Outside my window

not always a pretty view

Have you heard the term “window of tolerance”? I hadn’t until I started learning about the effects of trauma.

According to Daniel J. Siegel, who coined the phrase, it is “the optimal emotional ‘zone’ we can exist in to best function and thrive in everyday life.”

In other words, it’s the space where we feel comfortable, safe, curious, grounded, and emotionally regulated. It’s in the middle of a continuum, with hyperarousal on one extreme and hypoarousal on the other. Hyperarousal is a state of stress, anxiety, panic, hypervigilance, fight-or-flight. Hypoarousal is a state of numbing, shutting down, withdrawal, shame. (Read more here.)

Because every human has lived a unique story that forms their window of tolerance, everyone’s window is different. Some are much narrower, some very wide. Some people lean toward hypoarousal, some toward hyperarousal. This is why traumatic events affect us in different ways. One person can hit a deer and laugh it off. His window is pretty wide. Another hits a deer and develops anxiety and panic attacks every time they get in a car. His window is narrower. Our windows are shaped by our experiences.

Any traumatic incident will tend to narrow your window, and these events are cumulative. So, if you suffered adverse childhood events (ACEs), you are more likely to have a smaller window of tolerance than someone who did not. Adult traumas also narrow our windows, but as you would expect, those that occur in childhood have slightly more profound effects.

My story includes a history of events that began narrowing my window of tolerance when I was very young. As I’ve gone through life, more have been added to the total. Then when I was hit head-on a few years ago, my window of tolerance suddenly became dramatically smaller, so that now it doesn’t take much to push me outside of it.

I’ve watched myself go to both sides of my window. I’ve been aware of times when I was numbing, shutting down, withdrawing. After several panic attacks I found myself sitting in the bathtub with the shower doors closed, fully dressed. I think I’ve gone there because it’s a small space where I can shut everything out, and it feels safe. I was trying to regulate myself out of hyperarousal by diving headlong into hypoarousal at the opposite end of the spectrum.

Other times I have found myself in a state of high anxiety, unable to calm down and think rationally. According to this article, “When we’re within our window, we have access to our prefrontal cortex and executive functioning skills . . .” which allow us to regulate ourselves and problem-solve as we go through life. “When we are outside the window of tolerance, we lose access to our prefrontal cortex and executive skills and may default to taking panicked, reckless action or no action at all.” Basically, we go into fight-or-flight mode.

But did you know there are more Fs to that mode? Your brain chooses from among them, trying to keep you alive.

We all know about fight. That looks like moving toward your stressor ready for battle. Then there’s flight, running away in an attempt to preserve your life.

But there is also freeze, which is what a rabbit does, thinking if it holds perfectly still you won’t see it and it won’t get hurt. And fawn, which looks like trying to appease the threat so it will stop being threatening—this is where people-pleasers are made.

I also learned recently that there is a fifth F: fornicate. This is often seen in survivors of childhood sexual abuse. The victim, instead of running away from future sexual encounters, runs toward them, actually initiating them, in an attempt to control this aspect of their life that previously felt out of their control. It’s a form of fight that backfires in the most heartbreaking way.

This whole line of thought came up for me Saturday when Ben and I got up early and drove to Pennsylvania for a wedding. In case you didn’t know, I do all the driving since my accident. That means we left at 7am to drive 4 1/2 hours to be there by 11:57am, the stated wedding time. (I know.)

It was very cold and windy. I-81 is not a picnic on a nice day, and this day it was hard to keep the car in one lane because of all the wind. Then add the 18-wheelers. There were other tiny stressors along the way because we are, after all, humans living in a fallen world. I could go into the details of all the little things that were going through my mind and adding thin layer upon thin layer of discomfort to my nervous system, but the specifics aren’t important. What matters is that for most of the day, despite the normal irritations of life, I was still within my window of tolerance, so I could handle them.

Then on the way home we stopped at my parents’ house to pick up my dad’s truck, which we have inherited (thank you, Daddy and Mom and brothers). I told Ben I wanted to drive it home (3 1/2 hours) so I could get used to it and make sure I liked it before I gave Ben my car to drive and made the truck mine. Ben said he would follow me home, “just in case.” I thought that was silly, but whatever. He likes to take care of me and I appreciate that.

Keep in mind that at this point it was 3:30pm and we had been on the road since 7, already a long day. We drove around the corner to a gas station to fill the truck and in that short mile I was already feeling agitated. While Ben pumped the gas, I sat in the truck very aware of being so uncomfortable in dress clothes, hands freezing because the truck wasn’t warm yet, and not being able to see well because the inside of the windshield desperately needs cleaning. These are all such little things, but they were adding up and pushing me closer to the edge of my window.

Finally we got on the road over the mountain that I have driven probably 50 times in the last six months, and I became aware that the truck was pulling to the left and when it got up to 55 miles an hour, there was a pretty good shake in the steering wheel. Obviously it needed the tires rotated and balanced, and a front-end alignment. No big deal, right?

Except it was. At that moment it was the final stressor that pushed me outside my window of tolerance and I started crying and shaking. I wasn’t just tearing up. It was panic-crying. I know this because I’ve had it happen before. By this time we had gone through the only little town and we were on a winding, two-lane road with no place to pull over so I had to keep driving. I 100% do not recommend this.

Finally there was a parking area in front of a very old building that might have been some kind of abandoned store and I pulled in, with Ben behind me. I walked (in the still-freezing-cold wind) back to my car and he could tell right away things were not going well. I choked out, “I cannot do this.” When I’m in panic mode, it’s hard to speak words.

We sat in my car for a bit trying to help me calm down, with only marginal success. Eventually we got back on the road with Ben driving the truck and me in my car, which was way better. But I continued to have crying spells most of the way home. This is how I knew it was not just something bothersome but an actual panic attack.

A simply bothersome event can be gotten over pretty quickly. After a true panic attack, it often takes a few days for me to become regulated again. It is a major assault on my nervous system that leaves me exhausted and wanting to hide in the bathtub with the shower doors closed. My body is looking for the safety of a cocoon, and some serious rest.

So does this mean that once you have experienced a trauma, you are stuck with a narrow window of tolerance? Not at all. Windows can be widened. It takes time and effort, but it can be done.

First, take care of your physical body: get adequate rest, eat nutritious food, get some exercise.

Second, support your mind with positive experiences. Get out in nature, do things you enjoy.

Third, find ways to reduce external stressors. Turn off the news, find a different job, set healthy boundaries in relationships, learn how to “ground” yourself.

And finally, learn some adaptive techniques to help you self-soothe and regulate your nervous system. With practice you can widen your window.