Window of Tolerance - Understanding Activation
Have you ever had what felt like an extreme reaction to something that felt relatively small? Maybe dropping a glass while cooking dinner at the end of the day resulted in a full-blown panic attack… or a conversation with a friend triggered feelings of shame and anxiety that left you exhausted and staying in bed most of the following day. This is usually a sign of something deeper going on in our nervous systems.
The Window of Tolerance (WOT) is a framework created by Stephen Porges, PhD and founder of Polyvagal Theory. I find this to be an incredibly helpful framework to understand our own nervous systems, the nervous systems of others around us, and our adaptive responses to danger and stress.
When we are in our WOT we are able to think & feel at the same time. We have the capacity to connect with other people, engage in creativity, learning, and play, and generally respond (versus react) to the environment around us.
If there is a threat, our nervous systems can activate to hyperarousal - this can look/feel like an increased heart rate, thoughts speeding up, an impulse to hurt someone or something (physically or verbally), wanting to flee or leave, panic attacks… a real increase in energy. The survival strategies connected with hyperarousal are fight, flight, and appease.
If hyperarousal and its clever survival strategies aren’t working to keep you safe (or haven’t kept you safe historically) our nervous systems will often go towards hypoarousal. This can look/feel like shallow breath, lethargy, numbness (physically, emotionally, foggy thoughts…), a floating quality, depression, slower heart rate, dissociation… a real decrease in energy. The survival strategy connected with hypoarousal is what we call feigned death (like an opossum playing dead when afraid - the safest thing to do is to do nothing at all).
The survival response, freeze, occurs when hypo & hyperarousal are activated at the same time. Think of a deer in headlights - every muscle is extremely tense and ready for action (either fight, flight, or collapse) but the deer’s nervous system is paralyzed at the same time.
Aren’t our nervous systems amazing? If you are being chased by a bear it can be lifesaving for the fight, flight, freeze, or feigned death to become activated within your nervous system. But oftentimes when we have a history of past traumatic experiences, our nervous systems can be triggered into believing there is a threat (i.e. a bear, the potential to lose love from someone you care about, etc.) present even if the actual present moment is safe.
What survival strategies do you tend to use more often? Is hypo or hyper more familiar to you?