Talking about trauma can make things worse. I'm a therapist, and I know how valuable it
can be to talk about trauma. But when you don't understand your window of tolerance,
talking about trauma can backfire. So it's super common for people to get stuck in a trauma state
but literally not even realize it. And that's why understanding the window of tolerance is
absolutely essential to doing trauma work. It's probably one of the first things your therapist
assesses, without you even realizing it. And when you do, when you can stay in your window,
it makes it possible to talk about trauma, process through it, and move forward,
instead of getting stuck, overwhelmed, flooded, or dissociated. So in this video we'll talk about the
three states of your nervous system. One of them looks like high-functioning dissociation. We're
going to talk about two common pitfalls of trying to talk about trauma and the practical skills you
can use to widen your window of tolerance so that you're more resilient in the face of stressors or
trauma. Okay. So first, one of the really interesting, paradoxical things about doing
trauma work is that sometimes - well, actually, often - a lot of times trying to talk about trauma
can make things worse. I mean, not only does it feel worse, and that's why so many people avoid
thinking about or talking about their trauma, but also bringing up trauma without a certain set of
skills can actually reinforce the trauma response in your brain, making it stronger and louder
instead of helping you work through it. So here's what happens when we remember a traumatic event:
we're bringing to mind the thoughts, feelings, and sensations of that trauma. Our uniquely human
brain perceives danger right here in the present moment, and this triggers a fight/flight/freeze or
fawn response right here in your body. The memory of trauma in the past triggers a physical reaction
in the present, a survival response. And one of the results of a fight/flight/freeze response is
that it shuts down your ability to think clearly. Like literally your prefrontal cortex has less
blood flow and less activity, and this makes it hard to think clearly, so it makes you feel like
you're actually in danger right now. And when you feel like you're in danger, you're going to run
away from that tiger, not balance your budget. So your brain shuts down emotional processing
and cognitive processing. And then it's going to power up your muscles, like your fight-or-flight
response. Or, if the threat seems overwhelming, it kicks on a freeze response, which is like shut
down, curl up, hide, and conserve your energy. And these are all survival responses. They're primal.
They're deep in your anciently evolved brain. And they can help you survive a physical threat,
but they can also stop you from being able to process past trauma. So what happens is you think
about a traumatic event, your body gets activated, your processing shuts down, and your brain learns,
"Oh, I wasn't just in danger when that car crash happened, but just thinking about that
car crash feels dangerous." And that anxiety gets stronger and stronger over time. So people often
get stuck in the number one pitfall, which is just avoiding thinking about a traumatic
experience. Or the second most common problem is that when people try to work through their trauma,
they try to just get over with it. So they just try to jump in too fast, and they get triggered,
and they reinforce that trauma response. But with the right skills, you can learn to work through
trauma in a really productive way. And here's where the window of tolerance comes in. When
we understand how our nervous system works, you can learn how to become less reactive to stress
and increase your capacity to experience all kinds of feelings, not just stress or
overwhelm but also happiness and excitement and joy and love. All the feelings. So this term,
the window of tolerance, it was originally coined by Dan Siegel, and it describes how your brain and
body reacts to high levels of stress, which are the common physical responses to trauma. Every
person has a range of experiences that they're able to sit with and work through. So basically,
your window of tolerance is your personal capacity to tolerate distress, to handle big emotions and
challenging experiences. So there's essentially three zones of our nervous system. So our our
window of tolerance is characterized by a sense of groundedness, of flexibility, of openness and
curiosity. It's our ability to be present here in the moment and to tolerate the stressors that come
at us. So when you're in your window of tolerance, you can be here in the present moment. You can
think flexibly and connect with other people. Uh you can sit with your feelings or thoughts. And
when we're regulated or supported enough, this is the space, right here in our window of tolerance,
where we can work through feelings and intense memories and bodily reactions to trauma. And if
we're in this space while we work through trauma, our trauma is actually going to resolve over time.
Our trauma is actually going to resolve as we process through it, as we talk about it or share
it or or work through those feelings. But what we often see with trauma survivors is that when they
try to work through their trauma or even just through experiences in their daily lives, they
quickly get overwhelmed. And that's because what's happening is their nervous system is getting stuck
in this hyper-aroused response. What we have, when we have unprocessed trauma, even small triggers
can flood us with a fight/flight/freeze response, and this shuts down processing. So this next
state is called hyperarousal. It's when you feel threatened or anxious, even if you don't know why.
Uh you're more sensitive to sights and sounds. You might feel like you have a racing heart or racing
thoughts, or you might feel like hypervigilant, or you might see threats everywhere. leading you
to act irritable and edgy. Um you might interrupt people. Um you might get controlling, or or your
muscles might feel really jittery, or you might feel just driven to keep busy all the time. Or you
might just do a lot of running, whether that is like physical exercise or, you know, perfectionism
or procrastination or distraction. So there's the flight response, right? We're avoiding things that
make us feel more activated or more stressed out. So essentially we get stuck here when
your brain has remembered a past threat, and then it triggers the fight/flight/freeze response here
in your body. And when we get stuck in this state over and over, that chronic stress can be harmful
and depleting. Now, just to be clear: being here once in a while? No problem. Like we're built and
made to handle stress, to get activated and then to resolve that threat and come back down into
a rest-and-digest state. But a lot of people who have experienced trauma get stuck up here
for extended periods of time time, or they pop into this state with just tiny little triggers.
They're very, very highly reactive to triggers. Um so for example, let's just say you're ready to
work on your old trauma, but every time you try to talk about it in therapy, you get like all
shaky. Your mind races or it goes blank, and it's like you can't even make words anymore. And the
therapy session seems like it's over in a blink, and you can't really remember what was said. So
that's most likely getting stuck in hyperarousal. Okay. The third state is hypoarousal. And I think
this one doesn't get enough uh emphasis. So this is where your primal responses turn on a
shutdown-and-detach mode. So you may feel numb, foggy, detached, unmotivated, tired, lethargic.
So in the short term you might feel like giving up or saying like, "Why bother?" But in the long run
this looks like burnout and depression. So this is, again, is a protective, numbing state. It's
triggered by your brain perceiving a threat to be too big to escape. Like a little child
with an abusive parent - they can't escape, so they just numb out to protect themselves
from hurt. Sometimes people prefer being in this state because they don't have to feel.
Um some people are actually so good at this state that they might look super chill on the outside,
but they're actually massively dissociating in an area. So maybe they're able to function at work,
but they're not functioning at home or in their relationships. And on the opposite end of this,
you might look like completely frozen up and be unable to move or speak. I experienced this
recently. So I was in the hospital recently for 4 days with my baby, and the doctors would talk
to me, and I would have to have them repeat what they said like over and over again because I just
wasn't processing what they were saying. Like I'm reasonably intelligent, with some medical
background, and it wasn't that the words were too big for me. It was that the stress of worrying
about my child made that part of my brain that processes information not work so well. So I was
stuck somewhere between hyper and hypoarousal. And I seemed fine on the outside. I was like pleasant
and cracking jokes. But I wasn't processing information. And then when I got home it all hit
me, and I was able to understand her diagnosis. But also emotionally I was drowning. Like I didn't
feel stressed or look distressed in the hospital, but when I got home I had a meltdown. So sometimes
this state looks like fawning. Uh this is the instinctual response to appease people, like
even a perpetrator. You may try to keep others happy, acquiesce, or try to just go with the flow
and avoid any conflict. you may give up all your boundaries in an attempt to stay safe. Okay. So
let's see if we can understand what this concept of the window of tolerance looks like throughout
the day. So let's say that you wake up in the morning. It's a normal day. You get to work,
and your boss is immediately jumping down your throat. Your your boss is rushing you, and you're
feeling stressed. But then you make a mistake, and you feel like this overwhelming sense of shame. So
you act like everything's fine, but inside you kind of go numb, and you're horrified. Like you
you think um about quitting. You feel like you're no good. You don't care anymore about the project.
You just say yes to everyone and kind of just go through the motions. And then when you get home,
you like just curl up in a ball on the couch and watch TV and zone out. Maybe your spouse asks you,
"How was your day?" and you can't even manage to tell them how it was. Uh your walls go up. Maybe
you're irritable or discouraged or you feel like a failure, but you can't muster any energy to think
about work or to face the challenge. So this is when you get stuck in hypoarousal. You just feel
kind of numb, burnt out, and tired all the time. Now, let's go back to talking about what this
window of tolerance looks like for people. Some people have a very large window of tolerance. It's
unique to every person. They're able to behave really flexibly. They're able to think flexibly
about problems, and they're able to be really effective even when there's high degrees of stress
or difficulties in their life. And and trauma can shrink people's window of tolerance. Your nervous
system is just more reactive to perceived threats. But anything that depletes your resilience can
shrink your window of tolerance. So that includes physical illness, chronic stress, discrimination,
poverty, or even in the short term, stuff like being hungry or tired. All of that can shrink your
window, your capacity to handle what's going on. But the great thing is your window is not fixed.
You can learn and develop skills to expand your window of tolerance. Every time you learn a new
skill, like grounding or willingness or cognitive defusion ,you increase your window of tolerance.
When you take care of your body with sleep and nutrition and exercise, or when you build up
a support network, like that all increases your ability to work through big emotions and intense
memories. So do challenging exercises - so things that are stressful but within your growth zone.
So that's like kind of right in here. This includes things like a physical exercise,
uh climbing mountains, facing stressors head on or solving problems, and like processing through
difficult emotions and memories. All of these slightly stressful experiences can help expand our
window of tolerance. But when it comes to trauma work a good therapist can be vital. So here's what
a therapist does. They're sitting in the room with you, and even if you aren't aware of it,
they notice it when you go out of your window of tolerance, and they're going to help you
get back regulated. So they might prompt you to use a grounding skill, or they might help soothe
you with comforting words and things like that. So when you're stuck in hyperarousal, what you
need is soothing skills. You need grounding skills or cognitive skills. Like let's think about this
rationally. Anything that helps you get a little a little bit of distance between yourself and
your feelings. So this is like cooling it down, basically. Maybe we slow down the processing of
your emotions or memories um through writing, or we just do it in really tiny doses so that
you don't get overwhelmed. Um so for example, if you're processing trauma and you're getting
really activated and anxious, your therapist would coach you to get grounded by like holding a heavy
object in your hands or pressing something cold on your face, and then just always helping you
remember that here, in this moment, you are safe. So all of those techniques help you return to that
window of tolerance so that your brain can kick on and process those memories. Okay. So what if
you're stuck in hypoarousal? So if you're stuck in hypoarousal, you need gentle activation, right?
Getting re-present. You need um laughing a little bit, movement. So in this case we need to kind of
heat things up. So maybe you start shaking your hands or patting your legs. And the goal is to
move. You can't go really, usually, straight from hypoarousal into a regulated state. You actually
have to go from hypoarousal into activation and then back to regulated state. So we can't
just think our way out of this. We need to use our body to communicate to our brain that we are safe,
that we can handle this, we can - we're capable, and that we're safe here, in the present moment.
So one of the most effective things we can do to process trauma is to learn to identify these
states in yourself and then tailor your favorite grounding skills and activating skills to help
you move back into your window of tolerance. So here's a couple questions to help you explore
this. When you're in your window of tolerance, how do you feel? What helps you stay there when things
get tough? What kind of things push you above your window of tolerance? What does hyperarousal
feel like in your body? What do you notice about yourself in this state? What would others notice
about you when you're in this state? And what kind of things push you into hypoarousal? What
kind of situations lead you to feel numb or shut down? What does that feel like in your body? Does
that lead to any kind of actions or behaviors, like oh, I'm just not going to go into work,
or I'm not going to talk to anyone today because I'm feeling so shut down? As you work with a
therapist to face your fears and to process hurtful experiences, your window of tolerance
will grow. You can build your internal resources when you build self-awareness of what zone you're
in and as you develop grounding skills and learn to get activated when you need to. The more
time you spend within your window of tolerance will strengthen your parasympathetic response.
That's essentially the regulating part of your nervous system. And little by little, as you face
challenges in your stretch zone, you can widen your window of tolerance. And that'll help you be
more adaptive, flexible, and resilient and make it possible for you to work through and process old
trauma. Okay. Hope this video was helpful. Thank you for watching, and take care.
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