Key Takeaways
- Trauma can narrow your window of tolerance, making everyday stress harder to handle.
- Practicing breathing exercises and relaxation techniques can help you manage your emotions.
- Seeing a mental health professional can help you heal and expand your window of tolerance.
Traumatic experiences can overwhelm your neurological system, which can lead to heightened sensitivity and affect your ability to manage your emotions for many years afterward.
In this article, we explore how trauma can affect your window of tolerance, signs that your window of tolerance has been disrupted, and steps you can take to heal.
What Is the Window of Tolerance?
The window of tolerance, developed by American psychiatrist Dan Siegel, MD, describes the optimal range of arousal for daily functioning.
Within this window, we can process emotions, think clearly, and communicate effectively, explains Brian Jo, PhD, a licensed psychologist at Columbia University Medical Center.
Everyone’s window of tolerance is unique, with upper and lower boundaries defined by hyperarousal (too much arousal) and hypoarousal (too little), says Dr. Jo.
A wide window allows for tolerating emotional experiences and maintaining safety. A narrow window can lead to dysregulated states where everything seems threatening, Dr. Jo explains.
Trauma and Its Impact on the Window of Tolerance
Traumatic experiences disrupt your emotional balance and sense of safety, causing fear, confusion, helplessness, or dissociation. These experiences can include accidents, illness, violence, and natural disasters.
When facing a threat, your nervous system triggers survival mode. You are no longer able to stay within your window of tolerance and your nervous system moves you from a state of safety to a state of protection, says Dr. Jo.
Once outside your window of tolerance, your ability to function decreases, and you’re unable to process and integrate the experience, Dr. Jo explains.
This may result in memories of the event being incomplete, fragmented, or contradictory. You might also experience symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), says Dr. Jo.
Impact of Complex Trauma
Complex trauma is a form of trauma that is severe and ongoing. It includes experiences such as childhood neglect, abuse, assault, violence, racism, and war, Dr. Jo explains.
Experiencing complex trauma can overwhelm your window of tolerance repetitively and across time.
Complex trauma often develops in childhood, but may also develop in adulthood, says Dr. Jo. Below, he outlines how this can affect the window of tolerance:
- Experiencing complex trauma in childhood: During childhood, a mix of your genetic temperament and caregiving environment shape the width of your window of tolerance. Childhood experiences of complex trauma narrow the window over time, stunt the developmental process, and impair the functioning of the mind and body.
- Experiencing complex trauma in adulthood: As adults, complex trauma narrows the window of tolerance and impairs your ability to function effectively and consistently in the contexts of relationships, school, and work, due to increased emotional dysregulation.
Signs of Window of Tolerance Disruption
When your window of tolerance is disrupted, Dr. Jo explains that you may experience either hyperarousal or hypoarousal:
- Hyperarousal: In this state, the sympathetic nervous system is overactive. You may feel hypervigilant, have intense emotional reactions (often fear or anger), experience anxiety, exaggerated startle responses, disorganized thoughts, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, sleep issues, and nightmares.
- Hypoarousal: Here, the parasympathetic nervous system is immobilized to save energy. This can result in numbness, shock, absence of sensation and emotion, severe depression, disabled cognitive processing, disconnection from others, and dissociation. Some people even experience a total mental and physical collapse, causing them to shut down.
Your body tries to protect you from new threats and prevent additional experiences of trauma by narrowing your window of tolerance and increasing your sensitivity to situations that look threatening to your nervous system, Dr. Jo explains.
However, when your window of tolerance is narrow, even minor stressors, memories of traumatic instances, or harmless situations can trigger you and push you out of the window of tolerance, into either hyperarousal or hypoarousal. This can make it difficult for you to function.
Hyperarousal
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Overactivated nervous system
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Rush of energy
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Intense emotional reaction
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Disorganized thought processes
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Intrusive thoughts
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Startle responses
Hypoarousal
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Immobilized nervous system
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Lack of energy
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Emotional shock and numbness
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Disabled cognitive processing
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Dissociation
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Collapse and shutdown
Healing and Expanding the Window of Tolerance
These are some steps you can take to heal from the traumatic experience and expand your window of tolerance.
Self-Regulation Techniques
Self-regulation involves becoming aware of your triggers, noticing how you react to them, and learning to control your reactions.
These are some strategies that can help you track your triggers and reactions:
- Pay attention to your triggers: A first step is to identify the experiences, thoughts, and images that bring you to the boundaries of your window of tolerance and trigger the hyperarousal/hypoarousal states, says Dr. Jo.
- Be mindful of your reactions: The next step is to be present in your body and observe how you react to your triggers. By being present in your body and paying attention to your emotions and bodily sensations, you can increase your capacity to mindfully observe your experiences and learn to regulate your arousal states, Dr. Jo explains.
These are some steps you can take to regulate your emotions if you’re experiencing hyperarousal, according to Dr. Jo:
- Breathing exercises: Breathing exercises like deep breathing, box breathing, and cyclic sighing can help counter hyperarousal by calming your heart rate, restoring regular breathing, and reducing anxiety.
- Relaxation techniques: Doing a progressive muscle relaxation or a relaxing visualization exercise can also help you manage your reaction to a stressor.
- Purposeful movements: Lengthening and aligning your posture, and pushing against walls can help discharge anger and tension.
- Environment scanning: Doing a 5-4-3-2-1 scan of your current environment can help you stay grounded in the present. List five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste.
These are some steps you can take to regulate yourself if you’re experiencing hypoarousal, according to Dr. Jo:
- Stand and move your body.
- Shake yourself.
- Jump up and down.
- Squeeze and relax your muscles.
- Engage your five senses, looking for things you can touch or smell, for example.
It can be helpful to maintain a journal where you track your triggers and your physiological reactions. You can also make note of which grounding techniques help you regulate your emotions and return to your window of tolerance.
You can heal and expand your window of tolerance by restoring your capacity to integrate your experiences and be present in the moment.
Therapeutic Interventions
It can also be helpful to seek help from a mental health professional who is trained in trauma-informed therapy and can help you navigate the aftereffects of trauma. Trauma-informed care takes into account your trauma history and provides a safe and supportive environment for healing.
These are some forms of therapy that can help you heal from trauma:
- Trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT): TF-CBT helps you manage your trauma responses and re-learn that there are safe people in the world who will not hurt you.
- Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy: EMDR therapy involves processing and understanding the traumatic experience while paying attention to a back-and-forth sound or movement, such as a finger waving from side to side, a tone, or a light.
- Somatic experiencing: Somatic therapy integrates body awareness into the therapeutic process, by creating awareness of inner physical sensations, which are considered the carriers of traumatic memories.
After identifying the boundaries of your window of tolerance and developing more regulation tools, working with your therapist at the edges of your window can help you develop a “dual focus” on both your internal emotional experience and the circumstances of the present, says Dr. Jo. “This dual focus helps you to stay present, observe your experiences, and increase your capacity to tolerate intense emotions.”
This exercise not only expands your window of tolerance, but also supports the healing process of trauma by building trust, developing new beliefs, and internalizing a safe and supportive relationship that can undo the harm created from interpersonal trauma, says Dr. Jo.
Supportive Relationships
Building healthy, supportive relationships with trusted people can help you co-regulate your emotions and expand your window of tolerance.
Support can come in the form of loved ones such as friends, family members, and partners. It can also be in the form of a support group of people who have had similar experiences and can share experience, resources, and advice.
Self-Care Practices
Practicing self-care can help support better physical and emotional well-being and improve your resilience. Make sure you’re getting enough sleep, following a nutritious diet, getting regular exercise, and engaging in hobbies that interest you.
