Why You Shut Down in Love: How Polyvagal Theory Explains Relationship Quality & Nervous System Dysregulation
- Nikta Niyazi
- Nov 21, 2025
- 4 min read
Updated: Dec 1, 2025
We often believe that love is about compatibility, communication skills, emotional intelligence, or choosing the “right” partner. But beneath all of that lives a deeper truth:
Your nervous system decides the quality of your relationships long before your mind even understands what is happening.
Polyvagal Theory, a groundbreaking framework by Dr. Stephen Porges, shows that our autonomic nervous system quietly dictates how we connect, how we protect ourselves, and how we experience intimacy, joy, and safety. When we look at polyvagal theory and relationship quality, it becomes clear that the way we connect isn’t just emotional—it’s deeply physiological.
Let's explore how a dysregulated nervous system impacts love, and how learning emotion regulation can transform the way you show up in your relationships.
Through Polyvagal Theory, We See How the Nervous System Shapes Both Daily Life and Relationship Quality
Your autonomic nervous system is not just a biological system; it is a storyteller. It shapes your beliefs, behaviours, and emotional patterns by constantly scanning for safety or danger.
As one book passage explains:
“Physiology and psychology are interconnected. State ( your nervous system) and story work together in a persistent loop.”
In simple terms:
Your state (regulated or dysregulated) shapes your story: (“I’m not enough,” “People leave,” “Love is scary”).
And your story reactivates your state.
If this loop is not interrupted, it becomes the background music of your entire relational life.
This is why two people can experience the same situation: a partner coming home late, a message left unread, a moment of silence and react completely differently.
Their nervous systems are living in different realities.
The Autonomic Hierarchy: Why Some Love Feels Expansive and Some Feels Suffocating
Polyvagal Theory describes three main states:
Dorsal Vagal (Shutdown)
A state of collapse, numbness, or hopelessness. Relationships feel overwhelming, too much, or pointless.
Sympathetic (Fight/Flight)
A state of mobilization and anxiety. Relationships feel intense, unpredictable, or unsafe.
Ventral Vagal (Safety & Connection)
A state of openness, curiosity, playfulness, and presence. Relationships feel warm, grounding, and emotionally nourishing.
“In sympathetic and dorsal activation, the nervous system limits perception to either/or choices. The ventral vagal state restores the capacity to consider nuance, options, and possibility.”
When we are dysregulated (in a state of sympathetic or dorsal dominance), our ability to see possibilities shrinks. We become rigid, defensive, or emotionally unavailable.
But in ventral vagal — the regulated state — the world becomes bigger. We can connect without losing ourselves. We can set boundaries without fear. We can receive love without collapsing into old wounds.
Ventral vagal is the biological foundation for secure attachment.
The Face–Heart Connection: Why Love Begins Before Words
One of the most beautiful discoveries in Polyvagal Theory is the social engagement system — a network created by five cranial nerves that link the muscles of your face, voice, eyes, and head movements to your heart.
The book calls this the “face–heart connection.”
“As the ventral vagus emerged… pathways that control the muscles of the face and head connected with the heart, forming an integrated social engagement system.”
This means:
the softness of your eyes
the warmth of your tone
your micro-expressions
your ability to listen
your capacity to make someone feel seen are physiological acts, not just an emotional ones.
Your body is constantly sending signals:
“Come close,” or“Stay away.”
And you are continuously reading the same signals in others.
This is why you can sense someone’s emotional availability instantly. It’s not “intuition” alone — it’s neuroception: the body’s subconscious detection of safety or danger.
How Dysregulation Damages Relationships
When the nervous system isn’t regulated, it can create patterns such as:
1. Overreacting to small issues
A late reply becomes abandonment. A disagreement becomes a threat. Silence feels like rejection.
2. Emotional shutdown or dissociation
You go numb. You avoid conflict. You lose interest, then feel guilty for disconnecting.
3. Hypervigilance
Constantly reading your partner’s tone, words, energy, micro-shifts. Feeling unsafe even in stable relationships.
4. Repeating old attachment patterns
Choosing unavailable people or pushing away available ones.
5. Sharing a dysregulated space
A dysregulated nervous system dysregulates the other person. Co-regulation becomes co-activation. Two people begin mirroring each other’s stress instead of safety.
Why Regulation Is the True Foundation of Healthy Love
When you understand your nervous system, you understand yourself on the deepest level.
Regulation gives you the ability to:
Stay present during conflict
Hear your partner without defensiveness
Repair instead of withdraw
Hold emotional intimacy instead of escaping it
Let yourself be loved
Let yourself be seen
This is what the text means when it says:
“Polyvagal Theory invites you into the science of feeling safe enough to fall in love with life.”
A regulated nervous system allows you to fall in love with someone without losing yourself, collapsing into fear, or reenacting trauma.
It also helps you become a regulating presence for others — a steady, grounded, softening force that makes love feel safe.
Final Reflection
Your relationships will only go as deep as your nervous system feels safe to go.
Love requires more than communication skills —it requires physiological safety, emotional capacity, and the ability to shift back into ventral vagal connection.
When you learn to regulate your nervous system, you don’t just heal your patterns —you open the door to a new experience of intimacy, joy, and connection.
How Can I Help?
At Neeyaz Counselling, I help your nervous system move out of chronic fight/flight or shutdown and return to a regulated, safe state. Hypnosis gently rewires the subconscious patterns that keep your body stuck in old defences, allowing you to feel grounded, open, and capable of deeper connection.
Book a Hypnotherapy Session — Regulate Your Nervous System & Transform Your Relationships.
Refrences
Dana, D. (2018). The polyvagal theory in therapy: Engaging the rhythm of regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Dana, D. (2021). Anchored: How to befriend your nervous system using polyvagal theory. Sounds True.
Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. W. W. Norton & Company.
Schwartz, A. (2023). The polyvagal theory workbook for trauma. New Harbinger Publications.
Tatkin, S. (2012). Wired for love: How understanding your partner’s brain and attachment style can help you defuse conflict and build a secure relationship. New Harbinger Publications.
Johnson, S. M. (2008). Hold me tight: Seven conversations for a lifetime of love. Little, Brown Spark.
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