What is a window of tolerance?

The phrase window of tolerance is a bit of a buzz word in the psychology world at the moment. But what on earth does it mean?

Our window of tolerance is the amount of distress we can handle (like anger, sadness, anxiety etc.) without feeling out of control (or the amount of emotion we can feel while remaining emotionally regulated). Let’s look at what happens when we are outside of our window of tolerance, or to put it another way, when we feel like the emotion is in control of us.  For example

• the angry person who is yelling and screaming or using lashing out physically
• the sad person who is overwhelmed by sadness, perhaps crying uncontrollably or so deep in depression they can’t pull themselves out of it
• the anxious person who is so anxious they are in a panic, they can’t stop the uncontrollable worry, or the compulsive checking of things.

In each of these examples, the person feels at the mercy of the emotion, they can’t stop what it is doing to them or making them feel.

Contrast this with someone who is having the same emotion, but is inside of their window of tolerance, or emotionally regulated. The will be aware they are experiencing the given emotion, but they will feel ‘bigger’ than it. They will be able to make choices about what they do when they are feeling the emotion. For example.

• the angry person is aware of their fists clenching (or having the urge to clench them), is aware of the want to hit, punch or yell etc., but instead decides to walk away, or spend five minutes focusing on slow breathing in and out, or takes a walk etc. They are still feeling the anger, but they are choosing how to act.
• the sad person thinks, I feel sad right now, I’m just going to get on with my day, I know it will pass.
• the anxious person who is aware of their racing heart and thoughts and decides to take five minutes to feel their body, focusing on their surroundings, breathe slow and deep.

Note that being inside of your window of tolerance does not mean that the feeling goes away, it just means we are the boss, rather than being ruled by the emotion. Another commonality with these examples, is that in each one the person is mindfully aware of what they are feeling and is able to take action to help ease or manage their emotion.

Everyone gets outside of their window of tolerance from time to time. Highly sensitive adults and children may find staying within their window of tolerance particularly challenging. As do people that suffer from trauma, anxiety, depression and anger issues. In all these cases, their nervous systems are particularly reactive to distressing events/situations -even those that most find a mild concern. The key is to learn to recognise when you’re heading outside of your window and to then take steps to bring yourself back. Adult, teen and child counselling is all about expanding a person’s window of tolerance for distressing emotions. This is done in a variety of ways, but the outcome of all of the techniques is to help remove some (or all) of the distress out of the emotional triggers, so that they same trigger doesn’t cause such a big reaction in the person.