Know Yourself: The Window of Tolerance

If you’re feeling constantly overwhelmed, numb, irritable, or like you’re just barely holding it together at work, you’re not broken. You may be outside your window of tolerance.

Dr. Dan Siegel coined the phrase “window of tolerance” to describe the zone in which your nervous system can function well.

When you’re within this window, you can handle stress, think clearly, and respond rather than react. You might feel challenged in a stressful situation, but not completely unhinged or shut down.

In healthy environments where people feel safe, supported, and emotionally regulated, this window tends to be wide. Here, it’s manageable to bounce back from and manage stressors.

For those who have trauma in their systems, chronic burnout, or work in high-stress environments like toxic workplaces, inconsistent leadership, or the pressure cooker of entrepreneurship, that window shrinks.

When your window narrows, even seemingly small stressors start to feel unbearable. A simple Slack message might push you into hyperarousal (panic, running away, anxiety, or irritability), or hypoarousal, where you feel checked out, numb, frozen, or dissociated.

You may even start to avoid people, projects, or situations just to protect your energy. Unfortunately, isolation can shrink your window further, making it even harder to cope when stress shows up (which, let’s be real, it always does).

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