What this measures
What people call 'anxiety' or 'low motivation' is often a nervous system stuck in a survival state that no longer fits the situation. Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory maps three of these states: ventral vagal (safety and connection), sympathetic (fight or flight), and dorsal vagal (shutdown). Most adults can name when they feel anxious. Far fewer can tell whether their body is mobilising or collapsing, which is why the same feeling of 'off' can come from two opposite physiological roots.
How it works
The ten questions come from Polyvagal Theory, developed by Stephen Porges at Indiana University. Each item describes a real situation (a manager's vague message, a free weekend, a mistake at work) and asks which of three body-level responses fires first. Each option maps to one of the three autonomic states. Your final profile is the percentage of responses in each state, with the dominant one indicating where your nervous system is parked when it idles.
What you'll get
You'll see your distribution across ventral, sympathetic, and dorsal, plus a written read of what your dominant state means in daily life. Each profile comes with state-specific re-regulation tactics: cold exposure and slow exhalation for sympathetic, gentle bilateral movement for dorsal, maintenance practices for ventral. The follow-on assessment links straight to overthinking patterns.
The Nervous System State Test
Map your autonomic nervous system profile
Based on Polyvagal Theory, developed by Stephen Porges at Indiana University — a framework for understanding how the autonomic nervous system shapes our responses to safety and threat.
Takes about 2 minutes