Resilience and the window of tolerance

You may have heard or read about resilience over the last few years, as it seems to be a new buzzword. How we need to build up resilience to have good mental health; how important it is for young people to develop it. What actually is resilience?

What is the window of tolerance?

It’s called the window of tolerance by therapists, a term devised by Dr Siegel, who has done a lot of research into mindfulness. He’s interested in how well we are able to regulate our emotions. You may have never heard of the window of tolerance before, but I bet you have experienced it if you’ve ever felt like you’ve lost control of your emotions.

The window of tolerance is our ability to cope with stress on an everyday basis. You may have noticed that when you are feeling calm and relaxed, you can put up with much more than when you are feeling anxious or depressed. Some people just seem to have a wider window of tolerance than others, but don’t worry, because this stuff can be learnt once you understand what’s going on and what you can do to develop it.

If you are feeling mentally strong and capable, you can cope with little things and bigger things triggering you without these setting off an emotional response that you can’t seem to manage. For instance, if you’re on your way to work and your bus gets caught in a traffic jam, someone with a wider window of tolerance would be able to put up with this without getting too annoyed or frustrated. Whilst being able to acknowledge that it’s a pain and could have some knock-on effects, such as being late for a meeting, they can also see the bigger picture and accept that these things happen are out of our control.

They may even see the positive impacts of the situation, happy that this delay gives them longer to listen to a podcast, read a book or just enjoy watching the world go by through the window. They are not triggered and do not feel any anxiety, stress or anger. Or if they are triggered, they notice these feelings emerge and work on managing and reducing them so that they don’t become overwhelming. They remain calm and relaxed. How annoying!

Someone with a smaller window of tolerance, on the other hand, is unable to do this. Their response may be an almost immediate one of frustration and anger, stress or dismay. This response will most definitely be felt in the body – a clenching or tightness in the chest or stomach, perhaps, as their nervous system instantly feels some kind of threat. Levels of the stress chemical cortisol will quickly rise and add to the mix, and their breathing will probably become shallower. They’re on their way to losing their cool, and it seems like nothing can stop this process.

They may also start catastrophising, which means that their mind will leap to all sorts of negative consequences of being late, for instance, their boss will be annoyed at them, they will let everyone in their team down, and they may even lose their job. This leads to further anxiety and looping, which means going over and over the same negative thoughts in our minds. If you’ve ever experienced this, you’ll know it’s not very pleasant.  

This habitual way of responding to stress can then set off damaging beliefs about ourselves. Beliefs such as I’m useless. I always mess up. I’m stupid. These limiting beliefs are never far away from a small window of tolerance, always snapping on the tail of stress and anxiety. This makes us feel even worse, yay, as we go deeper into our physical and mental misery. Add a little shame into this mix as well, because we can’t control ourselves, and other people are definitely going to judge us for this (mask, mask, mask). Give it a good shake. All this and it’s not even 9 am.

Self-esteem and the inner critic

The strange thing is, half of the time we’re not even aware that we’re thinking these damaging thoughts. They have become so entrenched, so normal, that we hardly notice them when they start sniping at us. It is that critical inner voice that is quietly but persistently putting ourselves down in a way in which we’d never speak to others. If this resonates with you, then I don’t need to tell you how damaging this is to our self-esteem and the impact it has on our lives. And its power lies in its insidiousness because it’s in the background all the time, quietly ripping us to pieces as we go along our merry, oblivious way.

Trauma and your window of tolerance

If you’re also someone who is affected by trauma, then you may have a small window of tolerance, which is why people get triggered so quickly and ‘easily’. Your nervous system is always on high alert, looking for and expecting a threat so that when one does arise, you are ready to react. This is your survival instinct kicking in; it’s protecting you. The thinking, logical part of your brain will go offline whilst older, more primitive systems become activated – the decision to fight, flee, freeze or flop. It’s a biological instinct and one that you have learnt in response to stress.

The problem is that it’s often maladaptive, which means that this response is prompted by triggers that are not a threat to our lives. But our body doesn’t know this because it’s a pattern which has been forged over the years, so it seems normal. But what it’s doing is taking us back out of the present into the past (to that original time when we were genuinely in danger) and also into the future at the same time, which is where the catastrophising comes in.

The most important thing is that we’re not in the present anymore, and we’re definitely unable to think rationally. Some people describe this as being hijacked because it’s something that comes on with such speed and force, it’s not until afterwards that they can make any sense out of it. And they are right because, as I’ve already mentioned, the logical part of our brain, which lives in the frontal cortex, goes into shutdown so that the part of our brain which deals with survival can take over. It’s a goodbye to rational thinking and a hello to a flooding of emotions.

I do think that this accounts for some violence and conflict, because people simply don’t know how to control these emotions. They react without thinking. What always comes to mind for me is the image of young men becoming inexplicably angry and aggressive, of losing it because they are triggered and they don’t even know it, much less understand what’s going on. Then the feelings of shame follow, which make them feel even worse about themselves. Or the mum who is overwhelmed because she has too much to do and frequently loses her patience with her kids and feels terrible afterwards.

Therapy and your window of tolerance 

If you do have therapy and your tolerance window is quite narrow, you may notice (or your therapist may notice) that your ability to put up with uncomfortable emotions in therapy is compromised. Your instinct may be to avoid these and even stop therapy altogether (flight response). Or you may shut down and disengage (freeze). But this is exactly where you need to focus your attention if you ever want to make progress.

If you can stick with it, you can learn with your therapist how to tolerate discomfort and distress. This should be done at your own pace because everyone is different. Being able to sit with anxiety and stress and learn to observe rather than react is a skill which can be learnt and even mastered. This is what it means to regulate your emotions ,and the freedom it gives is life-changing.

I like this stuff because it works. Whatever you want to call it, resilience, window of tolerance, being able to cope – this is something we can work on and improve. We can experience ourselves changing and notice our ability to manage stress expand in ways we’ve never had before. This gives us the mental space to deal with bigger things, like what we actually want to do with our lives. Do I want to stay in this job/relationship?

So, if you can, give yourself the time and patience (because there’s no room for that critical voice during this process) to widen your window and find out who you really are beneath the stressful, traumatised part of you.