Finding Your Window Of Tolerance: Trauma Recovery and Healing
Ariel Emmanuel, MHC
Many people are experiencing stress and overwhelm with the changes in the world. Building awareness of our emotions through our window of tolerance can help us manage the changes and unprecedented experiences. What we have been enduring in the last year or so can be traumatic for most. Racial trauma and the effects of a long-term global pandemic are incredibly complex. After multiple traumatic events, it's essential to find ways to deescalate your nervous system and create mindfulness about what safety and security can look like in your body.
What is the Window of Tolerance?
Psychiatrist Dan Seigel first coined the "Window of Tolerance" and the concept of mindsight. He described it as the zone of arousal in which a person can function most effectively. When people are within this zone, they can typically receive, process, and integrate information. They can respond to the demands of their everyday life without much difficulty. They can also reflect, think rationally, and make decisions calmly without feeling overwhelmed or withdrawn.
During extreme stress, overwhelm, or after experiencing trauma, people will often respond from their instinctual hyper or hypo arousal states, also known as their trauma responses. Trauma responses like the fight, flight, freeze, and fawn are automatic bodily responses to traumatic stimuli that create feelings of anxiety, panic, hypervigilance, racing thoughts, emotional numbness, depression, emptiness, or lack of desire and motivation.
When people act from their autonomic nervous system, their brains cannot process the environment around them. Their brain reduces the ability to reason, which creates feelings of intense emotional dysregulation.
Mindful Awareness of Your Window of Tolerance
Everyone's window of tolerance is different, and the external environment can impact it. Your window of tolerance is your personal comfort zone. It's a zone of safety, security, and confidence for each person. It is a place where you feel most like yourself and can handle anything that comes up. When you are in your window of tolerance, you have the ability to self-soothe, understand, and become aware of your emotions.
So what is your window of tolerance, and how do you know when you're operating in that window? It's always helpful to take a moment and be curious:
Am I dysregulated, stressed, overwhelmed, anxious, sad, numb, or frozen?
Did something happen recently that contributed to this feeling?
How is the state of the collective experiences impacting me?
Are there activities that help to get me back into my window of tolerance?
Am I feeling grounded in my body and aware of my emotions?
What does my personal window of tolerance look like?
What are my limits and boundaries?
Do I know how to say no when I'm feeling overwhelmed?
Do I have balance in my life?
How do I balance self-care and productivity?
Do I know what my needs are and how to care for myself when I'm feeling depleted?
Asking yourself a series of questions can help build mindful awareness about where you are and what you need to get into your window of tolerance.