Polysecure: Attachment, Trauma and Consensual Nonmonogamy

by Jessica Fern

However, enormous stressors or big overwhelming events are not the only ways that a person’s nervous system can be activated and overwhelmed to the point of experiencing trauma. We can also experience smaller but ongoing stressful events that have a cumulative harmful effect. Instead of getting a single massive blast of the survival cocktail into our bloodstream when we experience a car accident, a natural disaster or a physical assault, we can get little blasts throughout the day from experiences like demanding work environments, relationship tension, health issues, life transitions, traffic jams, parenting, etc. Our bodies need time to metabolize the chemical cocktail released from stress and when we are in a chronic state of stress—whether big or small, physical, emotional, psychological, environmental or existential—we can get pushed over the edge into a state of sympathetic nervous system dominance. This means that the survival response that was meant to be temporary has now become constant. The threat that we experience does not even need to be real, but the repeated perception of a threat, day after day, can push our nervous system into a traumatized state. When this happens, we are living in survival mode, stuck in sympathetic dominance and unable to access our ability to recover and thrive.