Putting It All Together
We have covered several frameworks. Here is how they connect:
- Adaptive Information Processing — memories stored without processing remain active, controlling present responses. EMDR reactivates the processing system to resolve them.
- The triune brain — the limbic system’s threat responses override cortical processing. Trauma keeps the system running in survival mode.
- The four survival programs — the specific protective responses your nervous system launches: fight, flight, freeze, fawn.
- Polyvagal Theory — the three states the nervous system moves between, and why neuroception determines which state you are in.
- Window of Tolerance — where processing can happen, and what happens when you go outside it.
- Attachment theory — how early relationships shaped your nervous system’s settings and the templates you carry into adult life.
Together, these frameworks give you a map of your own system. Not to explain away your responses — but to understand them. And in understanding them, to begin working with them rather than against them.