SAFE RELATIONSHIPS

Looking for more info on Porges, I watched an "interview" of him by Jayson Gaddis on YouTube.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pbVTla932Y  The program is named "The neuroscience and power of safe relationships."

That's not really what it was.  Porges turned out to be the thorough academician, married to a woman in a closely related field, and according to his testimony, a veteran of three periods:  ten years before children, the years with children, and now the years after children -- which he enjoys the most.  The kids are two boys, now in their thirties, working in related fields.  He had a steady stream of information and could not be interrupted much -- just deflected to a new aspect.  The more I listened, the more I liked him.

Jayson Gaddis is a contrasting generation, from that slick, self-important, shallow bunch of entitled people.  He's a relationship counselor who seems to relate mostly to the camera with a lot of gimmicks, narrow diagnoses, and humorless prescriptions for making people do what you want them to do.  He has a handsome face and a balding head.  I came to quite dislike him.  

Porges added more new information even though I've been chasing his ideas for a few days, so that I really wanted to hear more and will probably have to get his newest book.  He's quite modest about his work being part of a whole, not the ultimate answer to life and wealth.  

The idea that the oldest response to danger is immobilization which is the resort of reptiles and which was later at least partly supplanted by the mammal's "fight or flight" though in extreme cases terror will still make us freeze, was elaborated by him.  He says the two oldest and most fatal dangers for mammals are isolation and entrapment.  There is a kind of these two things  -- you and I alone together and you'll never leave me -- which is safe BECAUSE THE MAMMALS INVOLVED ARE FULL OF OXYTOCIN.  This is intimacy, the most fatal two dangers for mammals made safe for the moment.  ("Love or sex", I wanted to ask.  I suspect Gaddis can't tell the difference.  His reference is capture and retain.)

Porges says life is ALL ABOUT SAFETY, not just survival, though the two go together.  Safety is what makes it possible to turn attention to other creative efforts and cooperations.  It enables real achievement in other fields and endeavors.  With safety, survival begins to power evolution.

Other tidbits will have to wait, but for another instance, he puts considerable emphasis on the ability of speaking/hearing to convey safety.  Lower voices are safer.  I think of the screeching of many news desk jockeys.  Danger, danger, danger!  Hear about the latest threats!!!  

Muddled middle ear listening leaves off the last syllable, he says.  Scrambles the incoming messages.  I've been wondering about this.  When I make phone contact to order something or correct a mistake, I can hardly understand the high pitched chipmunk voices of the women.  (Never men.)  Yet babytalk is always high-pitched.  Porges says men talk to their dogs with a higher voice.

The best posts and vids are the ones that are like an unrolling string of info, more more more.  The whole face/heart thing to figure out.  The gut as a producer of seemingly unrelated auto-drugs.

Where is the huge insight about seriously dislocated shoulders?  Where is the one about how to survive three weeks of double-subzero weather and constant snow?  There's a lot of death under that snow until it melts and starts up the new life of Spring late in March.