#windowoftolerance #comfortzone
Let's assume all creatures want to feel safe and comfortable. By safe I refer to a sense of being able to rest without an anticipation of danger approaching. By comfortable I mean a feeling of ease, softness, relaxation. The level of comfort might be determined by our current or past circumstances, who is around us and what attracts our attention.
In order for us to grow in our capacities to experience life and the world, we need to expand our comfort zones. What motivates us leads us to pursue growth. This might mean overcoming anxieties about asking someone out on a date and tolerating a rejection response, opening up to love and experiencing heartbreak or taking steps towards overcoming a fear of connecting with creative urges.
In Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CAT) there is an assumption we all have certain predispositions for tolerating emotions. Some of this may be temperamental and some may be due to environmental influences. Some ways of being may be socially conditioned which then impact on how we learn to relate to ourselves and others.
We are wired for survival and from the moment we are born our brains adapt to our environments. Actually, we are shaped even before we are born with a link between mental health and hormones on the the developing brain of a foetus (Poggi Davis et al., 2007). Even still, we enter the world with a brain that is ready to adapt. As we mature, our brains discover how we get our needs met by adapting to our environment. Fundamental needs like shelter, safety, food and comfort, as well as other needs like curiosity, creativity and play shape our early ways of relating for us. On top of these formative ways of relating we layer more and more ways we discover we need to be in the world for us to continue to grow and develop. Our comfort zone grows and develops along with our sense of safety and connection. The more we feel safe and connected with ourselves and others, the more safe and secure we feel in the world.
When we experience a traumatic event, that is, an event that causes us to feel an intolerable level of distress all by ourselves, this creates a rupture in our sense of safety both in ourselves and those around us. If we experience a prolonged amount of distress without relief, this effects, and educates, our nervous system and impacts on our tolerance for distress in the future. Without sufficient grounding and self-soothing, then the more stressors we experience, the more dangerous we perceive others to be, the more threatening the world seems and the smaller our comfort zone becomes.
Living with a sense of threat can lead to avoidance behaviours and a threat-based belief system existing to protect us from future uncertainty. We engage in safety behaviours which limit and restrict our engagement with the world. Our comfort zone becomes smaller and our lives become more restrictive. Though these behaviours seem to keep us safe, they come at a cost to our ability to interact in the world around us.
Understandably, when living such a restricted life, it will not take very much to activate our threat system. There is a soft edge where it feels anxiety-provoking but necessary to get out of our comfort zone. Therapy is a place where we explore what happens in the edges of our comfort zone.
Mapping in CAT helps us find ways to describe different parts of ourselves involved in a stress response. With consistency, safety and connection, we create space to discover what else may be possible when we are not activated as intensely. In therapy we focus on a concept called 'the window of tolerance' to find a way to describe when we are experiencing an internal shift between what felt safe and comfortable and now feels unsafe and uncomfortable. Our task in therapy is to help build trust in yourself to discover what is related to expanding a comfort zone and allowing for a psychologically flexibility and for a better relationship to exist and what is related to actual harm and danger. Noticing our patterns of relating can help us discern which is which, but ultimately I offer to facilitate a space for you to experiment with this, perhaps make mistakes and learn along the way how to build a trusting relationship with yourself.
What can cause us to go outside of our window of tolerance?
Sometimes what we fear far outstretches what is happening in the here and now. Past experiences of abandonment and rejection being activated by similar emotions in the here and now can cause us to be outside our window of tolerance. Sometimes our bodies may connect with something before we become consciously aware of it and this might also cause us to feel more panicked and stressed. Our bodies can pick up on things our minds may sometimes try and ignore.
When there are beliefs which stem from past traumatic events we tried to put away on a box, these beliefs may surface when we feel under stress and reinforce physiological and emotional dysregulation in our nervous system.
How do I stay within a window of tolerance?
We live in a world where the future is unpredictable and uncertainty is a part of life so unfortunately we will all experience moments when we are shifted outside of what we can tolerate. To manage this uncertainty, we have beliefs. Beliefs help us navigate the world and our goals but can also impact on the size of our window of tolerance so it is a good idea to check-in on whether we are limiting ourselves by our belief system. Noticing the belief system which exists in your mind may be a way to explore what happens when you experience stress and uncertainty. It is easier to notice these beliefs and not be taken in by them when things are going well for us. When life is unstable and emotions run high it might be more difficult to appraise a belief system without feeling self-blame or shame.
Being present in the moment is a way to return within our window of tolerance. Grounding exercises and breathing to regulate our nervous system are additional ways to return within our window of tolerance. Being around a co-regulating other is considered to be helpful too. This is something that happens when we connect in a therapeutic relationship. The more we can sit with what it feels like when we are at the edges of our window of tolerance, the more we can grow this window. Sometimes it may give rise to curiosity too. What am I tolerating here? What is the feeling? What does it remind me of? What part of me is being invited to be intolerant of this? In CAT we could engage this part into dialogue and creatively explore what it has to say.
Importantly, where possible, another way of getting back into our window of tolerance is by identifying new choices, finding a way to be flexible and perhaps recognise it may seem 'as if' something is happening but in the here and now, perhaps the situation is different now.
Engaging in these practices may help with creating space for nurturing our window of tolerance as a baseline, before any stress sets in. By habitually engaging in belief-monitoring, grounding exercises, breathwork, and any other forms of self-soothing means that when we need to access this part of us, it somehow feels automatic and habitual.
Because every moment is unique, not all the things that help us will always have the same effect or will necessarily be beneficial at a time of a crisis and heightened stress. These examples relate to down-regulating a stress response (when we are hyper-aroused and in fight or flight mode). Sometimes we may need to increase activation if we are experiencing a 'freeze' response. It comes back to trusting ourselves and supporting our system in ways we sense may be beneficial.
References:
Dana, D. (2020) Polyvagal exercises for safety and connection. W.W. Norton & Company Ltd: London & New York
Poggi Davis, E., Glynn, L. M., Dunkel Schetter, C., Hobel, C., Chicz-Demet, A. and Sandman, C. A. (2007) Prenatal Exposure to Maternal Depression and Cortisol Influences Infant Temperament, Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 46 (6) pp. 737-746.