If depression is the emotional expression of the immobilization response, then the solution is to move out of that state of defense. Porges believes it is not enough to simply remove the threat. Rather, the nervous system has to detect robust signals of safety to bring the social state back online. The best way to do that? Social connection.
For people who don’t prefer social connection, I’ve seen that exercise works well
Edit: just want to highlight that polyvagal theory, the main point behind this article, is unsubstantiated thus far
Porges believes
This is an interesting article and yet you’ve chosen to quote the most speculative unscientific part of it from the final paragraph.
“Have you tried going outside” is not a scientific cure for depression.
That’s not what it’s saying at all, it’s talking about immobilization as a survival strategy as induced by the body’s neurophysiology, think of it as another option after flight vs fight responses.
Here’s the report mentioned in the article https://explore.bps.org.uk/content/report-guideline/bpsrep.2020.rep133
Edit looking closely, the report itself doesn’t mention anything about the immobilization defense.
Edit2 so on further review, I agree that this article is low quality. Apologies, was just browsing while half asleep and thought it was interesting
Polyvagal theory itself does not seem promising so far. Oh well, editing this post to highlight that…
Depression has many causes:
- For once, people work too much. It exhausts the body and we feel tired.
- For two, there’s the meaninglessness of life. It’s difficult to stay motivated when nothing makes sense/there is no future.
- Thirdly, positive sexual experiences strongly cure depression. Since the dating market is largely fucked (no pun intended), well that option doesn’t exist to large parts of the population.
- Fourtly we’re socialized to hide depression. As everybody knows, the first step to solve a problem is to recognize it exists. Stigmatization of depression has held back effective treatment for way too long.
I get more depression around people. I do better in the woods all by myself. My protection is to get away from people. I don’t feel lonely or alienated in solitude.
People don’t depress me, but I only have so much charge on my social battery. And yeah, seems we’re the odd ones regarding the outdoors. When people first meet me, they often comment about my running around the creeks and swamps alone.
“Aren’t you worried about (panthers, gators, bears, serial killers) ?!”
“Uh, no, they’re rare enough and I carry a gun if it comes to it.”
Great. On top of thinking me fruity, now I’m an armed fruit.
Here people ask if I’m worried about bears. No , they’re worried about me. You’re way more likely to get mugged in the city than mauled in the woods. I have bear spray just in case.
When people are told that depression is an aberration, we are telling them that they are not part of the tribe. They are not right, they don’t belong. That’s when their shame deepens and they avoid social connection.
And that’s not the only reason people are made to feel they’re not part of the tribe, that they don’t belong. There are many things in this modern (post modern?) world that cause us to become alienated from other people, even and especially those in our own community. The nature of community itself has changed. Many relationships and social institutions feel more tenuous or impermanent.
It’s a vicious cycle: people feel alienated from others, it causes them stress, the stress causes anxiety, that leads to the immobilization response and depression, the effects of the anxiety and depression cause people to become further alienated from others, and the process accelerates and perpetuates.
