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Managing Stress and Trauma

Trauma and stress can feel overwhelming. Making yourself feel safe and calm again can feel really difficult. Understanding your ‘Window of Tolerance’ can help.

What is the Window of Tolerance?

The Window of Tolerance is a tool to help us to understand our response to overwhelm, stress and trauma (Siegel, D 1999). It helps us to make sense of why our mind and body responds the way it does, which helps us to make sense of our behaviour.

When our senses perceive threat or danger, they send a message to our nervous system (the part of our body which connects our brain to our body) the nervous system will then react by alerting and preparing our body for danger by releasing hormones which enables our heart to beat faster, our lungs to breathe deeper and react with a ‘fight/flight/freeze’ response.

The Three Mindsets

The goal of implementing healthy and consistent coping mechanisms into your daily life is to help you maintain your mindset in the ‘Window of Tolerance’. However, to understand what this mindset looks like, it’s useful to understand what other mindsets you can become trapped in. Either side the Window of Tolerance is ‘Hyperarousal’ and ‘Hypo Arousal’.

But what do these mindsets look like?

Hyperarousal

Hyper vigilant, panic attacks, anger, anxiety, overwhelm, and feeling unsafe.

Window of Tolerance

Feeling calm and in control, feelings are manageable, able to communicate needs, responsive not reactive, and feeling safe.

Hypo arousal

Numb, depressed, low mood, feeling isolated/self-isolating, disconnected, and shut down.

Let's break them down further...

Hyperarousal

Hyperarousal can often feel like…

Our mind is racing with worries and thoughts we cannot control or block out (intrusive thoughts).
We can often feel overwhelmed and panicked.
We can feel like feel like we are ‘looking for the danger’.

So, how can we manage these feelings?

Things that may help:

Space for calm breathing
Grounding exercise
Music that soothes
Talking to someone who feels safe
Having timeout
Yoga or gentle movement
Shower/bath

The Safe Zone

Our window of tolerance is our ‘safe zone’. This is when we feel most able to cope with life. We feel more in control and able to understand what we are thinking and feeling in our mind and body.

Repeated trauma and stress can shrink our window of tolerance. Using the window of tolerance helps us to understand how we
individually react to stress and overwhelm.

Sometimes our window (safe zone) can hold more, and we are able to navigate situations easier.

Hypo Arousal

Hypo arousal can often feel…

Isolated and disconnected. Some people refer to this as ‘dissociated’ from feeling or ‘numb’.
Like we are in a cave switched off from the world.

Hypo arousal or dissociation is a survival response which can block out overwhelming experiences. However, living in this state can also block out positive feelings. As a result, we can feel disconnected to our bodily sensations and people around us.