Anxiety is a complex response, which has a response at a physiological, cognitive and behavioral level. It is an emotion, which like all emotions, has the purpose of preparing the body for action.
However, if this emotion is not adaptive, it disorganizes behavior and interferes with the person’s activities and functioning.
Anxiety produces symptoms at a physiological level such as tremors, restlessness, muscle tension and pain, or fatigue. And behavioral problems such as nervousness, restlessness, irritability, impatience and poor quality of sleep. What to do about this?
The window of tolerance, a concept developed by Dr. Dan Siegel, refers to the range or amount of anxiety that one is capable of experiencing tolerantly. , that is, maintaining harmony. When we are within our window of tolerance, we are within our safety zone, we can manage ourselves without becoming emotionally overwhelmed.
This window of tolerance is different for each person, since it has its origin in the experiences experienced in dangerous or traumatic situations and how one has managed to return to a state of calm.
Dysregulation occurs when you begin to go outside the window of tolerance, increasing stress and anxiety. This is because the mind believes that the trauma or extreme stress experienced in the past is recurring.
There are two states that happen when we are outside this safety zone, known as hyperarousal and hypoarousal, which occur when you dysregulate.
It happens when you are above the maximum tolerance level. Emotions such as fear, panic, anxiety, anger or hypervigilance are felt intensely. Hyperactivity also makes it difficult to sleep, eat, control emotions, or concentrate.
This is because the activity of the sympathetic autonomic nervous system is increased, responsible for involuntarily regulating actions related to stress.
2. Hypoactivation
Unlike the previous one, happens when you are below the tolerance range. The goal is avoidance of feeling, so you may feel tired, confused, distracted, or ashamed. It can also affect sleeping and eating habits, difficulty expressing, processing thoughts and emotions, and responding physically.
This is because the parasympathetic autonomic nervous system is activated, responsible for relaxation, breathing and pulsation among others.
Managing tolerance windows
Wider windows allow for greater integrity in life, while the narrower the windows are, the more prone they are to rigidity and emotional discomfort.
Learning to manage your window of tolerance allows you to face the demands of life. There are two ways to stay within your optimal zone: self-regulation that helps process stress and anxiety and expand the window of tolerance to cope with life’s demands.
How to improve emotional self-regulation
Early experiences with the behavior of our caregivers play a fundamental role in emotional regulation and our window of tolerance.
Babies, when they are born, have high levels of adrenaline, and contact with the mother or caregiver regulates this hormone due to the interaction of another hormone, oxytocin. This hormone is a neurotransmitter that stimulates the neuronal connections essential for the development and maturation of the baby’s brain.
Neuroscience has shown that infants and young children do not have the biological capacity to complete the stress cycle on their own. That is built over time through a multitude of co-regulation experiences.
A baby or child who has been able to develop a secure attachment style is able to self-regulate either their emotional state or remain largely within their window of tolerance. like helping another person regulate.
On the other hand, people who developed insecure attachment have limited capacity for emotional self-regulation, so they may have low tolerance for anxiety.
How to improve your anxiety tolerance window
According to recent research, it has been found that inducing feelings of security in adults can help overcome the negative effects of insecure attachment.
People who have lived under stressful conditions flood their bodies with the hormone cortisol, a chemical substance that temporarily blocks the hippocampus responsible for the formation of explicit or conscious memories.
On the contrary, the accumulation of implicit or unconscious memories increases , due to the effect of adrenaline produced by the amygdala. These memories emerge as flashbacks or overwhelming sensations of bodily terror and helplessness.
Being able to recognize your window of tolerance allows you to take steps to not become emotionally overwhelmed. You can use one of the following techniques:
Regular practice of these tips will teach you to instinctively recognize your window of tolerance. and self-regulate when necessary.
Expand the window of tolerance thanks to creativity
Thanks to the right hemisphere, faces, emotions, and expressions are recognized, which facilitates social connection. It is responsible for creativity, imagination, sense of movement in space, three-dimensional perception and musical sense.
Implicit memory is part of biographical memory, of our corporeal and emotional experience, of the connection of security and perceived attention. Implicit memory is found in the right hemisphere, while explicit memory, conscious memory, is in the left. The left hemisphere is in charge of language, logic and decision making.
To be creative, the integration of both hemispheres is needed; it is not limited to the functions of the right hemisphere, since it involves multiple brain functions and structures. Creativity is an extremely complex mental process.
From my private practice I carry out individual Art Therapy sessions for adults, a psychotherapeutic discipline that uses creative experimentation, to recover and reconstruct implicit memory by resignifying previous experiences, helping to find a language with which to understand and communicate the derived emotions.
This expands the tolerance window, you learn what the individual limits are within which to feel in balance and harmony , and the neural process to manage anxiety is integrated. This integration includes body regulation, emotional balance, self-knowledge and empathy, promoting well-being.
