What is The Window of Tolerance and why is it so important?

Emotional Regulation & Nervous System • January 23, 2022

She had crashed into a proverbial riverbank and was no longer in the flow of the river.

I’ll share more about how I brought her back into her Window of Tolerance after this epic disappointment later in the essay, but, for now, let’s talk about why the Window of Tolerance is so important.

Why is the Window of Tolerance so important?

Put plainly, existing within the Window of Tolerance is what allows us to move functionally and relationally through the world.

When we’re within our Window of Tolerance, we have access to our prefrontal cortex and our executive functioning skills (for instance: organizing, planning, and prioritizing complex tasks; starting actions and projects and staying focused on them to completion; regulating emotions and practicing self-control; practicing good time management, etc.).

Having access to our prefrontal cortex and executive functions equips us to work, be in relationship, and problem solve effectively as we move through the world, despite encountering hiccups, disappointments, and challenges along the way.

When we are outside The Window of Tolerance, we lose access to our prefrontal cortex and executive functioning skills and may default to taking panicked, reckless action, or no action at all.

We may be prone to self-sabotaging behaviors.

Gravitating toward patterns and choices that erode and undermine our relationship to ourselves, others, and the world.

Clearly, then, it’s ideal to stay inside the Window of Tolerance to best support ourselves in living the most functional, healthy life possible.

But, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that all of us – at every age from the moment we’re born to the moment we die – eclipse our Window of Tolerance and find ourselves in a non-ideal emotional regulation zone sometimes.

That’s normal and that’s natural.

So the goal here is not that we never eclipse our Window of Tolerance – I personally and professionally think that that’s unrealistic.

Rather, the goal is to increase our Window of Tolerance — to genuinely widen your window — and to grow our capacity to “rebound and be resilient” — coming back to the Window of Tolerance quickly and effectively when we find ourselves outside of it.

How do we increase our Window of Tolerance?

So how do we increase our Window of Tolerance?

First, I want to acknowledge that the Window of Tolerance is subjective.

We each have a unique and distinct window depending on multitudinous biopsychosocial variables: our personal histories and whether or not we came from childhood trauma backgrounds, our temperaments, our social supports, our physiology, etc..

Windows of Tolerance are, in so many ways, like a proverbial snowflake: no two will ever look exactly the same.

Mine may not look the same as yours and so forth.

Because of this, I want to honor and acknowledge that those who come from relational trauma histories may find that they have a narrow window of tolerance compared to their peers who come from non-trauma backgrounds.

Those of us with childhood abuse histories may, too, find that we are more frequently and easily triggered and pushed outside of the optimal emotional regulation zone into hyper- or hypoarousal.

This is normal and this is natural given what we’ve lived through.

And everyone on the planet – whether or not they come from a relational trauma history or not – will need to work and effort to support themselves staying inside the Window of Tolerance and practicing resiliency when they find themselves outside of it.

It just may mean that those with relational trauma histories may have to work harder, longer, and more deliberately at this.

So again, recognizing that our Windows of Tolerance are unique and we all need to invest effort into staying inside of it, how do we do this?

In my personal and professional experience, this work is two-fold:

First, we provide ourselves with the foundational biopsychosocial elements that contribute to a healthy, regulated nervous system — including nurturing the parasympathetic nervous system, the branch responsible for rest, recovery, and the body’s natural sense of safety.

And two, we work to cultivate and call upon a wide toolbox of tools when we find ourselves outside of our Window of Tolerance (which, again, is inevitable).

To the first part of the work.

Providing ourselves with the foundational biopsychosocial elements that contribute to a healthy, regulated nervous system – this entails:

• Providing our body with supportive self-care. Getting enough sleep, getting enough exercise, eating nutritious foods, refraining from substances that erode our health, attending to emergent medical needs.
• Providing our mind with supportive experiences. This may include adequate amounts of stimulation, adequate amounts of focus and engagement. Adequate amounts of rest and spaciousness and play.
• Providing our spirit and soul with supportive experiences. Of being in connected relationship, of being connected to something bigger than ourselves (this could be spirituality but can also be nature).
• Tending to our physical environment to set ourselves up for success. Living and working in places and ways that reduce stressors instead of increasing them. Designing the external environments of our lives to be as nourishing (versus depleting) as possible.

The second part of the work.

Cultivating and calling upon a wide toolbox of tools when we find ourselves outside of our Window of Tolerance – is how we practice resiliency and rebound when we find ourselves in hyper- or hypo-arousal zones.

We do this work by developing practices, habits, tools, and internalized and externalized resources that help soothe, regulate, redirect, and ground ourselves.

I focus heavily in my work with my therapy clients to help them cultivate a wide, diverse, rich and effective toolbox of resources they can use to practice resiliency when outside of their Windows of Tolerance and while detailing the breadth and specifics of all of these tools is beyond the scope of this essay, I’ll share that these tools are both internal and external in nature, multisensory, and designed to support my clients when they’re by themselves, or at work being watched by others, or in literally any other situation or environment.

For a sampling of potential tools, feel free to explore this essay I wrote years ago that went somewhat viral. See which among these tools you might like to add to your own Window of Tolerance resilience toolbox!

So how did I help my toddler move back into her Window of Tolerance this morning?

First, I affirmed and validated her feelings, helping her feel seen and acknowledged for her big feelings.

And then, when this experience of being seen and accepted lowered her reactivity even fractionally and she was able to hear me again, I invited her to make eggs with me (she gets so excited about cracking open eggs!).

Clinically speaking, I redirected her and engaged her prefrontal cortex in an activity, allowing her nervous system to regulate further.

After all of this, I’m happy to say that we ended up having a great breakfast of scrambled eggs. With no more tears before preschool drop-off.

Expanding Your Window Through Trauma-Informed Regulation Therapy

When you describe to your therapist how a simple work email sends you into panic or how disappointment makes you completely shut down for days, you’re mapping the edges of your Window of Tolerance—and therapy helps you understand that having a narrow window isn’t weakness but evidence of a nervous system that learned early to protect itself. Together, you explore what to do when you’re so dysregulated you don’t know what to do, recognizing that your reactions make perfect sense given your history.

Your therapist helps you identify unique triggers and patterns: perhaps criticism launches you into hyper-arousal because it echoes childhood verbal abuse, or conflict triggers hypo-arousal because dissociation was your only escape. While others might brush off what devastates you, your nervous system is responding to past danger signals even when current threats are minimal.

The therapeutic work involves both understanding and action—learning to recognize early signs you’re approaching your window’s edges before you’re fully dysregulated. Tension in shoulders, shallow breathing, the urge to flee all become important signals. Your therapist helps you build a personalized regulation toolkit: deep pressure for hyper-arousal, gentle movement for hypo-arousal, bilateral stimulation to return to center.

Through co-regulation in the therapy relationship itself—experiencing someone who stays calm when you’re activated, who doesn’t abandon you when you shut down—your nervous system learns it’s safe to expand. Each session provides practice tolerating more without defaulting to survival modes.

Most powerfully, regulation therapy teaches you that expanding your Window of Tolerance isn’t about never getting triggered but about resilience. Every time you successfully navigate back from hyper- or hypo-arousal, you’re literally rewiring your nervous system. You’re proving that you can survive the frozen-waffle moments of adult life without losing yourself completely to panic or shutdown.

Wrapping up.

With my daughter, as with all of us, the goal isn’t to keep her from ever feeling disappointed. (She’d be poorly set up for real-life if my husband and I treated her with kid gloves. Hustling to make sure she never experienced disappointment in her life!)

Instead, the goal is to help her nervous system learn, over time. That she can tolerate more and more age-appropriate disappointments. (Increasing her Window of Tolerance.) And equip her with tools and strategies to help herself get back to her Window of Tolerance. So that she can move forward and on with her day (resiliency and rebounding).

And now, as we conclude this essay, I’d love to hear from you:

What are one or two tools that you personally use when you find yourself outside of your Window of Tolerance and in hyper-arousal? Similarly, what are one or two tools that you personally use when you find yourself outside of your Window of Tolerance and in hypo-arousal?

Please, if you feel so inclined, leave a message in the comments below. Our monthly blog readership of 20,000 plus people can benefit from your wisdom and experience.

Here’s to healing relational trauma and creating thriving lives on solid foundations.

Warmly,

Annie

Annie Wright

LMFT · 15,000+ Clinical Hours · W.W. Norton Author · Psychology Today Columnist

Annie Wright is a licensed psychotherapist, relational trauma specialist, and the founder and successfully exited CEO of a large California trauma-informed therapy center. A W.W. Norton published author, she writes the weekly Substack Strong & Stable and her work and expert opinions have appeared in NPR, NBC, Forbes, Business Insider, The Boston Globe, and The Information.

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