Holding Your Nerve: Living Inside the Window

Some days I can handle the noise of the builders currently working out the back of my house, the mess of my still-packed boxes, the grief of moving home and leaving my beloved life in Bristol, and the group chats that constantly give me updates on said life!  I feel steady, present, able to think and feel at the same time.

Other days, the exact same things happen and it’s too much, so my instinct is to go numb. I shut down or lose it completely, and it feels like there’s no space inside me to take any more in.

Maybe you recognise the variations in your ability to cope with life’s many happenings and challenges. The difference could be your nervous system’s window of tolerance (of course it could also be peri-menopause, but that's a post for another day...!).

Coined by Dr. Dan Siegel, the window is the range of arousal you can stay within and still feel like yourself. Too far outside, and you end up in survival mode; either anxious and overwhelmed, or flat and disconnected. Your system isn’t broken. It’s trying to protect you.

Trauma and chronic stress can narrow the window over time. Bessel van der Kolk wrote about this in The Body Keeps the Score, and polyvagal theory explains how our bodies constantly scan for threat, even when our minds don’t realise it. If you’ve lived through a lot, your body might be quick to shut down or power up; thank goodness, because it’s learned to keep you safe.

But the window isn’t fixed. It can stretch.

That’s the good news. The nervous system can learn, slowly and gently, that it’s safe to stay present. Therapy can help with this, not by forcing regulation, but by building it. Through relationship, breath, movement, and noticing early signals. Through moments of co-regulation that slowly become your own. Body-based therapies like EMDR or somatic experiencing work especially well for this, but any approach that honours safety, slowness and connection can help.

We can help children grow their windows, too. The key isn’t teaching them to self-regulate in isolation, but helping them co-regulate with us. That means staying steady with them through big feelings, offering calm instead of control, and letting them borrow our nervous systems until theirs mature. Over time, these repeated experiences of safety, even in the midst of storms, give children the internal scaffolding they need to stretch their own capacity.

There’s more awareness about the window of tolerance now, and that’s helpful. But it’s important to be thoughtful about how we use this idea. Some people shouldn’t feel regulated in every situation. If you’re navigating racism, poverty, ableism or other systemic harm, dysregulation might be a wise and necessary response. The problem doesn’t live in you, it lives outside. And the answer isn’t always “get back in your window.”

Still, it can be hopeful. You can grow your capacity. You can learn to spot the early signs. You can find ways back in through breath, movement, cold water, warmth, music, safe people, and kindness towards yourself.

The window can stretch. And so can you.