Listening to Our Nervous System: A Guide to Our Window of Tolerance
Have you ever noticed how on some days we feel calm, balanced, and able to handle whatever comes our way? But on other days, everything feels overwhelming and we get easily irritated by the smallest things. Or perhaps there are days when some of us feel completely spaced out, exhausted, and unable to find the motivation to do the things we usually love.
This is our nervous system communicating with us.
We could think of our emotional capacity as a window. When we are within our Window of Tolerance, the ups and downs of emotions are manageable. But this window is not fixed. It changes day to day, and sometimes even hour to hour. Depending on what’s happening in our lives, the Window of Tolerance could shrink or expand.
When lack of sleep, stress, or trauma pushes us outside of this window, we experience dysregulation. Depending on the direction, we usually go one of two ways:
- Up into hyperarousal, where we feel anxious, angry, or deeply overwhelmed.
- Or down into hypoarousal, where we feel numb, heavy, or shut down.
We could support ourselves in two main ways.
- We could do things that expand our capacity, like getting enough rest, moving our bodies, and spending time with safe people.
- We could build a personal first aid toolkit for when we find ourselves pushed outside our Window of Tolerance.
To use these tools, we first need to be able to notice when we are out of capacity. We could check in with ourselves through our thoughts, our physical body, our emotions, our senses, or our social capacity.
I have put together some helpful worksheets to guide us in exploring these signals and understanding our own unique responses.
Which of these are relatable for you? Let me know in the comments below.
