Hearing yourself getting louder mid-argument while also keenly aware that you’ve invested way more than required and may be losing control.
Then there’s the other end of the spectrum.
Something that would ideally produce an emotional response, never really lands and somewhere in the back of your mind you think “Shouldn’t I be feeling something?”.
Both have to do with arousal — how switched-on the body is at a given moment. This is called the window of tolerance.
Think of arousal as a scale with two extreme ends and a band somewhere in the middle where one can think and feel at the same time. At one end, the feeling takes over. At the other end, everything goes quiet.
Most of what we’ve covered in the distress tolerance series aims at getting back into that sweet spot, or expanding it.
The same event can land completely differently depending on where on that scale it finds us.
This blog is about recognising where you are in the window of tolerance, and knowing which of the distress tolerance skills is built for that particular situation.
The Zone Where You Can Cope
The sweet spot or the optimal zone of arousal is the window of tolerance. Within it, strong feelings can be processed rather than only survived.
It’s a helpful way of thinking about an otherwise abstract circumstance. No test can tell us exactly how wide our window is or where its edges fall.
The window of tolerance is more than being absolutely calm forever. We can be annoyed without the annoyance running the next hour. Someone can criticise us and we can separate the constructive feedback from the tone, rather than perceiving it as an insult and reacting. We can be tired and still decide what to do about being tired.
Nobody can stay in their window of tolerance permanently, but it’s a helpful goal to work towards reaching there whenever possible.
When the Window of Tolerance Narrows
Trauma, anxiety and long stretches of stress all make the window smaller. After experiencing any of them for prolonged periods, the body starts defending against things that aren’t dangerous, reading an old threat into a present moment.
Leaving the window isn’t always a malfunction. For someone in a genuinely bad situation, shutting down is a human response rather than a failure. Some days are also just harder than others — a narrower window makes a difficult Wednesday more difficult.
Being outside the window is the situation wherein assessing our own state becomes challenging, so asking someone to notice they’re overwhelmed asks the most of them at a moment when they have less to give.
A more reliable sign that is easier to read than your emotions is the feeling in your body. Fast or slow heartbeat. Tense or heavy limbs. Talking too much, or not talking at all. Those are visible from outside ourselves in a way a mood isn’t, and they’re also what we’d notice first in someone else.
The right kind of support can be the fastest way to expand your window, and the wrong kind of company can be the swiftest way to shorten it.
Hyperarousal: When Everything Speeds Up
Hyperarousal is too much activation. Anxiety, panic, fear, hypervigilance, defensiveness, anger.
Sleep goes, appetite goes, concentration goes. The mind won’t switch off.
It’s the reply already assembled before the other person has finished speaking, and the message sent at speed and reread at length the next morning.
This is the state the TIPP skills were built for. They work on body chemistry rather than on reasoning, which matters, because reasoning is precisely what’s least available here. Cold water lowers the heart rate directly, and no argument is required for it to work.
The STOP skill does something just as necessary — it buys the few seconds between the urge and the act, which is often the whole difference between a bad afternoon and a worse one.
And Wise Mind ACCEPTS is for the stretch afterwards, when the arousal is still high and has nowhere useful to go yet.
Hypoarousal: When Everything Goes Flat
Hypoarousal is too little activation. Numbness, no energy, nothing to say, movement slowed down. The kind of flatness we can’t explain to someone who asks what’s wrong.
This state is generally harder to come back from than the one above, and the reason is structural rather than a matter of willpower. Hyperarousal at least supplies energy to act with. Hypoarousal removes the very thing we’d need in order to do something about it.
Which is why the way back in is sensory. The self-soothing skills (IMPROVE) can be used here to bring sensation back rather than to calm anything down, and focusing on one thing in the moment gives us a way back into the room. Self-soothing skills work by lowering the bar for action.
People can move between the two states in short periods, and some of us sit in both at once — flat and watchful together — in which case working with whichever one we feel more strongly is helpful.
Hypoarousal can also sound like depression and there is an overlap. What separates a state from a condition is duration. If your lack of energy lasts consistently for most of the day for more than 15 days then it’s likelier to be depression than a passing hypoarousal state.
How the Window Gets Wider
Widening the window of tolerance comes from consistent arousal regulation. Mindfulness is another practice that helps increase endurance.
The reality acceptance skills can lead us to that mindfulness when practised repeatedly to accept life as it is. Radical acceptance, turning the mind and willingness help on that path. So do half-smiling, willing hands and mindfulness of current thoughts.
The benefits of widening the window of tolerance are subtle. What changes is felt in smaller ways: less time spent outside the window, and a shorter route back from it.
Crisis survival skills aren’t for everyday problems, and the window is best used when something’s wrong, not a dashboard to constantly watch.
Somewhere along the way, coping well stops meaning a day without difficulty.
It starts meaning something less flattering and more useful: that we can feel intense emotions for a while, know it, and still find the way back before the day is lost.
And if you need help finding the way back, we’re always just a call away!