Updated on:
Reviewed by: Teayra Gray, LPC, LCPC, NCC, Lead Clinical Supervisor at The Viva Center, specializing in trauma-informed care with training in EMDR and Brainspotting.
Key Insights
Have you ever had a day when losing a sock can send you into an emotional tailspin? Or you forget to send an email, and it causes you to question your self-worth? Did you feel that you were overreacting to something, had no idea why, and felt unable to stop? We’ve all had days when seemingly small stressors cause big feelings. When our nervous system is pushed outside its window of tolerance, we experience a surge of emotions – anger, frustration, fear, or worry – that seems to overtake our minds and bodies.
This state of hyper-arousal might be followed by a sudden crash – a wave of exhaustion that leaves us feeling paralyzed and wanting to pull the covers back over our heads.
What causes these feelings, and why can we handle them some days and not others? According to therapist Stacey Thompson, LICSW, one major reason could be that we’ve ventured outside our “Window of Tolerance.”
What is the Window of Tolerance or Stress Threshold?
The window of tolerance (coined by psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel) is the zone where your nervous system can handle stress while staying calm, present, and able to think clearly. Trauma and chronic stress narrow this window, leading to anxiety and overwhelm (hyperarousal) or numbness and shutdown (hypoarousal). Supportive relationships, a sense of safety, coping tools, and therapy can all help widen it again.
When we are within our window of tolerance (stress threshold), says Thompson, feelings like irritation, anger, or anxiety are uncomfortable, but we can manage them and still function. In response to losing our sock, for example, we might just wear long pants to hide the mismatch. We’ll feel a little annoyed, but able to move forward to the next thing in our day.
“Our Window of Tolerance is shaped by our life experiences, and each person’s is unique”
~ Stacey Thompson, LICSW
It can be helpful to think of our Window as an empty glass and stress as the water that fills it. As long as the glass is less than full, we can contain the water. However, when the glass is filled too high, the water overflows and makes a mess. The same is true with our ability to tolerate stress. When our metaphorical cup overflows, the stress overwhelms our coping mechanisms, and our fight, flight, or freeze responses kick in.
What Happens When You Leave Your Window? Fight, Flight, or Freeze
When stress pushes you outside your window of tolerance, your nervous system shifts into hyperarousal (fight or flight) or hypoarousal (freeze and shutdown).
Fight and flight responses are both examples of hyperarousal, states in which our bodies prepare us for emergency action. Our pupils dilate so we can take in more information, and our muscles tense so we can take quick action.
Since the beginning of time, these reactions have helped prepare us to protect ourselves. Yet we’re not designed to be in fight or flight all the time. This represents a problem when we’re stressed, and our bodies kick into fight-or-flight automatically.
A person in a hyperaroused state may respond to a missing sock by tearing through their drawer or punching a wall.
In contrast, the freeze response is an example of hypo-arousal, which occurs when our brain senses that it is not possible to fight off or escape from a threat, so the best solution is to numb itself. Hypoarousal is characterized by feeling disconnected, immobile, or emotionless. In our daily lives, it can present as chronic fatigue, difficulty thinking or responding to information, and/or feeling emotionally shut down.
A person in a hypo-aroused state may view a lost sock as a sign that the day will be terrible and crawl back into bed.
How to Stay Within Our Window of Tolerance
We want to remain within our Window of Tolerance (or return to it as quickly as possible) so we can avoid the negative effects of hypo and hyperarousal. Thompson recommends the following.
1. Working with a therapist
Psychotherapy can be a powerful way to help expand your emotional threshold, especially when unresolved trauma is contributing to overwhelm, reactivity, or shutdown. A trauma-informed therapist can help you process difficult experiences, strengthen coping skills, and build a more flexible relationship with stress. Approaches such as EMDR and other body- and brain-based therapies may support regulation and reduce the impact of traumatic experiences. Over time, this work can help you feel more grounded and better able to respond to challenging situations.
2. Calming activities
Meditating, exercising, getting outside, knitting, writing, and reading – these are just a handful of activities that can induce a sense of calm and help you manage stress.
Thompson suggests thinking back to how you may have coped with a stressful event in the past and asking yourself: When did you start to feel better? What were you doing when that positive change occurred? Could you try that again to see if it could help with the current situation?
You can experiment with different techniques to discover what works for you. For example, if you hate sitting still and don’t feel like you “have to” or “should” try meditating, you may discover that dance or yoga works better. Your friends and family may also have suggestions for approaches that work for them.
3. Mindfulness practice
Whether you have a therapist guiding you or you’re learning on your own, mindfulness techniques can help you return to the present moment when your emotions feel out of control. Mindfulness practice involves fully attending to the present moment: the room you’re in, the way your body feels, the way you’re using space, etc. Honing in on these details can help turn off the faucet when water is threatening to overflow our emotional cup. Some popular and simple mindfulness activities can be found right here.
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