Find Your Way Back to the Window of Tolerance
Season 4- Episode 41
In this episode, Lauren delves deeper into the significance of expanding and maintaining your Window of Tolerance. She shares practical strategies to help you identify when you've stepped outside your Window of Tolerance and introduces evidence-based techniques that can be applied both proactively and reactively to guide you back into a state of regulation.
If you haven't already, check out Five Ives to see how strategies like this can be applied to adults, especially in the workplace. Five Ives works with staff in high burnout jobs to help them incorporate regulation strategies into their daily routines.
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Transcript:
“We are going to keep talking about the window tolerance because and nervous system we've been on. I've been on a nervous system kick and I think a lot of that has to do because I'm doing my own work and corrected me. There was a system that I didn't think was that out of whack until I realized it was quite out of whack. But the last many episodes I've talked about little shifts, micro shifts, nervous system, window of tolerance.”
“Today we're going to continue on some window of tolerance based strategies, evidence based strategies, some scientific stuff, some fun stuff, but some things that you could do to get you back into your window of tolerance.”
“For those of you who have not heard of window of tolerance, you might be thinking, what on earth are you talking about? For those of you who have heard me talk about the window of tolerance, you'd be like this again, maybe some new stuff. Good to listen to things, same things over and over and over and over again until your body is really ready to fully adopt them. So let's do a quick overview of the window tolerance.”
“I like to describe this as like a stoplight almost, although the like three circles or like three boxes stacked on top of each other, they're not. The colors play no part here. So essentially in the middle zone, like middle of the three boxes, middle of the three circles is what we call your window of tolerance. And, and that is essentially how much stress you can manage, how much overwhelm you can deal with, how much of whatever is triggering you, you can deal with and stay present and stay calm and feel alert and respond in a disreg or respond in a, hopefully not respond a disregulated way, respond in a regulated way.”
“It is when you feel disregulated that you are out of your window of tolerance, that you leave that zone in the middle. And when you leave that zone in the middle, you might go up or you might go down and you can be a person that does both.”
“I'm a person that's more prone to go up. Up means I am in the sympathetic side of the nervous system.”
“Down means I'm in the parasympathetic side of the nervous system.”
“So I'm going to talk here in a second. Like what? How do you know when you're in one side or the other?Like, what are the body indicators that let you know this?”
“For me, they are quite clear. For others, you may have to kind of think about it a little bit. It may not be as obvious, but the concept here is you want to stay in your window of tolerance, and none of us can stay in it all the time. It wasn't even designed for that. It was designed for us to be able to leave it to get stressed out, but then to come back very quickly. The problem is some of us are getting stressed out more and more frequently, more and more regularly, and we keep leaving our window of tolerance more and more and more. And what happens is that window tolerance shrinks. You're not spending as much time there. So it's. It kind of is like a muscle. It weakens, and that means you can tolerate less until you go up or go down. And while you're simultaneously shrinking your window of tolerance, you are growing your other window areas, your sympathetic or parasympathetic side of your nervous system.”
“So all this is a part of the autonomic nervous system. This was designed to well. It wasn't designed. It was part of our being, but it was created where it exists to, to help us survive. If a saber tooth tiger was chasing, you would want to leave your window of tolerance. You would absolutely want to go in the sympathetic side, and you would want to take off running or take flight. You might be so overwhelmed by that saber tooth tiger that you just freeze. And that would be more of your parasympathetic side of things. Probably would not be the best way to survive, but who knows? Anyhow, system is designed to keep us safe. System is what got us here today. It's why we as a species didn't die. So it's a good thing. It's a good thing to leave your window of tolerance. It's not a good thing to stay outside your window of tolerance.”
“Okay, let's talk about. What are the indicators that let us know that we have left the window of tolerance with the signs? I'm gonna give you just a couple. When you go up, typically you're a person who's more prone to anxiety, more prone to intrusive thoughts, more prone to racing thoughts, very irritable or moody, difficulty concentrating, feeling like your mind is pinging all over the place. You might feel like a tightness in your chest or a pounding heart. And you might feel a sense of overwhelmed or a sense of out of control.”
“When I read that list, I'm like, yep, that's me. Not all the time, but that's what it feels like. On the other hand, if you are more prone to the parasympathetic side, you might be so overwhelmed, so triggered, so stressed that you almost feel disconnected. You enter a more of like a state of depression and you almost become emotionally numb. And you potentially also have difficulty thinking clearly. It's a little bit different than a difficulty concentrating. You also typically feel pretty, pretty fatigued. Lack of energy. You might have a hard time like socializing or connecting with people because it feels like it's too much energy to do that. and you might do that if you're on the sympathetic side as well. But it's a little bit more disconnected, almost like internalized energy versus the, the sympathetic side is more like, it still can be internal. Cuz you could be ruminating in your head on thoughts, but you're, you're feeling more like tightness, tenseness, defensiveness versus numbness of the parasympathetic side.”
“So neither is wrong, neither is bad. None are bad, none are wrong. They are all natural responses to stress. And the is learning to recognize these states. And when do you leave the window of tolerance? Because you want to guide yourself back to the window of tolerance as quickly as possible. Because as soon as you get back, the more you stay there, the more you stay there, the more that grows, the more that grows, the more you can tolerate before you leave.”
“So it's just a, it's why the last episode was so important. I talked about a whole bunch of like micro behaviors that take us out of our window of tolerance. Like for example, myself more prone to the sympathetic side. I, I know that I'm staying out of my window tolerance. I'm like driving in the fast lane where I'm gassing it through a yellow light when I'm not fully stopping at a stop sign, when I'm standing to eat, or like I'm trying to do six things while I'm like on a walk. Those are all signs that there's like tenseness, tightness, too many things going on. My mind is in too many places versus when I'm home and I'm sitting still and I'm doing something kind of present and mindful, I'm back in my window of tolerance.”
“So there are micro things that we might be doing every day, day to day that we're like, wow, I didn't realize that was keeping me out of my window of tolerance. Driving in the fast lane keeps you out of your window of tolerance. Not fully stopping at stop signs is a sign that you're not in your window of tolerance. Y'all know what I'm talking about. Not the only one that does this.”
“Okay, let's talk about the techniques. What are the things that you could do to get yourself back into the window tolerance, like, instantly, quickly, because we want to. We want to utilize these things. We want to do these things both reactively, like, oh, I've left my window of tolerance. I feel. Insert sympathetic or parasympathetic side behaviors, actions, responses. We want to do them in reaction to being like, oh, I'm not in my window tolerance. And we also want to just do them preventatively throughout your day, throughout your life. Schedule them, don't schedule them, whatever it is, Pair them with a routine. Brushing teeth, having coffee. But things that you can do preventatively to just, again, strengthen your window of tolerance and, and keep you in there.”
“Okay, so let's talk breathing breath work first. I know this is not a new one, so I'm not gonna spend a whole lot of time here, but it is free and easy and can be done anywhere. So it's one of the easiest ones to. To go over. And it immediately and directly influences the thingsthat, like, get kicked into gear when you leave your window of tolerance, like your heart rate, your blood pressure, your emotional state. Breath work will neutralize it instantly if you do enough or the right type or long enough.”
So one type of breath work that's so easy to remember and it's just. I don't know if I would say it's fun, but it's a box breath. So you basically just visualize or even trace with your finger and you inhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, out for four seconds or a count of four, and one's probably not going to be enough.You might need to do two or three or five or ten boxes, but you'll feel your body. You'll know, like, your body will, will start to neutralize. You'll get back into your window of tolerance and know exactly. That feels like.”
“Another one that I like that comes from Dr. Don Wood. His work, and I'm going to reference a couple of things today from his work, is the five, six, seven breath. So you breathe in for five seconds, hold it for six seconds, and breathe out for seven seconds. And it's just, again, a really easy one. I do feel like I like the way that one feels. And I'll do it usually three, four, five times. And I feel a pretty significant difference with just that, but it's incredibly grounding and neutralizes me pretty quickly. If you are a person who is more prone to the parasympathetic side, the slower breathing, the long breaths are probably not quite what you need. Typically, we work in opposites of the nervous system. So if you are a tense, defensive, tight, sympathetic side of person like myself, you want the opposite. You want the long, slow count. Hold, breathe out.”
“If you're a parasympathetic person, more prone to depression, disconnection, you want to kind of wake up your nervous system. It's kind of like sleepy or disconnected. So instead of doing long, slow in and out breath, you would do really quick, more invigorating breaths to kind of gently wake up your nervous system. You get your blood pumping, get your oxygen to your brain, wake up your system. So your breaths would sound like this. So I tend to do hands on my head, and I almost pretend there's like a balloon there, and I just push on the balloon as I'm breathing. So it's hypothetical balloon. I'm like, also just good to get your hands above your head. You don't really do that a whole lot. Our hands are usually down at our sides or at our computers, but to get them up in the air, it's good.”
“Okay. Grounding techniques. Grounding techniques are like. It's something that snaps you back into the moment instantaneously.One of the, like, infamous grounding techniques is the 5. 4, 3, 2, 1. 5 things you can see, 4 things you can touch, 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, 1 that you can taste. I kind of hate that one because one. It's just so many steps. It's five steps. And two, like, it's hard to remember. Five what, four, what. So I. I'm not a big fan of that one, but I do like the one that's kind of adapted from Dr. Don Wood's work, where you close your eyes and you, you visualize a space that makes you feel really calm. And. And. And this is like, we. We call this, like. Like, this is a place. When I visualize it, the same place, I feel so calm when I think of this place. And for me, and I've used it before, I've taught it before, I've called it mind space. And I work and talk about with teams.We used to use it like, hey, can you visualize where is a place that you feel really safe andreally lock in the elements of that Smell it. Like, what does it smell like? What does it feel like? What do you hear? What do you see? And we kind of like, locked that space in that was their mind space, where they went when they felt overwhelmed or disconnected. So for. For me, my symbol, my mind space, is a tree house. I feel really safe in a tree house. I really love tree houses. So when I close my eyes and I think about what makes me feel safe, I visualize the same kind of treehouse. It's, it's the same place, going to the same place. And then I open my eyes. When I open my eyes, I just point or name three things I see. So again, you just close your eyes a couple seconds in your, your symbol mind space. And then you open your eyes and I see mint. A hot water pot and some roasted kale. Brings right back to the present other things that you could do. You could, I mean you could like sit with a heated or a weighted blanket. I, I love heated blankets. I'll be honest. I really, really love them. I really love them. I also love heated seats in my car. And I think about the EMFs that are emitted from wrapping myself in a blanket full of electronics. Oh, so bad. I know that usually they're pretty minimal ina way to, in a heated blanket. I don't have that many EMFs, but probably still not great to do that. “
“Weighted blanket though. That's great. I sleep at the weighted blanket. I didn't used to and I, when I first got it, kind of hated it. I was like, I kind of feel like I'm suffocating. But now I, I do sleep with it every night. I really like it. I just put on top of my comforter. It's a huge like queen size bed weighted blanket. I'm not even sure how you wash that thing. But why does this work? Because you are coming back to the present with a sense of safety, moving your body, connection to your body. So when you are like putting something weighted or putting something of, of temperature on your body, you feel it. Like you cannot not feel the weight, you cannot not feel the heat. So it brings you back into the present.”
“So there's that another one is just grounding through different types of movement. So it could be walking and that like bilateral rhythmic movement. All of that's anything rhythmic, anything that involves walking, swinging, jumping, touching both sides of your body, kind of swaying, trying to think about tapping, tapping your feet barefoot, walking barefoot, even just putting your feet in the ground. Here's why that's a good one.”
“And even beyond that, I'll talk about this in a little bit. Is like getting out to nature. So putting your feet on the ground is, is good. Even better than putting your feet on the ground is going out to nature. Why? Because our I believe it's alpha state is between 4 and 8 Hertz and that's like a state we want to be in when we're learning or like doing something with concentration or just in a great like state to be the, the Earth, it's energetic vibration, the, the energy at which the earth exists. Nature is 7.83 hertz. I believe that's between that 4 and 8 hertz. So if you go into nature, you put your feet on the ground, you begin to automatically like rhythmically match up with nature and, and it brings you out of maybe a stressed out state or a sympathetic or parasympathetic state. And it brings you back into the present by having your body match the vibrational state of the ground that you're feeling beneath your feet or the ground in space, the ground, but the nature around you.”
“What else?”
“Connection, Human connection. It could be with a friend, it could be with a partner, it could be with a family member, a therapist. But human connection, like social engagement theory, Dr. Stephen Porges work, sharing how you feel. There's a line with this of like venting and like emotional bomb dropping. It's like you want your friendships to not always be heavy and burdened with the things that you carry that are heavy and burdened at the same time. That's what really good friends are for, is to hold space all the time. Maybe not maybe, you know, a therapist might be a good person to share some of those things with. But good friends know that we go through seasons and that walking alongside our friends through seasons means that they'll be there for us when we go through tough seasons. So as a person who doesn't like to lay their heavy on anyone, I really have a tough time with this. But man, I found it so freeing when I just said these things and I, I could have said it into a voice memo and it would have helped me. So just speaking, saying, getting it out, hugging someone, deep connection, a distraction of connecting with someone that you don't have to think about the stressful thing. And then even just co regulating with someone, even if they're not doing breath work beside you or they're not running beside you, if they are regulated being around them, your mirror neurons in your brain,they start to mimic what you are around. So if you're around really regulated people, you stay really regulated. That's why like in feeling systems, when there's like disregulated parents, kids are really disregulated. They're, they're all mirroring each other. But you pull those kids out and you put them in a, in a regulated environment. Maybe that's a classroom, maybe it's not maybe it's a sporty, maybe it's a coach, somebody, something, a champion we used to call them when I was teaching about this in education. That person that's regulated, if they're regulated, that is the person that these kids co regulate with or that people co regulate with. And that allows them to come out of their disregarded state for a little bit and calm the heck down.”
“So connecting with others is, is really good. And then just connect with yourself. Like, can you have a mantra? Can you do some soothing touch and let me clarify what the, what soothing touch is? So let's go back to the mantra for a second because I just said it out loud and I was like, retract that. Like, don't say that the way you just said that. But I said it. We don't, we don't edit these things here. We just let it flow. The mantra, like, what's a mantra that makes you feel good, that makes you feel safe, that makes you feel grounded. For me, I, my mantra that I chose or my like statement is I am at peace because I really desire, at least in 2025, I desire to have a lot of peace. I'm like, I want peace and security. This year it was a tough 23 and 24. I'm ready for some peacefulness. So the other thing that I will do is my like grounding soothing touch to myself is a hug. And it sounds weird, but they're kind of two ways to do it. And if you're watching me on, on video, you can see this, but I'm not going to try and describe it. One, what I will do is I will literally just take my hands and like cross them to make an X of my chest and grab my shoulders and I'll just dig my hands into my shoulders and I just like kind of like a self hug, like a deep squeezy hug just on the front of my shoulders. The other thing that you can do is you can kind of take your hand and make like a C with it. Your thumb and your, your fingers and you can cup that underneath your kind of armpit and you can just hug yourself that way. That one doesn't feel as great to me, but I do like the cross body, like dig my hands into my shoulders. There's a really great grounding technique that Dr. Don Wood teaches where he talks about going into that mind space, visualizing the mind space, saying your, your mantra, and then grounding with the touch. So mine would look like it sound like, okay, I close my eyes, I Visualize my treehouse. Just take a couple seconds to kind of visualize what's in there. Then I say out loud, I am at peace and I give myself a little hug. And that boom instantly drops me in my window of tolerance.”
“So cool stuff.”
“Okay, Nature rhythm. We talked a little bit about this. The hertz of, of nature and getting out to nature and putting your feet on the ground. The power of rhythm too is a good one. So anything rhythmic is regulating, especially if it's below 80 beats per minute. 80 beats per minute is the, the maternal resting heart rate on average. So in the womb we regulated to 80 beats per minute. So anything below that kind of brings us back down. You don't want that. If you're in the parasympathetic side, you want something above 80 beats per minute. If you're sympathetic side, you want to do stuff below 80 beats per minute. So what I'm drawn to is maybe like faster beat, faster pace. That's what my body's used to. That keeps me out of my window of tolerance.”
“What I need is more like classical piano, like instrumental music, but even rhythmic things like clapping, jumping, not jumping. You could jump. Clapping, drumming was the thing I was thinking of drumming, playing an instrument that's like rhythmic strumming, anything rhythmic, even making a food, like if you're baking something, you just stir it. That's rhythmic. What else? Tapping your fingers. I'm not much of a finger tapper, butI am a lot of a toe tapper. I just don't even realize that I'm like rocking or shaking or tapping my feet and I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm, I'm regulating. I don't even know how that I'm regulating.”
“So just think about rhythmically, what could you add into your life or could you just oppose? Like if you're a person who knows, you lead your window of tolerance pretty regularly and you're a person that's more prone to the sympathetic side and you're listening to a lot of fast paced music. Can you swap that out? Not all the time, but sometimes for slower paced music and eventually get to more and more and more slower paced stuff. It's not always fun, but it's worth it.”
“I'm telling you all. If your nervous system is out of whack, your cells are not functioning as well as you want them to, meaning potentially they might be dying faster than regenerating. That's not good for longevity. Long term health, positive health, health outcomes. So if you're wind, if you're if you're window of tolerance, your nervous system, which is a part of your window tolerance. Window part. Your window of tolerance is a part of your nervous system. If that's all out of whack, it's causing your body to. To can be destabilized and that's causing your cells to not work as well, and that's causing your immune system to become weaker, and then you get sick and then disease sits in. I'm not trying to scare you, but this is science.”
“So we want to stay regulated. We want to manage our stress, mitigate the effects of stress, regulate our nervous system, have positive immune system, have ourselves, be regenerating, be healthy, stay healthy, live long. That's the goal. Okay, to recap, there are oodles of ways to get back into your window tolerance. Whether you're a sympathetic or a parasitic person, just remember to probably do the opposite or do more of the opposite and have a lot of grace for yourself. Because this work is hard. Like, it sounds pretty easy, or maybe it doesn't. Maybe it sounds easy to me because I've been teaching it for so long, but it's so much harder than it seams and it takes a lot of repetition. You have to keep. Keep at it because you basically have wired yourself to work one way and now we're trying to rewire to work the other way.”
“So work on things reactively. When you get out of your wind of tolerance, use something like I just mentioned, one of those many techniques to bring yourself back in. Do them preventatively, pair them with a morning routine or an evening routine or in your car, whatever it is, to keep yourself regulated. And there you have it.”
“That's it. That's all there is to it.”
“I'm not going to give you a try at home tip today because I just gave you like seven try it at home tips. I don't even know how many. Honestly, I don't even know how many things I just mentioned this episode because I kind of like just riffed off some things not ripped off. Rift. Rift Off. It's late in the day. I probably should have recorded this podcast this morning. Not tonight.”
“But if you are looking for more ways to support your nervous system to learn about, like, what does this look like organizationally? Like, what does it look like to like, have the nervous system of an organization, especially frontline organizations, especially organizations that are people who are serving people like education, policing, medical, nonprofits. If you want to know more about what this could look like and what doing this work looks like in leadership in company culture in the place that you are employed by or place that you run. 5ives F I V E I V E S is an organization funded by myself and Dr. Jessica Doring and we go in and we teach and coach through. If your organization or parts of your organization are in a survival state, here's how we get you up into to thriving and beyond. So to learn more about that, pop onto our website 5ives.com F I V E I V E S.com and don't forget to lock in what you learned today by applying it. Coming back here and letting us know how did it go, sharing any other techniques that you might use to get back into your window of tolerance or even sharing this episode with someone and saying like, hey, this made me think of you. Maybe we should do these things together so we can hold each other accountable.”
“Until next episode, I'm Lauren Spiegel and thanks for joining me.”