How the human nervous system organizes our bodies is nothing short of miraculous. When regulated, the systems of our body work in cooperation, ensuring homeostasis. In a state of hyperarousal or dysregulation, many physiological processes become activated, usually set off by stress.
Researchers continue to unpack new discoveries about the individual nervous system. As co-authors, we are curious about what it might mean to investigate a “collective nervous system.” This question connects to the field of collective intelligence, which examines how networks of cooperative behavior solve problems at the level of cells, tissues, and whole organisms. We do not claim quantifiable proof of a collective nervous system. Instead, we invite you to work with the concept as a practice: to explore it through your own experience, with curiosity, and in conversation with others, and to notice what the potential is for individual and collective healing.
Looking Through Our Collective Nervous System
In envisioning the collective nervous system, our tendency might be to look outside, visualizing a group of individuals who are wired together through their central nervous systems. But what if we explored what it feels like from within the collective? What’s the subtlest form of awareness we can access? How and what does the collective see?
What we can do as a collective, we can’t do alone. When we see as one body, we don’t miss anything. Imagine if, when just one person is hurt or is suffering in your neighborhood, city, or country, the entire population becomes aware? As our digital connectivity brings us closer as humans, so should our nervous systems. Only then will we act as one body that can offer much-needed mutual repair.
The Role of Polyvagal Theory
Developed by Stephen Porges, PhD, the Polyvagal Theory outlines a theory of “how autonomic regulation shapes the body’s ongoing capacity to maintain stability, support health, and adapt to changing conditions.” In his work, he redefines stress as “a measurable state during which homeostatic functions are disrupted” and the process of neuroception as that which “functionally decodes and interprets the assumed goal of movements and sounds of inanimate and living objects.”
Trauma is one such disruption. When it disrupts the nervous system, the regulation needed, according to Porges, includes trauma-informed educational practices that emphasize rhythm, predictability, and relational safety. We can each “upgrade our nervous systems” by enhancing neuroplasticity, focusing on autonomic regulation, and engaging in practices that support vagal tone modulation.
When we are dysregulated, sitting with someone even briefly who can offer “relational presence” — listening quietly or engaging in sharing — can calm a nervous system. While there are dozens of apps available to measure our stress markers and provide soothing guidance, there’s no substitute for relating with another human being (as does a new app that I, Thomas, am offering, called “Attuned,” currently in Beta). In this app, a person who helps regulate, called an “Anchor,” is providing a nervous system to another as a service.
Just as we circulate financial currency, can we lend our nervous systems to one another, providing support even briefly when it’s most needed? What kind of full-scale economy of support and intelligence would this create for our world?
Just as individuals work on balancing the vagus nerve, entire communities can also. This form of practice is especially relevant during times of collective trauma: “At the community level, structural adversity − including racism, poverty, and violence − disrupts neuroception on a population scale, locking individuals and groups into chronic defensive states,” writes Porges.
Shaping Our Collective Nervous System: From Traumatized to Trauma-Integrating
When an individual or a collective is dysregulated, the roots of stress may point to past trauma. Here we outline a pathway for envisioning societal change that moves through four phases of working through trauma:
Traumatized
Trauma-informed
Trauma-sensitive
Trauma-integrative
A traumatized society suffers through the same symptoms an individual can experience; in this situation, there may be political and group dynamics that reflect unhealed wounds and negative consequences for citizens, as well as time-worn cycles of traumatization such as crime, substance abuse, mental health disorders, and violence. Often the trauma is rooted in the unseen, unhealed collective past. What we find is that the social ecosystem is hurt and fragmented, which tells us that the trauma “load” is much greater than the resources of the system. Just as an individual can feel separate from others because they’re carrying a high trauma load, so can a society.
In a trauma-informed society, the culture (through policy or educational shifts) is learning skills and protocols to prevent trauma and work through its aftermath. Leaders become early adopters of trauma awareness as they begin to anchor guidance into the social system, much like the way tending to acupuncture points helps heal the entire body. When leaders and citizens become trauma-aware, they learn to develop strategies to prevent re-traumatization, partnering with the early adopters to develop pockets of resilience for further learning.
As a society incorporates new practices and learning, they solidify these principles, becoming “trauma-sensitive.” Once trauma sensitivity is established, such as processes for working through discrimination, racism, sexism, gender violence, and other serious challenges, living a life that is based on trauma sensitivity becomes “the norm.” In these societies, emotional safety is a priority; people feel more empowered to speak up and report traumatic events; and more data is flowing within the social system.
Finally, a society that can be identified as “trauma-integrative” has intentionally moved through its trauma wounds through dedicated restoration processes. It embodies principles that value peace and a commitment to human dignity and rights. Resting on all the work of the former levels, the society now has shifted the balance to a greater presence of resources versus a trauma load. There is individual and collective maturation; decision-making is part of a natural flow. Diversity enriches the social field, without needing to enforce policies. There is profound healing; so much so that the collective intelligence – and nervous system – of the society is naturally revealed.
Activating our Collective Presence
In the current state of the world, we can point to many examples where collective actions or group behavior is not working towards the greater good. Can we turn our attention towards what it truly means to offer collective presence? Can we highlight models of progress where societies are succeeding? To begin, we first need to see clearly the “inner sculpture” of trauma that has been formed in our awareness through centuries of traumatic experiences, including wars, genocide, and other forms of oppression. When we restore our capacity to see from within ourselves as the collective, we restore the agency and power that is our birthright as humans without imagining there is a separate “world out there.”
We are that world. The collective nervous system is our power bank. Let’s reclaim it.
