Why do I feel worse?

That’s a very common question, isn’t it? Very often, when we take some steps to heal ourselves, especially if it’s from something chronic, we can feel worse rather than better.

Why is that?

There are several reasons and I’ll go over some of them maybe in a series of posts, but the main one I want to cover today is the theory of the polyvagal ladder. It has really helped me to understand why I sometimes feel I’m getting more ruddy symptoms than before. As you know, I am currently doing some brain retraining, limbic and vagal work to unpick the chemical sensitivity triggered by perfume-gate. And I have felt crap.

But that is actually a good sign. Although it doesn’t feel very nice, I’ll grant you.

What is the polyvagal ladder?

Polyvagal theory comes from the work of Steven Porges – I’ve explained all about the vagus nerve in my Vagus Factsheet – so do read that for much more. But, essentially, it is a very important cranial nerve that goes right through the body, connecting the brain and body, controlling a lot of our autonomic body responses in eg. the heart, eyes, throat, lungs, gut etc. Because it’s a cranial nerve, most people think of it as purely brain-based, but actually only 20% of the vagus signalling is brain to body, whereas a whopping 80% is body to brain.

I tell you that because it explains why we get a lot of physical symptoms and responses with vagal activation or fatigue with poor vagus nerve function.

Anyway, in the ladder below, you can see the three main stages of vagal tone. We want to be at the top in ventral vagal – a sense of safety, wanting to be with people, calm, joyful.

People tend to only think of this polyvagal theory in terms of mood – anxiety, depression, freeze etc, but it can also explain a lot of physical stuff IMHO.

Often when we are dealing with a chronic illness, we have loads of symptoms and become fearful of having more of them – especially in sensitivity and fatigue cases. If I eat this food, go here to this place or event, smell this, do this movement etc, am I going to feel crap or react? This is the sympathetic stage – where we’re anxious and the nervous system is activated too much. It’s a place of fear and symptoms, if you like. Or don’t like, actually.

Eventually, we get tired, literally, and can enter the dorsal stage at the bottom of the ladder. We give up, feel hopeless, don’t want to be with anyone, go anywhere, we disassociate from ourselves. It’s all about avoidance at this stage in a lot of people – avoiding triggers, people, food, life. I also see a lot of distraction going on – anything but face ourselves or what is going on. We’ve had enough, frankly. (This was deffo me a few years ago!).

This is where we might feel chronic fatigue, our immune system is really low, our digestive system is rubbish, we’re not absorbing properly, we can’t find words, we just want to sleep – as I said to someone yesterday, it’s like the lights are being dimmed on life.

We don’t want that!

Climbing the ladder

So, once you understand how that ladder works, you can see why you might get worse before you get better. If you are in dorsal shutdown, you can’t get back to ventral safety unless you climb up the ladder – and that involves going through the sympathetic activated stage again. There’s no leaping over it, sadly. So, it’s very likely that, as you get better, you will get old symptoms appearing again, new ones; you might feel anxious, can’t sleep, get headaches, start to feel detoxy/fluey.

But it’s temporary. If you don’t stop.

I didn’t know this when I did the brain retraining last time. I started Gupta and DNRS and stopped because I felt awful after a week or so. Had I known about the polyvagal ladder theory, I might have continued, albeit at a much slower pace.

And that’s a real key. It’s part of the process. Healing, as I say in the Healing Plan, is not linear; it’s probably going to be a bumpy ride at some points – and here’s one reason why for you.

So, what do you do if you feel worse?

Two bits of advice here.

First: build some nervous system capacity – work on your vagal tone before anything else, and I’m including supplements, exercises, diet change etc there. It’s very likely that you will get much more from them once your nervous system is more regulated and has more capacity. You’re much more likely to tolerate them, too.

Second: go slowly. This is not a race. You don’t want to overwhelm your system. If you feel ‘bumpy’ or activated, go back a stage and do less. Don’t stop necessarily (be led, of course, by your practitioners here), but slow it down.

I find the best way to get rid of that activation is to shake. Literally. It helps work off any extra adrenaline and helps to activate the calming parasympathetic nervous system instead. Or, more gently, you can sway or rock. Sounds daft. But it works, I promise.

I thought this was a good explanation of why things like that work – do have a read. It’s a kind of somatic exercise – a body-up way of accessing the vagus nerve and sending safety signals back up to the brain. Calm down. Calm down. No need for fear or symptoms.

People always think these things are much too simple, but more and more I am using them as a first approach with patients. I do the voo breaths, as I said to you a few issues of the newsletter ago, and shake. I also walk and constantly repeat I am safe to myself. And dance around the kitchen like a mad woman – unless it’s a migraine, obvs. It helps.

Anyway, there’s one reason why you might feel worse. Are you going up the ladder? If so, welcome it, manage it and continue to climb. I’ll see you at the top!

Did this resonate with you, did it help? Let me know. I truly hope so.