The Window of Tolerance
A Way to Help You Feel Safe & in Control
What is the Window of Tolerance?
The Optimal Zone- where you can feel in control, engaged in life and safe
The Window of Tolerance ( Dan Siegal)
This is a model that explains how your nervous system learns how to find safety. When you understand what the early warning signs of your nervous system detecting danger ( whether it is real or perceived) are, you are better equipped to then respond, take the appropriate action and get yourself back to safety.
Trauma can highjack this system and so developing a curiosity and mindfulness around how you engage with all the signals your nervous system is sending you helps you navigate the world safely.
The Optimal Zone
When our nervous system is feeling safe and in control we are in our Optimal Zone. It’s called optimal because we find it easier to be in friendships and relationships. Our thinking is often it’s most clearest in this space. When we are here this is the perfect time to practice relaxation or to do a meditation or your tax return if that’s the sort of thing you like to do.
The Hyperaroused Zone- where you might feel agitated, frustrated . It’s a sign that something needs to change.
The Hyperaroused Zone- otherwise known as the “get me out of here” zone
When your nervous system detects danger- this might be just a feeling that you get or something triggered via a smell, sound, image, taste or even from being touched, your Sympathetic nervous system kicks into action. A bit like a security guard- it steps into take control to get you to safety.
Assuming you’ve been able to get to safety before, the odds are that you’ll find your way back to the Optimal Zone. It might be that you remove yourself from the situation or you establish a new boundary around what’s happening or some other affective action. If you have a history of not being able to get safe, you might find yourself a little stuck here- which is not pleasant in any way !
The Hypoaroused Zone- this is where you might feel really stuck, frozen or even disconnected from the people and things around you.
The Hypoaroused Zone - what I affectionately call the “Elvis Has Left The Building” Effect
It’s where your nervous system is indicating that it doesn’t have much left in it to get you safe. So it tends to withdraw you out of life and slows down all your body processes to conserve what ever energy is left.
In this space it might be hard to connect, to communicate and to care about yourself or anything else. You can miss a lot of life if you spend to long in this zone so in this video I offer some quick tips to help you reconnect with yourself and the world around you.
If all of this makes sense to you then in my 6 session Yoga for Emotional Resilience Program we explore this in a lot more detail.