Mental Flexibility: The Window of Tolerance

Trauma keeps us wired for worry, it slows down our capacity to grow, feel and experience life as it is now. The good news is we can unwind and create space within ourselves to feel the world through a lens of hope rather than mistrust.

Understanding the window of tolerance is a helpful skill in living beyond trauma. The window of tolerance is the optimal zone of arousal in which we are able to cope, function and tolerate everyday stressors, make room to process past hurt, communicate with clarity and be in a space of learning.

Trauma shrinks our window of tolerance, we spend less time in our learning flow state and longer in states of up or down (hyper-arousal or hypo-arousal).

Self awareness of our window of tolerance through understanding the physical and emotional biofeedback our bodies send us is essential, with this knowledge you are able to gradually widen your window of tolerance and stay longer in the optimal zone. The dream isn’t to always be calm but to have a mind body connection that is flexible, resilient and adaptable.

The Window of Tolerance

The window of tolerance is the zone of learning, joy and peace. When we are in our window of tolerance we are able to respond to physical and emotional demands effectively, we are self-regulated and what is called Safe and Social rather than responding from a place of fight, flight, freeze or fawn.

Trauma Impacts the Window of Tolerance

Our body is always prioritising safety, it wants you to feel safe. Trauma (which is unresolved stress) creates a pattern in our bodies to respond from a place of flight, fight, freeze or fawn even when the threat has past. Traumatic experiences can leave us in a state of biological dysregulation, where it can seem that social interactions feel disconnected, life purpose can feel murky and our bodily functions become impaired (thyroid, digestive and mental health illnesses as examples).

During traumatic experiences if we are not able to get away or fight back our body collapses into the freeze state, and particularly for interpersonal trauma we can depend on fawning (people pleasing) to survive complex and harmful abuse.

Hyperarousal

Hyperarousal is the body switched to on mode, it involved the activation of hormones such as adrenalin and cortisol to aid in escape or create fight energy.

We may feel this in our body as states of:

• Worry or anxiety

• Fear or panic

• Hypervigilance

• Rage

• Restlessness or decreased sleep

• Inability to focus

• Addictions, over eating or restrictions

• Outbursts, impulsive behaviour or compulsive thoughts

Hypoarousal

Hypoarousal is the biological stage after hyperarousal. It is where our body shuts off to replenish spent hormones. It is the freeze state.

• Disconnection or flatness

• Seperate from emotions

• Memory loss

• Unable to think or respond

• Depressive state, slow moments, low desire to move, increased sleep habits

• Auto pilot or disassociation

Living in your Window of Tolerance

Understanding how our body feels in our window of tolerance and outside of it helps us see the warning signs of dysregulation and take steps to come back to balance. When we know a even the slightest change of temperature, smell, sound, touch or a thought can be dysregulating and push us outside of our window of tolerace, we can appreciate our bodies rather than judging them.

There are four simple steps to understanding your window of tolerance:

1. Pay Attention to your body and the symptoms

2. Identify the symptoms your body experiences

3. Label your distress level (1 - 10)

4. Identify the cause and create new patterns

1. Pay Attention to your body and the symptoms

Our body is always detecting the stimulis in our world to check for threats, even more so when we have experienced trauma where everything felt like a threat or people who we believed where meant to keep us safe were the people harming us. Helping identify to your body to feel here and now (present moment), rather than there and then (past trauma).

2. Identify the symptoms your body experiences

Now start to check in with yourself, are you in states of hyperarousal and hypoarousal throughout the day? How often and what time of the day or events that happen bring your body into this state?

3. Label your distress level (1 - 10)

Scaling 1 - 10 (1 - being not at all and 10 - being very distressing) is a powerful tool of measuring your distress, your level of distress is unique to you. When we understand for example that dirty plates is 9 out of 10 for you but 2 out of 10 for people you live with you can start having meaningful conversations instead of invalidating fights.

4. Identify the cause and create new patterns

Writing and understanding our triggers that activate Hyper or Hypo arousal takes us closer to re-programming ourselves and creating healthier, kinder patterns. For example if dirty dishes are triggering to you because you experienced fear or abuse in childhood about dirty dished then you can start to create safety, tolerance and ‘here and now’ compassion for yourself.

Increase Your Window of Tolerance

Living within our window of tolerance is powerful way to feel like we know ourselves and make decisions from the clearest part of our minds. There are two ways to optimise this:

1. Widen Your Window of Tolerance

2. Self-Regulate

Widening your window of tolerance helps you to handle daily stress without being pushed into hyper or hypo arousal to cope.

Self-regulation helps you handle stress and return to the window of tolerance.

1. Widen Your Window of Tolerance

There are ways we can increase our window of tolerance and approach life with mental flexibility.

Practice Mindfulness

Building Awareness

• focus your attention

• identify what you are feeling

• ask yourself why do you feel that way

• question why those feelings matter

Be More Open

• let yourself feel everything, be open to both positive and negatives

• don’t push away unpleasant thoughts or emotions

• let negatives flow and pass through your mind

Be More Accepting

• accept feelings of both positive and negative experiences

• avoid judgment or censoring of your thoughts and feelings

• don’t be ashamed, embrace it instead

Be Present

• stay in the present moment and focus on what you are currently doing

• pay attention without judgment

• avoid multitasking as this is mentally draining

Increase Happiness

There are four happiness chemicals that your brain releases when you feel good. These chemicals are known as DOSE. When you are happy and have a positive experience, your window of tolerance will naturally expand.

By understanding how each of the chemicals works, you can trigger the release of one of the chemicals to improve your happiness.

Here are some examples of activities you can do:

Dopamine

• make a to-do list (each time you tick off a task you increase dopamine levels)

• create something such as writing, music, arts and crafts

• meditate

Oxytocin

• physical touch, cuddling, hugging, and even eye contact

• socializing with friends and family

• listening to music

Serotonin

• getting sunshine outdoors

• cold showers

• getting a massage

Endorphin

• laughter and crying

• eating dark chocolate or spicy foods

• creating music or art

Reduce Shame

Shame thrives in secrecy, and it can become a pattern of shame filled or defensive behaviour. Resolving shame needs openness, honesty and safe spaces for it to be held and transformed.

1. Name your shame

2. Listen to how you speak to yourself

3. Write about your shame

4. Tell someone you trust, shame evaporates in safe spaces

Build Resilience

Resilience is vital for surviving and adapting in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, or stress.

Build Connections

• prioritize relationships by connecting with those close to you

• join a group and build one-on-one relationships

Foster Wellness

• focus on all three aspects of health, (physical, mental and social)

• Avoid negative outlets (masking your pain with substance abuse)

Find Purpose

• look for opportunities for self-discovery

• take steps towards your goals (long term and short term goals)

• embrace change and be optimistic

• help others (supporting a friend, volunteering, connecting with support groups)

Overcoming hyperarousal is generally easier than compared to self-regulating when you experience hypoarousal. We need to move from hypoarousal, through hyperarousal to come back into our window of tolerance.

Self-Regulate Hyperarousal

When you experience hyperarousal symptoms you can soothe yourself with these techniques:

Release your anger (try one of these)

• close your eyes and lay down to let yourself relax and calm down

• give yourself a 10-second hug by wrapping your arms around yourself and holding tightly

• stretch your arms out in front of you to relieve that tension built up

• shake it off to relive that stress

• take a drink of water to cool yourself down and calm your nerves

Breathing exercise

• pause for a moment

• take a long and slow deep breath

• inhale with your nose and fill your lungs

• hold the breath for 3 seconds

• exhale with your mouth

• count each breath and do at least 10 deep breaths

Meditate

• being mindful and meditating go hand in hand

• helps to regulate emotions and thoughts

• relives stress by calming you down

Practice yoga

• yoga is the practice of controlling the mind and body

• improves your concentration and reduces stress

• relieves any tension built-up

Self-Regulate Hypoarousal

When you experience hypoarousal symptoms you can activate your body with these techniques:

Activate your senses (tap into your five senses)

• warm bath

• massage

• aromatic candles or scents

• music or natural sounds

• tasty food

Grounding exercises (try one of these)

• notice your feet connecting with the floor, how does it make you feel

• hold an object in your hand and really focus on it

• 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 exercise, close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, open your eyes, and look around the room and acknowledge:

  • 5 things you can see

  • 4 things you can feel

  • 3 things you can hear

  • 2 things you can smell

  • 1 thing you can taste

Additional Self-Regulation Techniques

Physical activity

• any form of physical exercise you enjoy helps

Challenge your thoughts

• recognizing negative thoughts, challenge the thought and reframing them in a positive way

Write things down

• writing helps clear your thoughts and unloads all your emotions out

• clearing mental clutter gives clarity and focus

Your Window of Tolerance

Appreciate you taking the time to learn about your window of tolerance, to review:

1. Recognize your window of tolerance and build awareness of your symptoms

2. Widen your window of tolerance

3. Self-regulate when you dysregulate and experience symptoms of hyperarousal or hypoarousal

This is a life long practice, it requires constant reliable repetition to form this new habit and awareness to be able to remove the automatic responses that trauma imbeds in the brain.

If you or someone you know are suffering with the effects of trauma please reach out for support.

Why the Baby Blues surface in the happiest time of your life.

We quietly rock our soft, warm baby in the dark hours of the morning, holding in our wee and having revenge fantasies about our sleeping partner. 

It’s common and normal to feel more than sad after welcoming a new addition or additional humans to our life, even though it’s paradoxically the time when we can also feel the happiest. 

Feeling this sadness as a parent is really real, and the cause? Having so many of our deep psychological, physical and social needs going unmet.

Parenthood is hands down the only time in our lifespan when we have the demands of consistently meeting the needs of a fragile new person, while systematically having to put our own needs on pause.

As breathtakingly good as being a parent is, it also comes with the weight of expectation, a huge sense of the unknown, jittery fears rising to the surface at unexpected times, overwhelming stress and at times it can downright test your tolerance. 

All this while you have an ever-increasing mountain of unmet needs. Makes sense why it can feel really rough right?

It is possible to enjoy the bumpy road and come out the other side with a few bruises and the wisdom of resilience too.

Here are 5 tips on how:

Befriend your trauma.

Ever found it really hard to find the words around your trauma? That’s because trauma isn’t stored in the language centre of our brain, it is stored in our bodies and in our senses. And it has a knack of showing up at the most inconvenient times, like birth, breastfeeding and special occasions. The more we know about how our trauma is triggered in our bodies, the more comfort, care and clarity we can include in times where we are most vulnerable. {As a trauma aware birth doula I see first hand the power that having a voice creates after feeling silenced}.

Get out of your head and into your body.

Remember above how trauma is stored in your body. And remember how unproductive your brain was waking you up a 2am to do some serious overthinking. The best thing to do when you are consumed by thoughts? Move your body. Yoga is one of the best practices for combining breath-work, body movements and conscious relaxation. 

Boundaries keep you and me safe, together.

If we don’t say yes authentically, we say yes resentfully and that leads to more problems that if we’d said no in the first place. Boundaries keep you safe, they keep relationships healthy and are the best way to role model to young minds what is or isn’t socially acceptable. {Chose what you want and don’t want, let people know when they’ve overstepped, know that upholding the boundary is harder than setting it}.

Being listened to is being loved.

There is such tangible pain relief to freely and openly sharing your birth story, your parenting wins and struggles or your grief over all the changes you’re going though. A friend, partner, fellow parent or therapist - find one person to trust. {Learning to trust is also affected by trauma, if you have a trauma history, talking to and trying to trust the people that contributed can increase your risk of feeling unheard}. 

Let it be, let it go, let it in.

Pain shows up for us to take action to stop the source of it, sadness shows up for us to be helped, joy shows up to remind us life is so worth living. They are all valid and important, denying one doesn’t expand the others, they all belong together in the emotional human soup that you are. Whatever you can’t change right now see if you can let it be, whatever you feel you can’t hold onto any more practice letting parts of it go, whatever you need more of allow yourself to let it in.

Entering the world of parenthood can be the highlight of your whole existence. It’s also allowed to feel more than sad at times too. 

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If asking for help is the hardest thing imaginable thing for you to do, then I am your person, I get how hard it is to ask for someone to listen but I will show up for you again and again, even when you don’t feel worthy of it.

I am kindness filled counsellor, birth doula, wife and mum. I have lived experience of the life-altering challenges caused by childhood sexual abuse, physical assault and emotional trauma. I have walked the path of a successful and positive recovery to become a kind, thoughtful and dedicated therapist.