How to Remain Mindful Within the Window of Tolerance
Mindfulness matters. However, for many people suffering with PTSD, this is not always easy to keep in mind.
Mindfulness, in and of itself, is a self-awareness technique that allows us to tune into our bodies’ needs and what we are feeling in the moment. In a therapeutic setting, mindfulness helps patients process thoughts and memories in a meaningful and constructive way that does not pass judgment.
In a previous blog about the window of tolerance, we discussed how everyone’s personal stress threshold resembles that of being on a roller coaster ride. Navigating PTSD is quite literally like being on a rollercoaster – one moment everything is smooth sailing and you’re having a great time enjoying life in the moment. But then the track beneath the coaster train shifts, and everything dramatically changes.
Whether sudden, or gradual, the roller coaster begins to climb or descend a great height. Suddenly it can feel like you’re out of control, with no way to escape — no way back to the initial boundaries contained within the stress threshold.
In the EMDR therapy we do, encouraging a mindfulness practice is key to helping patients conceptualize and work through traumatic memories present in the brain’s cerebral cortex, without causing emotional distress to manifest on behalf of the limbic system.
By maintaining the window of tolerance through breathing exercises, bilateral reprocessing (like butterfly tapping), service animal work, and other methods of relaxation, therapists can engage the conscious parts of their patients’ prefrontal cortex by distracting the unconscious parts of the brain that might fall into hyperarousal or hypoarousal.
Regardless of whether a person is feeling calm or slight discomfort, mindfulness practices allow us to hone in on key factors that are flowing through our mind and body — the roller coaster is going slow and steady; we are able to look around, take in our surroundings, wave at the people below, and remain relaxed, yet alert. The concept of anxiousness is not even on the radar.
Through this, EMDR allows patients the grace to remain mindful — regulated and focused on their thoughts and feelings — while processing trauma in a consciously safe environment.
But what happens when self-regulation escapes us? When PTSD is involved, a patient may not have all the tools they need to regain emotional balance when their internal Richter scale goes haywire as a result of a perceived danger from the unconscious mind, whether triggered by an unforeseeable external force or a sudden bodily response.
As out of control you might feel in these situations, there are plenty of coping strategies that can be put in place to help ground your bodily reactions and not only bring you back to the peace and stability within your own personal window of tolerance, but expand it wider at either end of the spectrum to help you remain conscious, calm, and engaged when stress levels begin to rise.
When it comes to navigating hyperarousal, some coping strategies to consider include:
Using grounding techniques to help orient and establish your five senses
Relocating to a calm environment or place that feels safe and familiar
Listening to calming music or a guided meditation
Deep breathing exercises
Getting in some exercise
When it comes to navigating hypoarousal, some coping strategies to consider include:
Gentle yoga, stretching, or any other form of exercise
Getting up and dancing or singing
Grounding and reorienting
Mindfulness practice
At its core, the window of tolerance is about engagement with everything around us, and feeling safe and secure within our own individual framework of stress tolerance and management. It is literally a serene view through a window into the world, simply as it is. It is the ability to cope with and tolerate whatever the world presents us with. It is, in other words, self-regulation through the practice of mindfulness and compassionate exploration.