Window of Tolerance

The Window of Tolerance is the capacity in which one can handle life’s stressors.
It is made up of three sections: fight or flight, rest and digest, and freeze

A typical situation like waiting in the lounge before a float appointment, provides a moment of downtime, and the activities you choose can affect your window of tolerance.

Chatting with others could add to an already building feeling of anxiety, or scrolling could be feeding into a habit of self-doubt. Chatting could also totally make your day or week, and scrolling could inject healing in the form of cat videos.

Below is the same wave of stressors in both a narrow window of tolerance and a wider one. Depending on where you are in your window, a choice in downtime activities could make a big impact on your mental health.

Suggestions to Heal

The Top-Down Approach
△ 🧠  ➔  △ 🧡

Change the way you think to change how you feel. Thought patterns establish our window of tolerance. Meditation, observation awareness, and practice help to see our thoughts and guide them. Eventually, with practice, the new thought becomes the dominant one, this is Neuroplasticity.

The Bottom-Up Approach
△ 🧡  ➔  △ 🧠

Change how you feel to change the way you think. When a trigger happens, the body needs to digest the experience. Bring the body to a state of release by relaxing and moving like yoga, dance, or massage to permit blood flow to the vagus nerve. This nerve is a natural tranquilizer that spans from the brainstem to the gut where the most serotonin is produced, strengthening the brain-gut connection.

The Halo-Halo Approach
△ 🧡 & 🧠 ➔  ˗ˋˏ 🧡 & 🧠 ˎˊ˗

Halo-halo is a dessert from the Philippines that means mix-mix. Many healing and relaxing practices mix both methods, activating a stronger bond in wellness, self-awareness, and brain-gut connection.

I try to practice my wellness playlist as often as I can. The more I am in a state of openness, wholeness, and presence, the wider my window becomes.

My Window of Tolerance

I used to live in an unsafe environment; emotionally, psychologically, and even physically, I would wake up feeling very unsafe. When I moved into a safe environment, I used to wake up and feel so much panic that I would sit on the edge of my bed and not move for hours. My body was frozen but my mind was racing about the most mundane things like getting up to brush my teeth and make breakfast.

When I told my therapist this, she outlined that this is a very common reaction in the body. When someone is in an unsafe environment and stressed, their body produces cortisol, the stress hormone. If the stressor keeps recurring, the body gets used to producing more cortisol. When they change their situation to a positive one, the body continues to produce cortisol, causing a faux panic. It takes the body a while to feel comfortable and safe before it lets its guard down.

I learned that my mental health, neurochemicals, and emotions are very much a physical part of my body. When I'm in a therapy session and I bring up something that bothers me and I start crying and feeling the effects of anxiety, the therapist is not like a friend or family who emotionally supports me, the therapist is trained to notice where I’m at in my window of tolerance and provide a variety of tools to help heal my neurological system. 

My parents divorced when I was six and they have since exhibited inappropriate behavior. I was the first daughter, niece, and granddaughter, and as the older sister, I stepped up in maturity, responsibility, and putting way too much on my plate. I’ve had several short-term therapists throughout my life because I needed a professional and sound mind I could trust to work through the stressors of school, career, and a disease.

Over the past 10 years or so, I have had a therapist about every 2-3 years for maybe 4-9 months, giving me a better idea of my window of tolerance and the degree to which I need their service. It's perfectly normal to have a consistent therapist in your life, that's quality time spent on your mind. I just wanted to point out that you don't have to commit to a therapist, especially when you’re new to talk therapy. For me, I needed a therapist through that move and that took about 5 sessions over 4 months.

If you’re going through something, talk therapy is a very flexible solution and prob the safest. Mental and emotional health is different than physical health because you are most likely conscious enough to tend to a physical injury. But when under mental stress, the body activates flight or flight which depletes resources to your prefrontal cortex, and your judgment is compromised. You would need someone who is trained and level-headed to assist you back to a fully activated prefrontal cortex. If you start journaling and even having a health history sheet handy for yourself, it gets into the problem-solving part of the session much quicker.

I also wanted to mention that it can be beneficial to talk to a camera or voice recording for a run at saying things out loud. I used to get so pissed when others mistreated me that I would go for a drive and record myself ranting and eventually cooling down and thanking God and then I would just delete it. This helped me to voice my emotions and boundaries.

It feels like as my window of tolerance is widening, I have a spacious mind to care for myself, deal with life’s stressors, and manifest the best situation. Thank you Jesus. (Mother Mary, Higher Self, Angels, Saint Stephen, Saint Benedict, Walt Whitman, etc.)

This wider window also helps with compassion towards others. When we see others reacting harshly, we may notice that they have gone past their window of tolerance. Find the safest way possible to support them and when necessary, remove yourself from the toxic environment and pray that they find their way back to a healthy prefrontal cortex and a wider window of tolerance.

June 30th, 2024