Expanding your window of tolerance
Expanding Your Window of Tolerance: How Therapy Can Help Heal Chronic Anxiety and Depression
Have you ever felt like your emotions are a rollercoaster, swinging from feeling super anxious to completely drained? Or maybe you feel stuck in one place—constantly on edge, or totally checked out. These feelings aren’t random. They’re connected to how your nervous system responds to stress and past experiences. Understanding something called the window of tolerance can help explain what’s happening and how therapy can make a difference.
What Is the Window of Tolerance?
The "window of tolerance" is a way of describing the range of emotions and energy levels we can handle without feeling overwhelmed. When we’re in this window, we feel balanced. We can think clearly, manage our feelings, and connect with others. Life might not be perfect, but it feels manageable.
But if you’ve been through trauma or a lot of stress, your window might be smaller. Little things can push you into one of two states:
Hyperarousal (fight-or-flight): You feel panicky, irritable, or like you can’t calm down.
Hypoarousal (shutdown): You feel frozen, numb, or like you’re running on empty.
Chronic anxiety often happens when you’re stuck in hyperarousal. Depression can show up when your system flips into hypoarousal or after being burned out from too much stress. Sometimes, you might even move between these.
How Polyvagal Theory Explains This
Polyvagal Theory, created by Dr. Stephen Porges, gives us a deeper look at how the nervous system works. It shows that our bodies have three main states:
Ventral Vagal State (Safety and Connection): This is your "calm and connected" mode. It’s where you feel grounded and open—and where you want to be most of the time.
Sympathetic State (Fight-or-Flight): This kicks in when you sense a threat, making you feel anxious, restless, or panicked.
Dorsal Vagal State (Shutdown): This happens during overwhelm or exhaustion, or when you are unable to mobilize for fight/flight, leaving you feeling numb, disconnected, or hopeless.
If you’ve been through trauma, your nervous system can get "stuck" in fight-or-flight or shutdown mode, or oscillating between them. Over time, this can lead to patterns of anxiety, depression, and feeling like you can’t get back to a calm, safe, connected place.
How Trauma Shrinks the Window of Tolerance
According to trauma expert Janina Fisher, trauma trains your nervous system to stay on high alert, even when there’s no danger. It’s like your body is always bracing for something bad to happen. This can lead to:
Constant anxiety, where your mind races, and you can’t relax.
Emotional numbness or detachment, which might feel like laziness but is actually your body’s way of protecting itself.
Trouble trusting others or feeling safe, even when you’re in a good place.
These patterns can feel frustrating and isolating, but they’re your nervous system’s way of trying to protect you. The problem is, they often make life harder in the long run.
How Anxiety Fits into This Picture
If you live with anxiety, you’re likely familiar with hyperarousal. Your nervous system is constantly in "fight-or-flight" mode, scanning for danger even when you’re safe. This can make everyday situations feel overwhelming, like giving a presentation at work, having a tough conversation, or even relaxing at home.
Anxiety keeps you on high alert, with racing thoughts, a pounding heart, and a sense that something bad is about to happen. Over time, this state can shrink your window of tolerance, making it harder to return to a calm and centered place. Small stressors might feel like massive challenges, and it can be exhausting trying to "hold it all together."
Therapy can help by teaching your nervous system how to regulate itself. This might involve identifying triggers, practicing grounding techniques, and slowly building your capacity to stay present without becoming overwhelmed. As you expand your window of tolerance, the world begins to feel less threatening, and you’ll find it easier to approach life with confidence and ease. In my practice, I have also seen that working toward a relationship with suppressed anger or grief, and finding ways to feel and express these emotions, can be an important part of expanding the window of tolerance and feeling more resilient.
How Attachment Styles Play a Role
Attachment styles—patterns of how we relate to others—can deeply influence our window of tolerance. These styles, formed in childhood, shape how we connect and respond to relationships as adults. Each style interacts with our nervous system in different ways:
Anxious Attachment: With an anxious attachment style, you may feel hypervigilant in relationships. Small changes, like a delayed text or a partner seeming distracted, can set off alarm bells, leaving you feeling panicked, insecure, or desperate to reconnect. This can push you into hyperarousal, where it feels hard to calm down or think clearly.
Avoidant Attachment: Avoidant attachment often leads to a tendency to shut down or pull away when things feel too intense. This may push you into hypoarousal, where you feel emotionally distant or disconnected from both yourself and others. Relationships can feel overwhelming, so distancing becomes a way to cope.
Disorganized Attachment: Disorganized attachment combines elements of both anxious and avoidant styles. This can make relationships feel like a confusing mix of wanting closeness but fearing it at the same time. People with this style often oscillate between hyperarousal and hypoarousal, as their nervous system struggles to find a sense of safety.
These attachment styles are often shaped by early experiences where safety and connection weren’t consistent. They can make it harder to stay in your window of tolerance, especially during moments of relational stress. Therapy can help you recognize these patterns and learn new ways of relating to yourself and others, so relationships feel safer and more fulfilling.
How Therapy Can Help Expand Your Window of Tolerance
The good news? Your window of tolerance isn’t set in stone. With support, you can expand it and feel more balanced. Here’s how therapy can help:
1. Learning to Notice Your Patterns
Therapy can help you tune into your body and emotions. Do you notice when you’re getting anxious or shutting down? Learning to recognize these signs is the first step to staying in your window of tolerance.
2. Practicing Calming and Energizing Techniques
Therapists can teach you tools to calm your system or boost your energy, depending on what you need. For example:
If You’re Overwhelmed (Hyperarousal): Building a safe therapeutic relationship, grounding exercises (like noticing your feet on the floor), Somatic therapies, Yoga, or mindfulness can help you feel safer.
If You’re Shut Down (Hypoarousal): Gentle movement, rhythmic tapping, creative expression, somatic practices, or talking to someone you trust can help you feel more alive.
3. Building Safe, Supportive Relationships
A trusting relationship with your therapist can help your nervous system learn to feel safe again. Over time, this feeling of safety grows and makes it easier to stay balanced, even in tough situations.
4. Healing Past Wounds
Trauma-focused therapies like EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, or Internal Family Systems (IFS) can help you process the experiences that keep you stuck. By working through these memories, your nervous system can start to realize the danger is over, and it’s safe to relax.
Expanding Your Window of Tolerance, Step by Step
Healing isn’t about getting rid of anxiety or sadness forever. It’s about learning how to feel those emotions without being overwhelmed by them. As your window of tolerance grows, you’ll feel more steady, more connected, and better able to handle life’s ups and downs.
If you’re struggling with chronic anxiety or depression and want to feel more in control of your emotions, therapy can help. It’s a space where you can reconnect—with yourself, your body, and the people around you. If you’re ready to start that journey, know that healing is possible. Together, we can expand your window of tolerance so you can live with more peace, strength, and joy.