MENU

What Is Your Window of Tolerance?

Jan 26, 2022

Bhanu Joy Harrison, LCSW, SEP, Adjunct Faculty Member
Navigating Trauma​: Mindful Skills to Enhance Safety & Regulation

As we all know, there is a tremendous level of stress in the world at large right now.  Trauma is showing up in many areas of our lives and in the lives of our clients.  How do we navigate in this world right now, to attend to our balance and regulation?

The window of tolerance, a concept developed by Dan Siegel (1999), is defined as a zone that exists between the extremes of hyper and hypo-arousal. It is the zone of optimal arousal or readiness for life or focus for the activity at hand.  Dysregulated arousal, swinging uncontrollably between hyper and hypo-arousal, is exhausting and occurs when we are overwhelmed or traumatized.

The window of tolerance is a helpful mindfulness and coaching tool to increase awareness and self-regulation. Our body provides cues signaling when we are in or out of our window. Understanding these cues and choosing appropriate activities and practices helps us stay in our window.

‘Embodying resources’ is a skill to help bring us back to our window of tolerance (Levine, 1997). A resource can be any activity, interaction, quality (faith, perseverance, strength) that creates a sense of connection, calm and safety. Talking with friends, going for a walk, meditating, cooking, dancing, creating art, and noticing beauty around us are a few examples of resources that can nourish our nervous system.

Practicing any of these activities can reduce stress and decrease burnout while adding richness and depth to life experiences. When dysregulated and out of our window, it can be difficult to think of resources, so it is good practice to write a personalized list beforehand. For example, a client was overwhelmed with grief over the sudden death of her husband. She was distraught, had difficulty concentrating, and was exhausted from crying. Upon the suggestion of creating a resource list, she wrote down activities she could do when she got too dysregulated from grief. She put these in a Mason jar on her dining room table with a taped image of an orange life jacket. When needed, she would reach in and pull out a strip of paper with a resource and do that activity. ‘Drink some water’. ‘Look at the sky’. ‘Take a deep breath’. ‘Put your hand on your heart’. She felt like she put on her lifejacket of resources to ride the tsunami of grief without getting pulled under. This process gave her strength to go through the grieving process and over time, increased her ability to function.

Embodying resources not only builds resilience, it helps bring us back into our window of tolerance and greater ventral vagal activity, mitigating some of the harmful effects of trauma.

Over time, ‘taking in the good’ can rewire the brain and help override the brain’s innate response to attend more to negative or traumatic experiences, the negativity bias. The key is to pay attention to the body sensations arising from these resources , not just think about them. Paying attention to sensations is the doorway into regulation and a more balanced ventral vagal state.

Practice: Bring a resource to mind.  Imagine that you are actually in that experience.  Flesh out the sensory details: what environment are you in, who is with you, what is the quality of sound or light and so on.  Next, notice what begins to happen in your body when you imagine this resource.  Does your breath change?  Is your heart rate different?  What’s happening in your muscles or your belly?  Stretch out the goodness of these sensations for at least 12-16 seconds. This practice will enhance your neuroplasticity and help you mitigate the effects of stress and trauma in your life.  

Navigating Trauma​: Mindful Skills to Enhance Safety & Regulation

0 Comments

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More Posts

Testimonials

I very much appreciated and enjoyed the content of this class (The Dynamic Trio). I was using concepts and techniques Ann Marie shared with my clients the day after training. I loved, loved, loved the inclusion of mindfulness in the training and in the concepts. I strongly believe that psychology and spirituality are synergistic disciplines that Ann Marie weaves together masterfully.
Erik M. HuberMFTCarlsbad Coaching and Counseling
Body Electric is great for those that are looking to challenge the automatic responses and default ways of thinking and being. Realizing that the conversation with the body has a different vibration and that it doesn’t always speak quickly is so valuable. Our bodies are a wealth of comfort and wisdom. This class provides tools for starting that dialogue with yourself and with others.
Alicia UpchurchStudent CoachBrooklyn, New York
Mindful Eating, Mindful Life is all about nourishment, energy, savoring and throwing away what doesn’t work for us in life. The course unfolds deep mindfulness about moments in time, decisions, weighing options, filling the void and emptying way beyond food.
Sandy WrightM.A., PCC, MCS GraduateFayetteville, AR
This was an amazing class that helped me develop better communication tools as a coach. Meg is a wonderful and knowledgeable instructor. I loved the poems she read at the start of each class! Thank you.
El Khansa Kaicer, Ph.D, LMFTLos Angeles, California
Ann Marie is an inspiration who teaches with a great command of the material.
Jeffrey GoldwasserD.C.Sylva, NC
I had a superb experience in this class [Where Mind Goes, Qi Goes: Somatic Coaching with Qigong]. There is a universe to be explored when it comes to understanding somatic work. I just got more and more curious.
Ruby OrcuttNCC, LMHC, CASACDerby, NY
I appreciated the online learning format for obtaining my EMDRIA credits and was glad to experience a taste of professional coaching. The class (The Dynamic Trio) made me curious about the process of transitioning from a clinical psychologist towards a professional coach. Thanks!    
Karen M. FahertyPh.D.
I was reluctant to take this course [Mindful Eating: Mindful Life] as I have struggled with eating disorders since my teens. I didn’t want yet another “eating plan” that would add more clutter to my already busy thoughts about food. I honestly only took the class because it was required for PCC and I came in thinking that maybe I could learn something to help my clients. But honestly, I learned a ton about myself, my thoughts about food and eating, as well as many tools and ideas to use with my clients.
Chelle JohnsonStudent CoachAlbany, Oregon
Meg is a great coach and teacher. She has very kind presence and incorporates variety of exercises and approaches to coaching which makes learning fun and interesting. The NVC proves to be the language of life and I love to see all of us really live this language with people around us.
Srdjan VukcevicFounder and CEO, Blue CoachPodgorica, Montenegro
S-T-R-E-T-C-H! Becoming The Incredible Coach You Truly Are was amazing; a must do class for anyone wanting to become a coach or anyone who is already a coach and needs to feel refreshed and revitalized by the possibilities of coaching and the difference the practice can make. I would thoroughly recommend this course, it is not for the fainthearted, you need to be all in – but it’s hard not to be when it’s delivered with such passion and commitment by Ann-Marie, and all your colleagues and peers are so invested. A total life experience, eye opening, breath taking and consciousness deepening. This is a course I will come back to again and repeat!
Alison CallanPrincipal Consultant and Coach3C Coaching