Emotional Regulation and The Window of Tolerance:
The state of being emotionally regulated is when we feel safe, secure, and stable on a mental, emotional and physical level. Dysregulation is when we find ourselves in some version of a survival mode. A lot of people are familiar with the term ‘fight, flight or freeze’ which is representative of what happens when a person becomes dysregulated.
I find that the concept of the window of tolerance, which was developed by Dan Siegel, MD, is a useful framework to better understand how emotional regulation functions. If you drew lines on a piece of paper to separate the paper into thirds from top to bottom, you would then have a top third, a middle third, and a bottom third. The middle third would represent the window of tolerance. When we are regulated, or in our window of tolerance (WOT), we may experience sadness, frustration, anxiety, etc. however, while we are in our window of tolerance, these ups and downs feel pretty manageable and typically do not have a significant impact on our functioning.
The top and bottom thirds of the diagram represent dysregulation or survival modes. The lines on the paper represent an emotional threshold. The top third represents what is technically referred to as hyper-arousal. This is usually when feelings of anger or anxiety carry someone over the WOT threshold and into a state of fight or flight. Hyper-arousal is usually triggered by a very activating emotional experience—for example, someone hears something upsetting and suddenly wants to leave a social situation or confront someone they are angry with. This is also where people experience things like intense anxiety, panic attacks, or anger outbursts. Hyper-arousal is not a mental or emotional experience alone; our state of regulation or dysregulation will also show up and impact our physical state and physiology. When we are in a state of fight or flight, we may experience shortness of breath, tension in our muscles, restlessness, dizziness, an increase in chronic pain symptoms, or increased blood pressure. We often look at our mental and emotional experience as separate from our physical state. You may have heard the expression, “it’s all in your head.” I generally disagree with this premise. Our nervous systems and physiologies do not recognize our mental and emotional experience as separate from our physical functioning.
On the other end of the window of tolerance is hypo-arousal, which is also referred to as the freeze response, or shut-down state. This is often the product of sadness, depression, or fear. The freeze state often shows up as depressive symptoms or maybe shutting down during a tense conversation with a romantic partner. This hypo-arousal experience can be debilitating, scary, or it could show up as lethargy, dissociation, loss of interest in activities, feeling numb, disconnected, or that “I don’t want to get out of bed” feeling.
The value of understanding this information is that then we can use it to build an awareness of where we are in our own regulation process in a given moment or situation or over a period of time. Also bringing more awareness to our own patterns and tendencies. Most people tend to trend towards one side of the WOT or the other. For example, some folks are easily triggered into an anxious or angry place that causes them to cross the threshold into hyper-arousal. They may even spend a good bit of time on a consistent basis in a state of anxious overwhelm or anger. On the other end of the spectrum, some folks tend more towards depressive or shut-down tendencies. This can be the “I don’t want to talk about that” or “I don’t feel like doing anything” sort of patterns. I think there is value for each of us individually to learn to identify our own thresholds and to build an awareness of how we know when we’ve crossed into dysregulation. We can then build skills and strategies for getting ourselves back to a regulated state, back into the Window of Tolerance.
External Strategies for External Stressors
In broader American culture, the majority of people tend to orient to problems from a “fix-it” mindset. From a clinical perspective, I would say that this represents an external orientation to our own individual emotional regulation. As an example, most folks are familiar with some form of financial stress. Maybe someone is worried about how they are going to afford to pay their rent/mortgage, bills, or how they will pay for a medical procedure they or a loved one needs. This is a common example of a stressor that can pull someone out of their WOT and into a state of dysregulation. A person might find themselves lying in bed, unable to sleep because their mind is racing trying to figure out how they will afford something. We tend to focus on the external source of dysregulation and rack our brains trying to figure out how to “fix” the problem. The belief tends to be that we cannot feel better, or regulated until we have resolved the issue of the external stressor. We then feel as though we must find a solution to our problem in order to rid ourselves of the stress, anxiety, or even panic that we feel.
Unfortunately, when we are in a state of dysregulation or survival mode our ability to access the part of our brain that we use for logic and rational thinking becomes impaired. This makes it increasingly difficult to find an external resolution to the problem at hand. Developing internal strategies to achieve emotional regulation does not resolve the external stressor, but it does give us the opportunity to experience the situation differently and to orient to the situation from a regulated state. This actually gives us the best opportunity to use our ability to problem solve and resolve the issue at hand, rather than trying to find a resolution when we are in survival mode.
Cultivating a Practice for Grounding and Regulation
These practical implications for problem-solving and decision-making reveal why cultivating internal skills for emotional regulation becomes quite useful and important. The first step is recognizing when one is in a state of dysregulation; the majority of people have learned to function in a state of dysregulation and do not recognize when they are out of their WOT. Once a person has identified that they are out of their WOT, then it is important to cultivate skills and strategies for regulating themselves. There are a variety of different strategies and skills that people find useful. Meditation or some other form of breathwork is a common and popular tool for regulating a person’s nervous system. Exercise is another common strategy. It doesn’t have to be intense exercise, it could be going on a walk, some light yoga, or a leisurely bike ride. Spending time in nature is another strategy that many people find helpful. This could be as simple as spending more time in the garden or keeping some plants in your apartment. For some people, doing something creative helps them ground and regulate themselves. Playing an instrument, doodling, using an adult coloring book, cooking, and listening to music, are a few more strategies that people find useful. Writing in a journal or talking to a friend just to vent or organize their thoughts and feelings is another way people might get back to a more regulated state.
In my experience as a therapist, if I say, “try X, Y, or Z,” someone may try those things and find that they are not what works best for them and wind up feeling more discouraged and frustrated. As a result, I have found that supporting clients I work with to find what works best for them and practice it often is a more effective approach. I believe that it is up to each individual to take it upon themselves to find what helps them ground and regulate themselves and practice it on a routine basis.
For someone who is struggling with anxiety or panic attacks, this may mean practicing some breathing exercises two to three times per day. For someone who is struggling with depression, it may mean going for a 10-15-minute walk once or twice a day, or even just a few times per week. For others, it may look like sitting down to practice an instrument or working in an adult coloring book at the end of a long workday. Again, the main point is to find a way—or even better, several ways—that work for you as an individual to practice grounding and regulating yourself mentally, emotionally, and physically and to practice it regularly.
Practicing grounding and regulating is not only for people who are struggling with emotional dysregulation. These practices have value for pretty much anyone. I see it sort of like eating healthy food, brushing your teeth, or getting some exercise. It is a staple of mental health and emotional well-being. It is also essential for the therapeutic process—as a foundation to build on and then move forward into other areas of a person’s mental and emotional experience. If we cannot regulate and achieve safety, it is incredibly difficult to move beyond that point of dysregulation and attend to other areas of a person’s mental and emotional experience. Learning to be confident in one’s ability to regulate their own system may be the most important single thing a person could focus on in order to improve their overall mental health and emotional wellbeing.
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