If you've been anywhere near the trauma healing or nervous system space lately, you may have seen the headlines. A group of researchers published a paper in early 2026 calling Polyvagal Theory "untenable." Wikipedia updated accordingly. People who have built their healing, and their practices, around this framework are understandably asking whether they should still be using this.
I want to talk about this because I think it matters. The answer is more nuanced than either the critics or the defenders are making it out to be.
What Polyvagal Theory Actually Gave Us
Before we get into the debate, let's acknowledge what this framework actually did for people.
For decades, those of us who had lived through trauma, toxic relationships, and attachment wounds found ourselves described in clinical language that felt more like a verdict than a path forward. You were overreacting. Too emotional. Too sensitive. Too much.
Polyvagal Theory changed that conversation. It gave us biological language for something we had always felt but couldn't name. When you freeze in a conflict that isn't even dangerous, when you go blank in the middle of a conversation, when you can't feel safe even in a genuinely safe relationship, that is not weakness. That is your nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do to keep you alive.
For those of us who came out of insecure attachment, that reframe is not small. It is everything. Your hypervigilance was not craziness. Your shutdown was not weakness. Your nervous system was an intelligent, loyal protector doing the only job it ever knew. That's the foundation Polyvagal Theory built, and no scientific debate takes that away.
What the Critics Are Actually Saying
A researcher named Paul Grossman, along with 38 co-signers, published a paper arguing the theory is fundamentally flawed. That's a strong claim, and it deserves a closer look rather than a panic.
Some of the criticisms argue against things the theory never actually claimed. Other criticisms raise real, unresolved questions about measurement and neuroanatomy, debates that are still actively playing out. Porges responded directly in the same journal issue. This is a live scientific conversation, not a closed case.
Here's what I found most telling. Buried in the critique is an acknowledgment that the clinical heart of Polyvagal-informed work, the importance of safety in relationship, the power of co-regulation, social connection as medicine, those concepts have roots that go back decades. They come from attachment research. They come from relational therapy. They were showing up in this work long before Polyvagal Theory gave them a neurological framework. In other words, the healing was never just about the science. It was about the truth underneath it.
What This Means If You're Healing Attachment Wounds
Here's where I want to speak directly to you, whether you're someone doing your own healing work or someone supporting others in theirs.
Attachment theory and Polyvagal Theory have always been natural companions because they are both describing the same fundamental human need, which is safety in connection. The reason your anxious attachment gets activated is not a character flaw. It is a nervous system that learned, through repeated relational experience, that connection is unpredictable or unsafe. The reason avoidant patterns develop is the same. The nervous system adapted. It protected you the best way it knew how.
Polyvagal Theory gave us language for the body's role in that story. It helped us understand why healing is not just cognitive. Why you can know, intellectually, that your partner is safe, and still feel your heart race when they go quiet. Why you can understand your patterns and still get activated. The body keeps the score, as the saying goes, and the body needs more than understanding to heal. That truth is not going anywhere.
A Lens, Not a Law
Here's what I believe after sitting with this.
Any framework, including Polyvagal Theory, is a map. Maps are useful. Maps are not the territory. The three-state model, regulated and connected, activated, or in shutdown, gives clients a way to locate themselves. It creates language for what's happening in the body. It takes something that felt chaotic and makes it legible. That legibility is therapeutic in itself.
The clients I have worked with who found genuine shifts through nervous system and attachment work did not find that shift in a research paper. They found it in the moment they stopped calling themselves broken. They found it when they understood that their patterns were learned, not permanent. They found it when they began to relate to their own inner experience with curiosity instead of shame. No scientific debate changes the power of that shift.
Three Things I'd Encourage You to Hold Going Forward
The first is to offer it as a lens, not a law. The three-state model is a starting place for self-understanding, not a neurological fact sheet. When someone recognizes themselves sliding into shutdown, that recognition itself is the work. Offer it as a way of making sense of experience, not as a rigid blueprint.
The second is to hold the complexity honestly. The nervous system does not operate in isolation. It is in constant conversation with attachment history, relational context, cultural experience, and the body's full biology. Polyvagal Theory describes one thread in a much larger web, and the most grounded practitioners hold that complexity without losing the thread.
The third is to trust what you observe. Paying attention to safety and connection in relationship, using presence and tone as tools, helping people develop language for their inner states, that is solid, research-grounded, relationally-informed practice. It doesn't stand or fall on any single theory.
The researchers raising questions are doing the work that science requires. At the same time, the clients finding healing in these frameworks are showing us something that science is still catching up to. Both can be true. The most grounded work happens when we hold them together.
If you're working through attachment wounds and want to understand your nervous system patterns more deeply, my Attachment Style Quiz is a great place to start. You can find it at www.wellnesswithrebecca.com.