What’s Your Window?
Huh, my “Window”? 🤔
The Window of Tolerance (WoT) also called Window of Resilience is a concept of individual capacity for navigating daily life. Our WoT determines how we participate in life with all of its stimuli. WoT varies and can depend on factors like stress, sleep, trauma, etc. Each of us has a baseline WoT, yet everyone’s window is different.
Let’s explore.
Some of us have a large WoT with lots of room to stretch, play, and participate in life. We flow easily through life’s ups and downs. Feelings of safety are abundant.
Others have less capacity and experience fearful vigilance. Note: Our WoT is / becomes smaller with difficult life experiences, chronic stress, or trauma.
Some have very limited capacity and live in a “faux window of tolerance”. Life was so fraught and traumatic early in life that safety was almost non-existent. Hence, when actual feelings of safety are accessed, they are so unfamiliar that they are frightening!
With a faux WoT, life feels utterly overwhelming.
How do I expand my Window of Tolerance?
🔎 Go at YOUR pace, not someone else’s.
🔎 Be compassionate with yourself.
🔎 Seek out somatic practices to try.
🔎 Work with a safe, trauma informed somatic practitioner or therapist.
🔎 Keep going. It really IS POSSIBLE to feel better! 🫶🏼
What kind of Window of Tolerance do you have? Do you feel yours is very spacious, very small, or somewhere in between?
The great news is we can expand our Window of Tolerance (aka capacity) with somatic practices and support from a caring and skilled somatic practitioner. It’s important to practice at your own pace – no matter how slow – and little by little capacity grows! 🌷
If you’d like to try some simple, yet effective somatic practices, check out my Soothe Yourself Somatically course! Click the button below 👇
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