Katrina Grabner

Introduction

The university experience can be both expansive and fulfilling, yet it is also a high-pressure environment, filled with potential threats to our sense of belonging and future stability. These threats, such as struggles with fitting in, the impacts of systemic racism, financial insecurity, concerns about physical safety on campus, family pressure, overwhelming workloads, and the fear of academic failure, can activate a state of constant alert in our autonomic nervous systems. Alongside these stressors, exposure to traumatic and adverse experiences is prevalent among students in higher education, with studies showing that 66% to 85% of youth report lifetime traumatic event exposure by the time they reach higher education (Frazier et al., 2009; Read et al., 2011; Smyth, et al., 2008) and approximately half of students are exposed to a traumatic event in their first year of higher education (Galatzer-Levy et al., 2012). Students with cumulative trauma are more likely to drop out, get lower grades, miss classes,  dissociate when stressed, self-isolate as a way of coping, experience anxiety related to deadlines, exams, group work, or public speaking, and have challenges with focusing, retaining information, taking risks, and regulating their emotions (Deberard, et al., 2004; Duncan, 2000; Thompson & Marsh 2022).

A trauma-informed pedagogical stance recognizes the impact of trauma on the student body and broader educational community and prioritizes practices that support (physical/emotional) relative safety, collective care, inclusion, and potential avenues towards repair, healing and increased resilience. This approach is informed by trauma-informed care methods already being implemented in the human services field, such as practices from polyvagal theory, which studies our automatic nervous system and considers the bio/psycho/social impacts of trauma and factors that promote resilience (Levine, 1997; Porges, 2022). In the context of higher education, a nervous system-aware approach is one that recognizes that we all have highly adaptive, automatic, psycho-physiological responses designed to protect us and that these responses are shaped by our lived experiences and show up in educational contexts. With this in mind educators can intentionally cultivate environments that foster both their students’ and their own neuroception of relative safety, with the understanding that learning is optimized when the nervous system is regulated and at ease.

Carello and Thompson write that becoming aware of the prevalence and impact of trauma among students and educators is only the first step and that the “next step is to learn how to effectively respond at both the individual and system levels” (2022, p.4). The following chapter focuses on ways that instructors can respond at an individual level in our classroom environments through an approach informed by polyvagal theory, recognizing that individual change also contributes to cultural shifts and broader systemic transformation. This is just one piece of the puzzle that can compliment broader and more systemic models such as the Equity-Centered Trauma-Informed Wheel (Thompson & Marsh, 2022) and Healing-Centered Engagement, which views trauma as a collective and relational process that invites holistic responses (Ginwright, 2018).

What is polyvagal theory?

Hyper-arousal (sympathetic nervous system)

One way that the clinician and author Deb Dana describes polyvagal theory is that it is the study of safety (2018). In moments of danger, our physiological and neuro-biological systems can respond to a perception of threat in an instant–before our conscious minds can create a cognitive meaning of what is happening (Geller, 2018). As the situation is assessed our autonomic nervous system will act by increasing our energy through hyper-arousal responses such as engaging with the threat (fight) or getting away from it (flight). Our body communicates to us through the language of sensation, showing us what nervous system state we are moving into or out of. For instance, when we are in a state of hyperarousal we might feel an increase in our heart rate, tight muscles, and fidgeting limbs. This is sometimes called a sympathetic charge (Geller, 2018). In this state of dysregulation, we have less connection with our prefrontal cortex making it difficult to focus and think in more complex and nuanced ways (Dana, 2018).

Hypo-arousal (dorsal vagal complex)

In extreme situations when we perceive that we won’t be able to fight back or run away, we conserve energy and “play dead”. This is a hypo-arousal response which has been referred to as freeze, shut-down or collapse. In this state you might notice a slowness of breath, heavy limbs or a foggy or floating feeling (Iannotti, 2021).

Social engagement (ventral vagal state)

As mammals, born in a vulnerable state, we are highly dependent on being take care of and responded to by others. We also detect danger when we sense potential threats to our feeling of belonging and connection with others. The ventral vagal branch of the autonomic nervous system is active when we engage with others through facial expression, tone of voice, and other forms of nonverbal communication. This state supports what Porges describes as the social engagement system (Porges & Furman, 2011; Porges & Carter, 2017; Kolacz & Porges, 2024). Since maintaining connection with others has been essential for human survival, we have also developed adaptive responses that can override initial impulses to fight or flee. These responses, often described as appeasement, fawning, submission, cry-for-help, serve as strategies to preserve connection and safety in the face of threat. Attunement with others can help us co-regulate, supporting a return to a ventral vagal state, the state in which we feel at ease, relaxed, connected to ourselves and others, and open to play and engagement.

Effect on the classroom environment

A tricky thing about our incredible nervous system is that once we have experienced a perceived threat to our safety, our nervous system and brain become expert detectors of anything that feels slightly familiar about that past threat and our body will often respond with the same nervous system response again and again. For instance, perhaps you are a student in class and your professor raises their voice to quiet the class. Your autonomic nervous system detects the loud voice of a male that sounds a lot like your father, and suddenly your body responds by shutting down. Now everything feels a bit foggy, and you notice fearing “getting in trouble” with this professor. Perhaps you now have a lingering feeling of “not liking” or trusting this professor, but you don’t quite know why.

On the other side of this scenario, maybe you are the professor and all you see is a student in your class who always has their hood pulled over their ears and it feels like they are not “really there”. Perhaps, you the professor, had a caregiver growing up who often felt “zoned-out” or absent. Your body now starts to respond to this student in a similar way by increasing your heart rate and going into a low-level fight-flight response, where you notice feeling irritated or grumpy and you can’t wait for this class to be over, because you are now wondering “why do I even bother teaching?”. In both cases, autonomic nervous system responses have impacted learning outcomes in ways that are difficult for both instructors and students to notice consciously.

In this hypothetical moment, both nervous systems are picking up on one another’s automatic body language, such as pupil dilation, and these signals let us know that something is potentially threatening, because another human is in an activated nervous system response or survival state, creating a negative feedback loop of dysregulation between both parties. We might refer to both the student and the professor’s response here as them being “activated” or “triggered” as their body detects a familiar feeling of threat.

In these moments our connection with the prefrontal cortex weakens, making it difficult to focus, make decisions, plan, or sense empathy. As the brain shifts into survival mode, processing complex new information becomes the lowest priority, which makes this especially important to address in learning environments. The good news is that there is another feedback loop that occurs when two nervous system begin co-regulating. When one person is able to soothe and regulate themselves and engage the parasympathetic branch of their nervous system, their body language can activate the ventral vagal complex in another person, helping that person feel safer and, in turn, reducing survival-mode responses in their nervous system and so on and so on (Kok & Fredrickson, 2020). In this ventral vagal state, we have greater access to play, ease, higher levels of focus, flow states and the ability to put ourselves in other people’s shoes. Scenarios like the one shared above are why becoming familiar with our own nervous system needs and patterns and learning to respond to ourselves and others in curious, gentle, and non-shaming ways is crucial in learning environments.

One of the ways we can begin to create conditions of relative safety in our classrooms, recognizing that while we may not eliminate all threats, we can support students to feel comparatively safer, better regulated, and more connected, is to begin to increase our own nervous system literacy and then develop our capacity to notice, recognize and respond to the signals our body is sending  us about when we are entering into survival responses such as fight or collapse. Sounds simple right? Curiosity and gentleness are key as there are many complex and very good reasons why our body may be preventing us from feeling or responding to our nervous system signals^[1]. The more we increase our capacity to sense our own internal signals and learn to attend and soothe either individually or with others, the more we grow our ability to have awareness of others and their potential needs. Here are some common ways you might notice survival responses showing up in yourself or in your students:

Hyper-arousal: fight, flight

• Irritation
• Oppositional behaviour
• Limit testing
• Fidgeting, a buzzy, busy feeling inside
• Leaving class suddenly
• Panic or high anxiety
• Racing thoughts
• Fast speaking
• Pacing
• Needing to move
• Difficulty thinking, focusing
• Difficulty connecting with others
• Difficulty making eye contact
• Big reactions or outbursts
• Trembling or shaking in limbs
• Verbal aggression, physical aggression
• Trying to manage arousal through sensory input such as headphones on in class

Hypo: collapse/shut-Down/freeze

• Looking dazed
• Not listening
• Daydreaming
• Forgetfulness
• Difficulty focusing
• Tired, low energy
• Difficulty connecting or making eye contact
• Not feeling like they are there when you engage with them
• Curled-up posture

Fawn, submit, appease, cry-for-help

• Highly fearful of rejection, such as perceiving feedback in class as rejection. This may be highly activating, and you might notice tears or fight, flight, freeze responses
• Lying to protect self from rejection
• Denying needs, prioritizing needs of others first, not even noticing needs
• Seeking proximity (others might feel smothered)
• Lack of boundaries (oversharing, e-mailing constantly)
• Difficulty making decisions (always asking, “what do you think?”)
• Looking for reassurance (“do you see me? are you there for me?”)
• Difficulty sensing self because so much energy is spent scanning other people to sense if they are okay
• Not feeling settled until one knows everyone else is happy with them, or at least calm and not upset with them
• Difficulty saying no or sticking with boundaries
• Trying to align with others with more power

References