Finding Your Window of Tolerance and Why it’s Important

Sometimes after a traumatic event, your brain and body get stuck replaying the trauma, causing you to feel like it’s happening again in the present moment even if it was years ago. When you talk about past trauma, you may start to feel sweaty, your heart starts racing, or you feel panicked and dreadful. Or you may go numb and find yourself staring off into space, feeling disconnected from yourself. When we feel this way, this means our window of tolerance is small, or possibly even nonexistent.

What is Your Window of Tolerance?

Your window of tolerance is the amount of distress your mind and body can handle and feel. Having a wide window of tolerance means you can think about a past trauma without reacting so intensely to it in the present moment. When your window of tolerance is bigger, then you’ll be able to think and talk about past trauma with less reaction. It will still feel uncomfortable, but you’re able to stay present and connected to yourself. 

Signs You May Be Outside Your Window of Tolerance: Hyperarousal vs. Hypoarousal 

Hyperarousal 

Hyperarousal is when your senses are extra heightened. You may experience feelings of overwhelm, panic, anxiety, fear, or anger. You may also struggle to sleep and focus. This happens when your nervous system reacts to trauma and translates into fight or flight. Your body shuts down and sends you signals to run or fight the threat you’re feeling. 

Hypoarousal

Hypoarousal is on the other end of the spectrum and can make you feel numb, disconnected, and dissociated. You may feel detached from yourself and your surroundings, or find yourself sitting and staring off into space and not remember what happened in that timeframe. In extreme circumstances, hypoarousal can lead to dissociation, which can cause you to feel disconnected from yourself in a more intense way, for longer periods of time. You may also have periods of time that feel “missing” to you or that you can’t remember. 

What it Looks Like to Be in Your Window of Tolerance 

When you’re in your window of tolerance, you’re able to talk about your feelings and process through them. You may feel more connected to yourself, grounded, present, flexible, and open. You’re able to talk about the trauma without it overwhelming you. When we’re outside our window of tolerance, we usually want to avoid talking or thinking about our trauma because it overwhelms us, but when we’re in our window of tolerance, we can think about what happened and feel stable while doing so. 

How to Widen Your Window of Tolerance 

When trauma happens, our window of tolerance naturally decreases. It can be extremely difficult to talk about or even think about what has happened. We may even be in a state of shock. Luckily, your window of tolerance can be widened with intentional practice. Mindfulness is a great start to getting comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, which can help you to feel the difficult emotions and sensations and be present with them at the same time. This would also look like being able to tell your body that you are not in a current threat or state of danger, so there is no need to fight, flee, or hide. This may not eliminate the feelings of hypoarousal or hyperarousal, but it sends the message to your brain that it’s safe to feel this way because there is not an actual threat in the present moment and as a by-product of this practice, your symptoms can decrease.

When starting therapy, your therapist will assess what your window of tolerance is and if you’re able to stay in it while talking about trauma and stress. If you’re outside your window of tolerance, then your prefrontal cortex is shut off, making it difficult or impossible to process trauma. Widening your window of tolerance will allow you to process the trauma so you can find emotional regulation and decrease symptoms of PTSD. 

How EMDR Can Help and Why it’s Important

When working through trauma, it’s important to make sure you’re in your window of tolerance so you don’t become retraumatized. Your therapist should help you determine this and further help you regulate yourself to stay in your window of tolerance. When doing EMDR therapy, it's very important to be able to stay in your window of tolerance. During reprocessing, you think about the traumatic memory while doing BLS. In order to do this safely and effectively, you must be able to think about the trauma while also being in the present moment. 

When you’re outside your window of tolerance, it’s difficult for your brain to reprocess information and memories. If you’re dissociating when trying to reprocess a distressing memory, you could further cause distress and be retraumatized because you could be overwhelmed with sensations or feel numb and have trouble regulating them. In EMDR therapy, we give you skills called “resourcing” that will help you to regulate your nervous system before we reprocess. This will help you to feel grounded if you’re struggling with staying in your window of tolerance.

Looking to Process Trauma or Grief?

I’m Kate, and I offer virtual EMDR Therapy to residents of DC, VA, MD, and IN to help reduce the intensity of emotions, thoughts, and negative beliefs you may hold about yourself after a loss or recent trauma. Contact me at rrrcounseling.info@gmail.com or at 765-432-5496 to schedule an appointment.

Kate Regnier, LMSW, LCSW, LICSW
https://www.regnierrestorativecounseling.com/