Normally as an aspiring clinical psychologist, I don't really focus too much on how our biological processes and the nervous system impacts our mental health. I should focus on this area a lot more than I do because our physical reactions to trauma, anxiety and depression are very important. Instead I tend to focus on the psychological processes that interact with our physical processes to produce behaviours. Yet as I deal with my sexual trauma more and more, I've realised I can no longer ignore the impact our nervous system and the role it plays in our mental health. Therefore, in this clinical psychology podcast episode, we'll be focusing on window of tolerance, hyperarousal and hypoarousal during psychological distress. And how importantly we can get back within our window of tolerance to improve our mental health. If you enjoy learning about clinical psychology, biological psychology and the nervous system then you'll love today's episode.
Today's psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Biological Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
What Is The Window of Tolerance?
This is a topic that has been critical in my rape counselling and once I understood this psychological concept, things started to get a little easier. You or your clients understanding the window of tolerance isn’t a magic bullet that will suddenly make everything better but it can be immensely useful in healing from trauma, including sexual violence.
Therefore, Window of Tolerance was a term coined by Daniel J. Siegel who was a clinical professor at the UCLA School of Medicine. He created Window of Tolerance to describe the optimal emotional “zone” that people can best exist in so they can thrive and function in their everyday lives. When someone is within their Window of Tolerance then they have a sense of groundedness, openness, curiosity, presence, flexibility, an ability to emotionally self-regulate and a capacity to tolerate any stressors that pop up in their everyday life.
However, either side of the Window of Tolerance are two different states where we do not function and thrive in our daily lives. These states are called the hypoarousal and hyperarousal states.
When someone is in hyperarousal then they are in an emotional state that we can characterise as panic, anger, high energy, anxiety, irritability, overwhelm, chaos, hypervigilance, startle responses and fight-or-flight instincts. For example, I know I’m in a hyperarousal state running my panic attacks, anxiety and my thoughts running a million miles an hour about how unsafe I am and how I need to escape or I am going to die or get raped again.
On the other end of the spectrum is the hypoarousal state where someone effectively shuts down and experiences numbness, withdrawal, depressiveness, flat affect, disconnection, shame amongst others. For instance, when I’m in a hypoarousal state (like an hour before I started writing this post), I was severely depressed, shut down and I didn’t want to move. I effectively wanted to play dead so I couldn’t be hurt again like he did to me that night.
Why Is The Window of Tolerance Important?
If we are outside of our Window of Tolerance then we cannot function and thrive in our everyday lives. For example, when my mental health died in August and September (and probably October) 2024 because of my rape, most of the time I was too hypervigilance, anxious and terrified to function on most days. I was always in a state of hyperarousal, or I was too depressed and shut down to function (hypoarousal).
Therefore, when we’re in our Window of Tolerance, we can access all the prefrontal cortex as well as executive functioning skills we need to be able to thrive. Like, our ability to organise, plan and prioritise complex tasks that we need to complete. Also, being within our Window of Tolerance means we can emotionally self-regulate, start projects and actions and focus on them and practice good time management.
These executive functions are critical to our functioning because they allow us to work, problem-solve whatever issues and challenges we face and they allow us to be present and work in our relationships.
This is a major problem I had during my mental health crisis. I was too anxious, terrified or depressed to do much work, problem-solve and I wasn’t able to have or maintain many social relationships. I wasn’t able to do much Outreach work at my university because a lot of it was brand-new students and staff that I had never worked with before, and the specific type of Outreach activities, because it was the school holidays, were so different to what I was used to. I couldn’t deal with it.
Then it was even worse for my own business. I couldn’t write as much, I couldn’t do a fraction of the business tasks that I needed to do and I can see the impact it has on my bottom line and the podcast audience.
This is why being within our Window of Tolerance is so important.
Moreover, we lose access to these skills when we’re outside of our Window of Tolerance because we lose access to the prefrontal cortex and our executive skills. Since instead of relying on these brain areas, we default to panic, action or a freeze response. Sometimes this can even manifest as self-sabotaging behaviours so we might gravitate towards choices and patterns that undermine or erode our relationship with ourselves, others and the world.
Ultimately, it’s important that we try to stay within our Window of Tolerance so we can support ourselves, function and live in a healthy way. Yet there will always be times in our lives when we fall outside our Window of Tolerance and we end up in some non-ideal emotionally regulated way.
Thankfully, this is just a part of human behaviour and it’s natural and normal.
Therefore, the ultimate goal of this podcast episode isn’t to make sure we never ever fall outside of our Window of Tolerance. That is never going to happen, but instead I want to show you why it’s important to expand our Window of Tolerance. This allows a person to effectively bounce back quicker and be more resilient over time, so we can better deal with being outside our Window of Tolerance.
In my opinion, this is a critical area of mental health and trauma work because as my Window of Tolerance has expanded I have been able to deal with more and more. For example, I used to have thousands of triggers (probably not a joke) but everything has been toned down recently in terms of my PTSD. Like a few months ago, if I even saw a reference of sex in a film or book, my mental health completely died and I would have major intrusive thoughts and flashbacks. Now I can tolerate sex references and even the odd light sex scene in a film or book and I only experience mild intrusive thoughts and flashbacks.
It's still a little distressing but it is nowhere near as bad as in the past few months.
How Do You Increase Your Window of Tolerance?
Whilst there are several effective therapeutic techniques and activities that can over time increase your Window of Tolerance, everyone’s Window of Tolerance is rather different because of a range of biopsychosocial factors. For example, whether or not you have childhood trauma and social support can impact the size of your Window of Tolerance as well as your physiology, personal history and your temperament.
All these factors and more interact with each other to make your Window of Tolerance, and no two Windows of Tolerance will ever be the same.
As a result, it’s important to mention that people, like me, who come from trauma backgrounds will have a smaller Window of Tolerance than people who have not experienced trauma. This shrinking of the Window of Tolerance isn’t unique to any type of trauma, like physical, childhood or sexual trauma, your Window of Tolerance doesn’t discriminate. Trauma is trauma and it is the unfortunate gift that keeps on giving.
The reason why trauma shrinks your Window of Tolerance is because trauma gives you triggers that are more likely to rapidly and more frequently push you outside your Window of Tolerance and into hypoarousal or hyperarousal.
Consequently, it’s important that as part of trauma work (even though anyone can benefit from this knowledge) is that we work to expand a client’s Window of Tolerance. This allows the client to practice resilience and bring themselves back into their Window of Tolerance when you’re in a hypoarousal or hyperarousal state. The only reasonable difference in this regard between people with and without trauma is that a person with relational trauma might need to work harder, longer and dedicate more time and effort into expanding their Window of Tolerance.
Personally, I can relate to this because it is normal for a person’s Window of Tolerance to expand as they get older, experience more things and stressors, and they learn more techniques without realising it about to bring themselves back into their Window of Tolerance. However, ever since I was raped and up until 7 months later when I learnt how to feel safe in my own body. I just couldn’t bring myself back into my Window of Tolerance and it required a lot of therapeutic work, a lot of effort and a lot longer than I wanted to to be able to bring myself reliably back into my Window of Tolerance.
There are still times I cannot achieve this but 90% of the time I thankfully can.
In addition, there are two main ways how someone can recognise that their Windows of Tolerance are unique and how to expand it. Ultimately, we need to understand the foundational biopsychosocial elements that contribute to a healthy nervous system and that’s why I flat out love Healing Sexual Trauma Workbook by Erika Shershun because it handles this topic very well. Also, we can give ourselves this knowledge by providing our minds with supportive experiences. This can include providing ourselves with good amounts of stimulation, focus and engagement whilst we balance this with good amounts of play, rest and spaciousness. This was a mistake I made this week at the time of writing because I overbooked myself with Outreach work at my university so I had plenty of stimulation, focus and I was really engaged with helping students change their lives, but I didn’t give myself enough rest time.
Hence, I found myself very outside my Window of Tolerance on two occasions this week.
Moreover, we need to provide our bodies with supportive self-care. For example, we need to get enough sleep, exercise, eat nutritious foods, attend to our medical needs and avoid substances that damage our health. Since if our bodies aren’t looked after then our nervous system won’t be healthy and it will be easier to go outside our Window of Tolerance. As well as we need to provide ourselves with supportive experiences like being in a connected relationship and being connected to something bigger than ourselves.
I know this sounds like religion and I suppose some people find this helpful, but you can be connected to other things greater than yourself. For example, I connect to my Outreach work at my university because I’m helping to inspire and show young people that it doesn’t matter what background or area they come from, if they want to they can go to university and thrive. As well as I connect to my books and my podcast because I am providing people with a psychology education, entertainment and hopefully I’ll inspire some people to enjoy mental health and clinical psychology as much as I do.
You can connect to anything that you are passionate about.
Finally for this first part, you can tend to your physical environment to set yourself up for success. You can do this by working and living in places and ways that reduce your stressors instead of increasing them. As well as you can design an external environment that nourishes you instead of depletes you. I did this when I moved into my shared house with my best friend back in June because as one of our housemates wasn’t moving in for another 3 months, I made their room my office (with their permission) and that was great for me. It gave me a stress-free, non-triggering environment for me to do what I loved.
Secondly, we need to work with ourselves to cultivate and use a wide range of tools to bring ourselves back inside our Window of Tolerance when we inevitably find ourselves outside. You can do this by developing tools, habits, practices and internalised and externalised resources that help you to self-soothe, self-regulate and ground yourself. I’m smiling as I write as I write this because these are aspects of Window of Tolerance that I’ve been reading about lately in Erika Shershun’s book, and it’s very helpful to learn about.
Maybe I’ll dive into these aspects of Window of Tolerance in a future podcast episode.
Clinical Psychology Conclusion
I cannot stress enough the importance of Window of Tolerance in trauma work, because it actually did change my life. There are a lot of concepts in clinical psychology that are useful to some clients but not all, and there are certain concepts that are useful to the vast, vast majority of clients. Window of Tolerance is certainly one of the latter, because it is a very useful tool for psychoeducation and explaining to clients why their body is reacting in the ways that it is.
It was a relief to understand why my body was doing all these extreme trauma responses and it was nice to put a name to the psychological framework. Therefore, it meant now I understood what I was dealing with it, I could research, read and practice how to expand my Window of Tolerance and how to reduce the volatility of my nervous system.
If I didn’t know about Window of Tolerance, I certainly wouldn’t be as far along in my recovery as I am now.
Ultimately, the Window of Tolerance might “only” be a psychoeducational concept but it is an extremely powerful tool to use in clinical trauma work. Therefore, I unofficially suggest to my fellow aspiring and qualified psychologists that you embody this Window of Tolerance in your own life and especially in your clinical trauma work. Your clients and yourself will openly find it more useful and life-changing than you ever thought possible.
I know I did, and that’s one of the entire points of our profession.
Clinical psychology is all about changing one life for the better at a time.
I really hope you enjoyed today’s forensic psychology podcast episode.
If you want to learn more, please check out:
Biological Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.
Have a great day.
Clinical Psychology and Biological Psychology References and Further Reading
Brown, S., Rodwin, A. H., & Munson, M. R. (2023). Multi-systemic trauma and regulation: Re-centering how to BE with clients. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 1-18.
Corrigan, F. M., Fisher, J. J., & Nutt, D. J. (2011). Autonomic dysregulation and the window of tolerance model of the effects of complex emotional trauma. Journal of psychopharmacology, 25(1), 17-25.
Craparo, G. (2014). The role of dissociation, affect dysregulation, and developmental trauma in sexual addiction. Clinical Neuropsychiatry, 11(2).
Gunter, E., Sevier-Guy, L. J., & Heffernan, A. (2023). Top tips for supporting patients with a history of psychological trauma. British Dental Journal, 234(7), 490.
Hershler, A. (2021). Window of tolerance. Looking at trauma: A tool kit for clinicians, 23, 25-28.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/making-the-whole-beautiful/202205/what-is-the-window-of-tolerance-and-why-is-it-so-important
Jenkins, S. (2018). Increasing tolerance for calm in clients with complex trauma and dissociation. In Equine-assisted mental health for healing trauma (pp. 44-53). Routledge.
Luby, R. R. (2024). Sexual violence: a trauma-informed approach for mental health nurses supporting survivors. Mental Health Practice, 27(4).
Siegel, D. J. (2010). The Mindful Therapist: A Clinician's Guide to Mindsight and Neural Integration (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology). WW Norton & Company.
I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page.
However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you.
Which I am going to say right now. Thank you!
Click https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.
Comments