re not supposed to live here.

The parasympathetic nervous system is the reverse switch. It powers the adrenaline and cortisol down and turns on the normal bodily processes that are not essential for combat or retreat. It restores us to the Green State, homeostasis.

But the “poly” in Polyvagal Theory introduces a third state. And it fills in the gaps missing in the two autonomic nervous systems theory. Like…for example, our earlier question of why do some victims of assault fight back and others freeze? Well, now we have the answer: the Dorsal Vagal State or Red State.

The Red State is the “freeze” state of survival. This is shut down, dissociation, curling up into a ball and covering your head. A little technicality here—Porges also defines this as a secondary part of the parasympathetic nervous system, which is why it’s the dorsal (back) vagal state while the Green State is the ventral (front) vagal state. The dorsal side, the Red State, is similar in that it deactivates adrenaline and cortisol and so on, but it does so to shut down completely when you feel overwhelmed or hopeless. It’s an internal collapse, a way of protecting yourself from the traumatic or intolerable reality before you. This is why some people freeze instead of fighting back or running away in a stressful or traumatic situation. It’s kind of like playing dead in survival terms. There are two paths here: danger leaves you alone, thinking you’re already dead, or you conserve your energy and lower pain while enduring. This is the last resort survival strategy.

To note here, Porges adds two more “last resort” survival strategies to the Red State called “fawn” and “appeasement.” This is usually in response to chronic and continuous danger—i.e. domestic violence—and results in the individual trying to show the perpetrator that they are on the same side as them (appeasement) or to support and please the perpetrator (fawning). All to reduce harm and danger.

As you might surmise, you are not supposed to stay in the Red System. Just long enough for danger to leave you alone or be reduced and appeased. But some people, like domestic violence victims, live here. Take a moment to let that sink in.

Now the introduction of the Red System wasn’t all PVT suggested. Porges posited the idea that these states frequently overlap one another. For example, when we are actively playing, our bodies are in a blended state of Green and Yellow. We need heightened awareness and speed to play well, but we’re not fighting for our lives. We’re bonding with other people. It’s all in good faith. And also temporary.

Where Attachment Theory Comes In

So there you have it. Our autonomic nervous system frames our activation states, but Attachment Theory determines how we act within each state. Really, we’re always asking just one thing—Am I safe with you? Our attachment styles dictate how we respond when the answer feels reassuring, threatening, or uncertain.

You know that anxiously attached people cling to closeness and avoidantly attached people distance from closeness—and fearful avoidants chase closeness and then self-sabotage when they get it. And you know this comes from not feeling safe and their parents not meeting their emotional needs as children. That’s usually what gets talked about. But here’s the side you might not have considered—that these behaviors are driven by the physiological response to feeling unsafe based on templates.

When we feel danger—emotional or physical—our attachment behavioral system comes online. This is our template from childhood: danger à reach for primary attachment figure à be soothed and/or protected. But when we are not soothed and/or protected, we must resort to secondary templates: hyper activation (anxious type) or deactivation (avoidant type) or both (fearful avoidant type).

This is why insecurely attached individuals are often in activated states—Yellow and Red—rather than in Green. Activated anxiously attached people execute the hyper-activation template. That is, they constantly scan for signs of danger, checking if their bond is intact, and managing the moods of those around them. Any perceived sign of this jets them into fixer-mode.

Activated avoidantly attached people initiate their template—deactivation. This looks like suppression of emotions, compartmentalization, pulling away from the source of discomfort, and distracting themselves. You would think that this pushes them out of the Yellow and Red, but that’s not actually true. On the surface, they have excellent control. They appear unaffected—the “this doesn’t affect me” effect anxious types notice during breakups with their avoidant exes. But studies show that physiologically, they’re still feeling it. The anxiety, the discomfort, the hurt. They just carry it differently.

Conclusion

Now does it make sense why I’ve been hammering home emotional safety? Avoidant or anxious behavior manifests out of the felt safety or danger in the nervous system. It doesn’t always distinguish between emotional or physical danger, and so the greatest gift you can give yourself and someone else is emotional safety. It is the axis upon which relationships thrive—it’s needed for co-regulation, bonding, trust, countless health benefits. When we turn the perspective from erratic, outward behavior inward, we can see anxious and avoidant behaviors for what they are: survival strategies learned from traumatic events or unstable conditions.

I think that the activated states in avoidants and anxious types require a deeper dive for the nuance of how they experience the activated states and how it channels their reactions to certain stimuli, but instead of inundating you with a 4,000+ word essay, I’m dividing this into multiple parts. Keep an eye out for more.