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The Window of Tolerance

Dr Dan Seigel coined the phrase ‘Window of Tolerance’ to explain how the brain functions within different circumstances. If the brain copes with the immediate stimuli, we feel calm, alert, and focused. We can make decisions, learn, and have empathy. Can you remember a time when you felt certain about accomplishing a task or challenge? Did you feel on top of things or even energised? This is a sweet spot in the window of tolerance.

Positive Stress

How do you manage moving home, going for a job interview, teaching a lesson, or trying to make tea – and feed the pet – and answer a call – and encourage your children not to argue? In these situations, the brain sends a signal to release a boost of energy to get the job done. In other words, our brain gives us a pick-me-up, and once the task is complete, we return to our usual status. Positive stress will happen many, many times a day.

To put it differently, remember the ‘first time’. The first time you chaired a meeting, went on a date, or learned to drive. It can feel exciting, stressful, or clumsy. Our brain will completely concentrate on the task by using a lot of energy. Over time, that same activity can feel less exciting or stressful. To the point where we are on autopilot as the brain no longer needs to concentrate as hard. The initial positive stress has helped widen our skill set and tolerance to the task. Our brain has adjusted accordingly to feel safe and in control. Positive stress widens our window of tolerance, with each interaction building a sense of resilience.

Tolerable Stress

Have you ever felt extremely stressed, and a good friend helped put things into perspective? Between you and your friend, you have explored the issue, talked about how the event made you feel, and put an action plan together. Your friend has helped you stay in or return to your window of tolerance. The stress is tolerable because your friend becomes the buffer; your sidekick, amigo, cushion, shock absorber, and safety net. A buffer can be a person, routine, or technique that helps you cope with stressful situations. Alongside a buffer, the brain reflects on the experiences to learn from them, potentially widening our window of tolerance.

Distress

The brain will activate the nervous system if you feel totally overwhelmed and completely distressed. You will leave your window of tolerance. When this happens, and it happens to all of us, we can react in different ways.

1. Becoming hyper-aroused triggers, a fight or flight response. It can create a sense of anger, panic, anxiety, and hypervigilance from any perceived threat.
2. We can also become hypo-aroused triggering a freeze response. A feeling of emptiness, emotionally numb or withdrawn from any perceived threat.
3. We react in both ways by initially feeling hyper-aroused, followed by feeling hypo–aroused or vice versa.

Toxic Stress

There are times when people can feel overwhelmed and do not have the buffer to make the stress tolerable. At all times, it is good to consider how to reduce toxic stress, either by completely removing the thing that is causing the stress or by introducing a buffer, so it becomes tolerable. When reducing the risk of toxic stress, you are supporting your wellbeing.

 The Window of Tolerance Beginnings 

As soon as we enter this world, we can feel distressed. It is a survival mechanism, cleverly designed to ensure our species continues. We are born with a very narrow window of tolerance; we cannot endure any form of distress such as hunger or feeling unsafe. We will cry until someone relieves us of that distress by feeding, cuddling, and reassuring our unique, small, and reliant selves.

Once a baby grasp that they are fed and feel safe, their tolerance to hunger or being momentarily left in a room can widen. The baby starts to build a little resilience to those feelings and behaves accordingly. The toddler learns to sleep on their own, an infant learns to share, a teenager learns to empathise, and the adult learns to unselfishly look after others (on a good day 😎). The stepping stone effect to skill building, emotional resilience, and coping strategies is fundamental to widening the window of tolerance. Simply put, a toddler doesn’t solely look after a baby as it would be too stressful for both; the toddler hasn’t learned the skills yet.

Imagine the window of tolerance as a culmination of child development domains and attachment strategies. As physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and pro-social skills develop, alongside how safety, comfort, proximity, and predictability needs are positively met mingle and strengthen, creating a scaffold of tolerance, thus widening as we develop.

Why Does it Matter? How will it Help?

A wider window of tolerance helps you feel in control, and to confidently respond in a positive stress way, which inadvertently generates a sense of resilience. Being calm, alert, and focused most of the time distinctively allows one to ride the rollercoaster, we call a day. There are also some great health benefits to a wide window of tolerance. When our brain is in distress, it prepares the body for a fight or flight response. It gives the body an energy boost by releasing a hormone called cortisol. Firstly, cortisol is extremely useful. It helps us wake up, monitor blood sugars, and help in a fight-or-flight situation. It gives a surge of energy to shout, punch, run, or hide. Long term, cortisol can be harmful to the body, increasing risks such as insomnia, heart attacks, and a low immune system. And who wants to live with those! High levels of cortisol can reduce the ability to concentrate and create dizziness. Cortisol is an anti-inflammatory in short bursts, however chronic (toxic) stress releases higher levels of cortisol increasing inflammation. So, on a personal level, learning how to maintain and widen a window of tolerance supports health and wellbeing.

From a child development and attachment lens, widening the window of tolerance with positive stress will support reaching child development milestones and building healthy attachment strategies (knowing how to seek safety, comfort, proximity, and predictability).

From a parent’s perspective, the ability to stay in our window of tolerance changes how we respond to our children’s needs and wants. We respond rather than react.

“Self-Reg starts with how well we can identify and reduce our own stressors and how well we can stay calm and attentive when we’re interacting with a child” P7, Help your Child Deal with Stress and Thrive by Dr Stuart Shanker.

Methods to Widening the Window of Tolerance

The first thing to remember is sometimes positive stress helps with the learning process and practice skills such as responding to distress😁, thus widening our window of tolerance. An ordinary day will have many positive stress opportunities, for example,

• Learning to get dressed,
• Getting ready in a timely fashion to get to school on time,
• Learning maths, science, sports, or reading,
• Learning how to share or negotiate with a friend,
• Learning how to respond to feeling sad,
• Learning how to respond to someone who makes you feel sad.

Here comes the complexity of it all… everything we learn is developing a physical, cognitive, emotional, social, and pro-social domain. And, as our brain and body have so many interconnections that are not linear, one domain can strengthen another. Our nervous system is a great piece of kit. Using body receptors and areas of the brain to monitor our safety is a full-time job. The watchtower is scanning internal and external signs for any danger or perceived threat. So, if we can help refine our receptors and areas of the brain – it can help the watchtower do its job.

By playing to develop the senses, fine and gross motor skills, the watchtower can utilise those skills both to identify risks and to help calm to nervous system down when activated. Tap into that influence, hear the celebration music as you imagine the potential to widen tolerance to distress and a way to return to a calm, alert, and focused state. And you know those people who do this well – because they are wonderful to be around. They have a positive energy, they ooze safety and you are more likely to use them for co-regulation.

CBT (Cognitive Behaviour Therapy) techniques can usefully change our self-talk. Exploring and challenging our thoughts and beliefs to support our feelings and behaviours. It encourages developing skills to respond in situations, thus widening our window of tolerance. Using restructuring and reframing offers a pause to reflect on thoughts. For example, an initial thought could be “I’m so stupid” to pause and reframe to “It’s been a long day, I’m tired and hungry, so I’m going to try again tomorrow”.

Relationships are essential in knowing what the child (and you can also do this for yourself) is interested in. Baking, eating, football, dancing, painting, gaming, and climbing to name a few are opportunities to develop the senses and fine and gross motor skills. Designing play and learning opportunities in existing interests or hobbies will ensure the child is already motivated to learn (even more so if there are in their (Maslow) self-actualisation platform). Mindfully verbalise through the play, the sensory experience, and comment on the motor skills they are building to help the brain unconsciously make those much-needed connections.

It is a fine line to walk when using positive stress to aid learning and widen the window of tolerance. Monitoring the child will help to recognise when the task becomes too much and therefore a positive (pro-social) regulation activity to reduce the distress would be advisable. This is a great learning opportunity and can teach the brain to respond to distress with healthy regulation strategies to tolerate stress. The learning is using regulation to hold and calm the emotional response, to identify what is causing the stress, and thus find a way to deal with it. Technically, calming the emotional response will allow the brain to continue to use its pre-frontal cortex to assess and identify the cause.

As a side, if a school or setting is looking for interactive regulation activities. Raising Children Together has a regulation toolkit and can contact us for more information (I know – a shameless plug 😁).

 Methods to Return to the Window of Tolerance

Notice what happens to your body and brain when you start to feel tension, nervousness, and pressure. Consider how you notice this… a change in breathing, a body temperature shift, skin colour changes, and concentration or thoughts changes? Recognising these changes in self and others will help to de-escalate through regulation techniques quickly.

 As noted above, leaving the window of tolerance means the brain and body are preparing for a fight, flight, freeze response, aka, aggression, fleeing, avoidance, or withdrawal behaviours. These behaviours are an automatic reaction to distress. At this point, very few people actually choose to behave a certain way. It is IN the window of tolerance; we learn to respond to positive stress (some from role models) and can become an automatic reaction to distress.

Breathing techniques, validating the feelings, removing overwhelming stimuli (e.g. an audience), cool air, fidget toys, pacing, using the extra energy by running on the spot, and tapping are healthy ways to respond to fight, flight, and freeze responses. The priority is to soothe the nervous system, so it stops releasing cortisol and the brain’s pre-frontal cortex becomes online again to assess and identify what is needed. Conversations about consequences or questions about what happened can occur once the pre-frontal cortex is in control again.

Protective Factors for All

Remember how a baby needs help to survive – well the need for support never goes away. We all need buffers. Significant others who can support each other. In fact, restricted social interaction and isolation are risk factors that can enhance inflammation! It’s the body preparing for damage if no one can help.

Connection and belonging support building trust to share the sea of emotions, needs, and wants. Picture a time when you were overwhelmed and your response to that situation. For many people, it would involve talking to someone they trust.

Relationships are needed to widen the window of tolerance by role modelling such as playing and building motor skills or responding to distress. Relationships also are needed in times of distress to co-regulate. Relationships are the people who advocate, coach, and influence – in a healthy way please 😁.  I believe that psychologically healing from adversity requires healthy relationships.

Protective factors can also be clubs, objects, or routines as they help to feel safe and offer comfort, proximity, and predictability.

To Conclude

Learning how to widen and return to the window of tolerance will begin a lifelong experience that is all about learning about yourself. To know when to take care of yourself, to adapt to life events, to know who will help, and to use that gorgeous body and brain effectively. If our children learn about it early, just imagine what their behaviours will look like. They will be attuned to their body and brain and use their skills to respond to their fight, flight, and freeze system by using healthy, learned strategies as much as possible, thus adapting to life events and situations. And when they do get angry or upset, it will be proportionate to the situation, reducing the amount of aggression for shorter periods.

There is a lot of information to digest so let’s finish with a video to recap.

Michelle x (I’m off to do some kettlebell exercises)