Wellness Matters Webinar - Expanding the Window of Tolerance - How to Respond instead of React

The window of tolerance refers to an optimal zone of function in which people can respond to stressors with emotional flexibility and clarity rather than reacting impulsively or habitually. When we are within our window of tolerance, we are better able to learn, connect with others, think clearly and creatively, and act according to our values.

In this presentation, we will delve deeper into…

• What the window of tolerance is

• How it is developed and shaped throughout our lives

• How the window of tolerance impacts daily living

• Tools for broadening the window of tolerance and developing a deeper sense of self-awareness and self-control.

Facilitated by: Jaqueline Brodbin

FAQs

• What does “window of tolerance” mean in mental health?

  The window of tolerance is your optimal zone of emotional functioning—where your nervous system feels safe enough for you to stay calm, present, and connected. Inside this window, you can think clearly, access your intuition, and feel emotions like joy, curiosity, and connection without being overwhelmed. When you’re within your window, your body is regulated: your breath is steady, your heart rate is comfortable, and you can engage with others and with life’s challenges in a grounded way. The webinar explains how this state supports both mental and physical health, including digestion, immune function, and bonding hormones like oxytocin.

• What are signs that I’m outside my window of tolerance (hyperarousal or hypoarousal)?

  When you move above your window into hyperarousal (the “red zone”), you may feel anxious, angry, panicky, tense, or “on edge.” Your muscles tighten, your breath becomes shallow, your heart races, and your mind may feel cluttered or stuck in worst-case scenarios. When you drop below your window into hypoarousal (the “blue zone”), you may feel numb, shut down, disconnected, spaced out, or hopeless, with very low energy and motivation. The webinar highlights how both states are survival responses—not personal failures—and how recognizing these early warning signs is the first step to responding instead of reacting.

• How can I calm my nervous system and expand my window of tolerance so I respond instead of react?

  To calm hyperarousal, the webinar suggests first honouring your body’s need for movement (for example, brisk walking, shaking, or other vigorous movement) and then using grounding tools like deep breathing, orienting to your surroundings with your senses (what you can see, hear, feel, smell, and taste), or safe-place visualizations. To wake up from hypoarousal, gentle movement (stretching, rocking, swaying, slow walks), sensory input (cold water, ice, peppermint, or other strong scents/tastes), upbeat music, and safe social connection can help bring you back online. Over time, repeatedly noticing your cues, pausing, and using these tools “rewires” the nervous system (neuroplasticity), gradually expanding your window of tolerance so you can stay present more often under stress.

• How do trauma and childhood experiences affect my window of tolerance?

  Your window of tolerance is shaped by both biology and environment, especially early relationships. As children, we learn regulation through co-regulation—caregivers’ eye contact, tone of voice, touch, and presence teach our nervous system what “safe” feels like. When needs are met consistently and we feel seen and soothed, our window of tolerance tends to be larger. Trauma, chronic stress, invalidation, discrimination, poverty, or never really feeling safe can narrow the window, making it more adaptive for the body to live close to survival states (fight, flight, freeze, or shutdown). The message of the talk is that your body is not broken—it has adapted to protect you—and with support, practice, and often therapy, your nervous system can learn that safety and regulation are possible again.

Transcript

Hello everybody, and welcome to our Wellness Matters talk this evening. My name is Nicole Imgrund, and I'm the owner and director of Rivers Edge Counselling Centre. I'm joined this evening by Jacqueline Broadbin, who is going to present a talk called “Expanding the Window of Tolerance: How to Respond Instead of React.”

Before we start the talk and introduce Jacqueline, I just wanted to let you know that this talk is part of a series of talks that we have every month, often a couple of times a month. There are over a hundred of them now on our website that you can view, and we still have two more coming up this summer as well. In July, we have a webinar on the 10th called “Sometimes Getting There Faster Means Slowing Down” with Aya Vance, a webinar I think is coming at the perfect time as we start our summer, about self-care and the importance of slowing down and the calm and balance that can be restored to our lives when we do slow down. And then the next week, we have “Unlocking ADHD: A Deep Dive into the Unique Challenges for Women and Girls” by Michelle Bella. You’re welcome to join us for those talks.

We’ve also posted on our website all of our fall talks. There are some amazing talks starting in September, so you’re welcome to take a look at that as well. Also posted to our website now is our fall program lineup. We just keep adding more and more programs. We’re really loving these programs and getting a really good response from the community as well. You will see single workshops or sometimes workshops that are just a couple of evenings or afternoons, as well as some longer-term groups. Take a look at those, and registration is now open for any of them.

Without further ado, let’s move on to our talk for this evening. Jacqueline says her talk is just under an hour, so we’ll have some time for questions at the end. If you want to put them in the Q&A or the chat, I’ll keep my eye on that and we will come to them at the end. Don’t worry too much about taking notes. You’ll have access to the slides afterward, and the recording will be on the website too.

Jacqueline is a counselling psychology graduate student at Rivers Edge Counselling, and she has experience supporting individuals through emotional regulation, trauma, and resilience building. Her work draws from attachment therapy, somatic approaches, and acceptance and commitment therapy. Jacqueline is passionate about making mental health accessible, and she’s here to guide us through understanding the nervous system and how we can expand our capacity for calm connection and grounded living. I will also share with you that although she is a practicum student with us and has been with us since September, she is staying on as well. She’ll be doing counselling and working as a provisional psychologist with Rivers Edge ongoing through the fall. With that, I am going to turn it over to you, Jacqueline.

Beautiful. Okay. Hello. Thank you for that, Nicole, and welcome to my talk on “Expanding the Window of Tolerance: How to Respond Instead of React.” As Nicole said, my name is Jacqueline. I’m a graduate practicum student here at Rivers Edge Counselling, and I have experience supporting the houseless population as well as youth in school settings. I tend to take a trauma-informed lens where I integrate attachment therapies, somatic therapies, and acceptance and commitment therapy.

Through my work experience and my school experiences, I have really learned the importance that the nervous system plays in our emotional well-being. I’m very passionate about helping people to feel safer in their bodies and in their relationships. With that said, I ask: have you ever snapped at somebody in traffic and wondered, “Where did that come from?” Or frozen up in a meeting or social setting, unable to think or speak clearly? Maybe you just feel kind of chronically low, anxious, or overall just off.

These kinds of emotional responses are more common than we often realize, but they can feel really confusing and lonely, and at times they can feel shameful as well. But what if I told you that they aren’t necessarily personal flaws, but rather signs that your system has been pushed outside of its comfort zone and pushed to the brink of its window of tolerance into what we call survival mode? Our ability to stay calm and think clearly and respond effectively gets hijacked when we are in this kind of survival state. Often, in the fast-paced and high-pressure world that many of us are living in, we are living on the edge of our window of tolerance.

This talk is relevant to anybody who struggles with their own reactions at times; anybody who works with or lives with children; anybody who has difficulty focusing or being productive; those who are feeling emotionally exhausted or burnt out. It can also be connected to physical symptoms like headaches, tension, and fatigue. That’s not to say that this concept is the only thing that matters, but it definitely can be informative if you are somebody who is experiencing any of these things.

We have been taught to hide or push through these states, but what if instead we could learn to understand them? I think that’s what the window of tolerance really is. It gives this new lens that allows us to view ourselves and others in a more aware and compassionate, more understanding way: that these reactions are survival responses and that there is an adaptive nature that comes with these emotional responses. The good news is that we can learn to work with them and we don’t have to work against them, and I think that can be really empowering to know.

So today we’ll explore what the window of tolerance is and how the nervous system responds to stress, and how the nervous system is connected to the window of tolerance. We’ll talk about how trauma, environment, and upbringing all shape our capacity to deal with challenges or distress or just challenging experiences. We’ll also talk about signs that you are exiting your window of tolerance or that you might already be outside of your window of tolerance, and tools that you can use to start to build that window of tolerance and feel this calmer, more connected sense of being.

First things first: what is the window of tolerance? It is a concept that was developed by Dan Siegel, who is a psychologist and an author. He has written many books about similar concepts—super interesting if you’re into those types of reads. The window of tolerance is essentially referred to as our optimal zone of functioning. This is when the body feels safe. In this state, we are prepared for connection, creativity, joy, and awe. I often tell people that if you’re feeling disconnected from your gut instinct or your intuition, or you’re not really clear on what matters to you, it could be because you are outside of your window and in more dysregulated states.

When you’re within your window of tolerance in this calm, focused, connected state, you’re more able to access your intuition and feel mentally clear. Being in the window doesn’t just help with mental clarity; it also supports physical health. There have been studies that show it’s connected to immune health and digestion, and it’s also linked with the releasing of oxytocin, which is the hormone that helps us to bond and feel close to other people.

It’s really normal for all people to move within their window and to move outside of their window. As you can see on this diagram here, above the window we have the hyperarousal state, which is our heightened, activated, anxious, angry, panicked, really activated emotions. I’ll refer to this as hyperarousal or the red zone. Below the window of tolerance, we have our hypoarousal, where we are more so experiencing numbness, shutdown, feeling disconnected from our bodies and from deeper emotions like joy and awe. We’ll go into more detail about those in a minute.

When we talk about the window of tolerance, what we’re really talking about is how the nervous system responds to safety and threats. The nervous system is the part of our body that connects our brain to the other organs of our body. The nervous system is also known as our built-in alarm system and our built-in calming system. It has two main functions, and those two main functions are due to its two different systems within the one big nervous system. We have two main modes: the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. I will go into detail about what those mean.

The sympathetic nervous system is our gas pedal. It’s the part of us that becomes activated when we are in our hyperarousal red state. In this state, we are feeling very activated and on high alert. This mode prepares us to fight, to run, and to react fast. Another way this can show up is through what’s known as the fawn response, which is more people-pleasing types of reactions. In this state, we are really motivated to survive. It’s not rational; it’s reactive and protective. It’s the state that gets activated when anything feels threatening.

It kicks in when your body thinks that it’s in danger, whether the danger is real or perceived. Imagine that you’re walking through an alley alone at night. When we think about this, what’s likely happening is we’re feeling on high alert, right? If we are in this dark alleyway all by ourselves, I can already feel it in my body when I think about that: my eyes are widening, my muscles want to tense up, and my senses are on high alert. I’m listening carefully to see if there’s anything happening around me. I’m just hyperaware of what’s going on around me. That is essentially what our hyperarousal or sympathetic nervous system is designed to do.

The thing is, it can kick on in response to anything that feels like a threat. This is not just limited to physical danger. As social beings, our brains are wired to respond to things like criticism, rejection, and being misunderstood. These are threats to our sense of self and to our sense of belonging. At the core of our being, we want to be part of other human experiences. We want to feel connected and like there’s a place that we belong. So when simple things like someone’s tone, a dismissive glance, getting cut off in traffic, or being asked to speak in front of other people happen, these things can feel like real threats. They can register in our system as danger because our body really cares about belonging and being part of a community.

Our nervous system does not ask whether something is logical; it just asks whether or not it’s safe. So we can see our sympathetic nervous system or our hyperarousal red state become activated when we are experiencing things like rejection or the other examples I gave.

The other side of our nervous system is the parasympathetic nervous system. This is what we refer to as our brake pedal. This is the system that wants to slow things down. There are two settings within this state. One is the ventral vagal, which is designed for restoring. This is where we relax and our body gets to restore itself and come back to a calm place. This is the part that’s connected to the window of tolerance. The other is the dorsal vagal, which is our shutdown state. Its job is to jump into survival and shut down anything that’s not necessary so that it can keep us alive, but it’s a slowed-down survival instinct.

To go deeper into these, the ventral vagal is designed to support rest, connection, and restoring. This is where we experience regulation. This is where we experience social connection. Our guards are able to come down. We’re feeling safe when we’re in this zone. We’re restoring and bringing our energy back, recovering, all of those types of things. When we’re in our window of tolerance or when our ventral vagal system is activated, we will experience steady and natural breath. This is when you feel really at ease in your breath. We’ll have relaxed bodies. Our heart rate will feel normal and relaxed. We’ll feel connected to our body, and we’ll also feel oriented and connected to the world around us. In this state, we also have access to our critical thinking and creative thinking, and we’ll feel engaged, safe, and grounded.

In our dorsal vagal state, this is our shutdown-to-survive mode and is connected to the hypoarousal, or the blue zone. In this state, our system shuts down anything that’s non-essential in order to preserve energy. Again, this is a survival instinct. Our body is saying, “Okay, this is all I’ve got. I’m just going to shut down, preserve my energy, and keep myself alive and functioning at the very least.” When we talk about preserving energy, this is why we’re feeling numb and disconnected from our body, disconnected from other people. We’re feeling emotionally and mentally shut down because our body’s only concern is just making it by. It’s going to shut down anything that’s non-essential.

This happens when safety feels impossible. There are a couple of ways that this can happen. One of them is if we are in constant overwhelm. If the world has been really hard, time and time again, and we feel constantly overwhelmed, it takes a lot of energy to be activated in the red, activated survival response. When we’re constantly feeling overwhelmed, it makes more sense for us to preserve our energy and drop down into hypoarousal. It’s not safe enough to go into the green zone, but it takes too much energy to live in the red zone. So we drop down to hypoarousal.

Another reason this might happen is if safety has never really been established. If you don’t know that being and feeling safe is realistic for you or something you’ve ever actually witnessed, your system is going to have to make a decision. “Well, the world’s not safe, and it takes a lot of energy for me to be in my activated state, so I’m going to drop down into survival. I’m just going to make it by. I’m going to shut down and do whatever I can to survive down here.” This can become our default mode when this has been our life experience time and time again. This is when we see people’s default modes and patterns being to move straight into hopelessness or feeling emotionally removed.

In this state, it can feel like you’re going numb, like you’re zoning out a lot, like you’re losing motivation, or like you’re disappearing inward. That is the survival response. This brings up the question: how is this shaped? Why do some people lean toward having a more shut-down blue reaction, some people lean toward having more of a red reactive kind of reaction, and other people seem to stay within their window and are relatively regulated?

We know that biology and development play factors. Children, teens, and adults have very different development. A child does not have the same capacity as a teen, and a teen does not have the same capacity as an adult. This is related to the fact that our brains are not fully developed when we’re a child or a teen. I think the age is about 25 when our frontal lobe is fully developed. Throughout development, our capacity for distress and for challenges grows.

We also know that people have different personalities and different temperaments. This is connected to genetics and hormones. Some people have higher levels of cortisol and adrenaline, while other people have higher levels of oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine. These things are also highly connected to the kind of sleep we’re getting, what our nutrition looks like, and what our exercise looks like. Biology and development play a role.

Even more so, we know that relational and environmental factors really shape our ability to cope with stressors or the window of tolerance that we move through the world with and that we learn is safe. One of the main ways this happens is through co-regulation. We learn to regulate ourselves through connections with other people. As babies, we don’t know how to regulate yet, so we turn to the adults or caregivers or those who love us, and we learn to match their nervous system. This is done through nonverbals: eye contact, vocal tone, touch, presence, feeling non-judgment. These calming experiences shape our nervous system and build our window of tolerance.

The other piece is how well our needs are getting met. This teaches us whether or not the world is safe: are my needs typically met? Is it safe for me to be regulated and to not need my survival instincts, for me to put my guards down? We learn this again through childhood, through co-regulation, and through whether or not our needs are being met. In these early years, we learn if safety is possible or whether we believe it’s impossible for us.

When safety is interrupted—our needs go unmet, we have traumatic experiences, we face chronic stress and overwhelm, or we feel chronically invalidated or like we don’t have a place where we belong—these things disrupt our ability to feel safe in our bodies and in the world. Our body learns that it needs to stay ready for danger. It is more adaptive for our body to have a smaller window of tolerance because we’re more able to access our survival instincts in a smaller window. If I’m living in this small window and I know the world is unsafe, it makes more sense for me to move quickly in and out of survival states so I can protect myself.

What’s nice about having a bigger window is that we’re really able to access deeper emotional experiences. The guards are down. The world feels safer, and we get to experience joy and awe. Our window can be a beautiful place to live, but it is actually very adaptive, when the world is unsafe, for our bodies to create a smaller window of capacity so we can access survival instincts more easily.

All of this is to say that this is not about pathology. It is about protection. Instead of asking ourselves, “What’s wrong with me?” we need to start to ask, “What has happened to me? What is my body doing to keep me safe? What can I do to work with it and thank it for that?”

I’m also going to add that systemic stress matters too. Experiences like racism, discrimination, chronic invalidation are going to contribute to whether or not you feel safe in the presence of other people and whether or not the world is safe and, therefore, your body is safe. Things like poverty, housing instability, generational and intergenerational trauma, and lack of access to care and support systems all teach us whether or not it is okay for us to put our guards down and live in a bigger window, or whether we need to shrink our window so we can access our survival responses more quickly.

Your body is not broken. That’s what I’m really trying to get to with all of this. It’s not broken. Your body has adapted to survive, and that has been a brilliant strategy for staying safe. If you are somebody who experiences a lot of reactive responses, or you feel like you’re in that hypo, blue zone a lot, there is something very adaptive and beautiful in that. That’s what I really want people to hear from this portion of the presentation.

The other really important piece I want people to hear is that practice changes the pathways. Our nervous system and our brain are not fixed. They are constantly adapting. Every time we choose to pause, breathe, connect with our system, think about what we need, and provide ourselves with what we need, we’re carving a new pathway. At first, it’s going to feel like you’re bushwhacking through the overgrowth, but with practice, these new pathways become more clear, stronger, and safer. It becomes more evident that we’re able to live in this calm, regulated state.

Regulation is not a one-time skill. It is a relationship that you build with your body over time, over and over again. Science calls this neuroplasticity. This is science’s way of saying that neurons can fire and rewire and create new patterns. Just like the system that once adapted to survive, it can also adapt to feel safe, connected, and steady. We know through science that change is real, healing is possible, and it’s not too late. We get to make choices over and over again about how we’re going about healing our system, growing that sense of trust, and growing the ability to regulate and tolerate challenging things.

The next question becomes: how do we do it? This part is very personal. Everybody’s nervous system speaks a different language, but most of us do have patterns. There are patterns that show up across different regulation states, and patterns that show up in our bodies and in what tends to be helpful for the different responses.

Step one is to get to know your cues and to get to know your patterns. This can be done through building body awareness, like engaging with body scans. Getting to know what our system is like in a regulated state allows us to be aware when shifts occur in our system. If I know that this is what my breath feels like when I’m feeling regulated, when my breath becomes more shallow or starts to move more quickly, I’m going to start to notice that shift. It really starts with getting to know your body when you are feeling calmer.

It’s also really important to start to recognize early cues for activation. Start to notice what your breath feels like as you heighten into the red, or what happens in the muscles in your body when you start to move down into hypoarousal. This body awareness is a key element in taking steps toward learning and reteaching this relationship that you have with your body.

Another tool I would add to getting to know your patterns and cues is journaling or taking time to reflect after reactions have happened. Think about the things that have triggered or caused or cued your responses. Maybe you notice that driving on the Henday in Edmonton during rush hour is something that typically gets you activated. Maybe you learn that certain types of eye contact make you feel dismissed. It’s important that we start to reflect and become aware of what is causing our system to pick up on certain things as threats. That’s step one.

Now, these are the patterns that will be helpful to bring awareness to what the cues might show up like in your body. In hyperarousal, our warning signs are tension in the body. We might notice a tight jaw, our shoulders tightening, our stomach becoming tight. Any muscle in your body can start to feel tense. Breath may quicken or feel more shallow. It might feel difficult to get your breath all the way down to the bottom of your abdomen. This can be a sign that we’re entering hyperarousal. Maybe you notice that your mind is racing or getting cluttered, and thoughts are getting stuck. Maybe you notice that you’re hyper-focused or scanning for threats, like that feeling of walking through the alley—very alert and on edge.

It’s also going to be harder to stay present in conversations. Our mind is going to feel very busy. It might feel like, “I need to get through this conversation so I can move on to the next thing.” This is another activated warning sign.

Signs that you are fully activated and out of your window are things like rapid heartbeat, panic, intense irritability or anger, not being able to sit still or think clearly, instincts to fight, flight, freeze, or fawn—these types of reactions—and feeling overwhelmed by emotions and sensations. You might feel overstimulated and want to bulldoze through things. Think of red, activated, tight, on-alert types of responses.

The body in hypoarousal has different warning signs. You might be really checked out. You can’t find it in you to pay attention or to emotionally get involved with things. You’re losing your focus a lot. You’re feeling heavy and slumped. You might notice your speech is slow or softened. You don’t have a lot of energy. Your body is preserving energy, so having a heightened voice or speaking quickly will feel like a lot of work. So we slow our speech and soften our volume. We might notice a sudden drop in our energy or motivation.

Signs that you are in shutdown include feeling like you’re not really here, feeling disconnected from your body and from people around you, feeling like things can’t grab your interest anymore. Feelings like numbness, dissociating, feeling blank inside, difficulty thinking or speaking clearly, shame or hopelessness, and very low energy and emotional collapse. If I were to put emotions here, the blue zone would be more on the depression side of things, lower energy. The red zone is more like activated anxiety and heightened energy.

Step two, after we’ve started to build that awareness of what this looks like in our body and which symptoms resonate with us, is to start using tools that help us move through it. Step two is really about giving the nervous system what it needs.

In hyperarousal, think of hyperarousal as up in the red zone. When we’re in hyperarousal, our goal is to calm the system and bring it down into the window of tolerance. The first step is to honor the body’s need for movement or activation. This can be done through vigorous movement—jumping jacks, burpees, stomping, shaking, or more intense workouts like boxing. This is our way of releasing that energy. From there, once we’ve exhausted some of the energy, we bring ourselves down by engaging with breath and grounding. This means bringing ourselves back to our body and orienting, which means coming back to the space we are in.

If you’ve ever heard of the 5-3-2-1 or using your senses, you might think about “What do I see? What do I hear? What do I smell, taste, and feel?” Engaging all of our senses brings us back into our body. Noticing what’s around us—where am I in space and time, what is actually happening in this present moment—and asking if there’s anything in the room that makes me feel particularly comfortable or that I want to engage with that will let me feel connected to the environment. These orienting tools bring us back into ourselves.

Something I use with clients sometimes is a safe place visualization. This is imagining a place that feels calm and safe for you. There are many guided meditations like this on YouTube, so if it’s something that you’re interested in, you can look into that and see if it’s a tool that works for you.

On the other side, we think about waking hypoarousal. Hypoarousal is down here, below the window. It’s very low energy, shut down. We want to bring ourselves up out of hypoarousal. Again, we want to honor the body. We’re not going to go from feeling really shut down to doing 20 jumping jacks. We could, but what’s important is that we move with our system in a slow way that honors what it needs.

Gentle movement—stretching, rocking, swaying, going for a walk—will ease you into your body and into movement. In this zone, it’s helpful to remind the body that it’s still here. Using cold water or ice will remind your skin that you have skin. Using things with strong scents or strong tastes, like peppermint, gum, or an essential oil with a stronger smell, can be really helpful. Peppermint is often a great option. It wakes up your taste buds and your nose, and it brings you back to the fact that, “Okay, I’m alert. I can remember that there are things actually on this planet right now that I can connect with.”

Upbeat music can also help—something that wakes us up and brings us back into the world. Connecting with other people is really helpful in this shutdown state as well, whether that’s texting somebody, making eye contact with somebody on your walk, or making eye contact with the person in the house with you. Touching them in a safe way—a handshake or a hug—reminds you that the world can be safe if you come up out of your shell a little bit.

Those are the step two tools. If this is something you’re interested in, this is the part you might screenshot.

Now, tools for building long-term capacity. Therapy is going to be something that is helpful for moving along that process and building skills in the long term. In therapy, you can process experiences, rewrite narratives, and reshape patterns in the loving and helpful support of another human, which can be really validating for your system when you’re feeling activated or like you don’t belong. Therapists can also help you identify patterns and help you apply skills that make sense for you. Maybe you’re having a hard time understanding what’s happening in your body in these states. Maybe you’re quite emotionally removed and don’t actually know what your breath feels like. Therapy can help you come back to that.

Another therapeutic tool that can be helpful is called somatic tracking, which is also something that you could explore on your own. Somatic tracking is a tool to help grow tolerance for uncomfortable sensations—getting used to what anger feels like or what it feels like to dip down into shutdown, slowly growing your tolerance and comfort with those sensations.

Safe relationships are also really helpful for building long-term capacity and feeling safe in our bodies and systems. Being consistently seen, heard, and supported is very validating when we’re trying to grow from patterns and alter our patterns. Again, finding your balance is important. This shows up differently for everybody. Finding what your window of tolerance looks like: what does rest really look like for you? What feels rejuvenating? What kinds of movement feel like you’re honoring your body? What does connection look like for you? What does being in solitude look like without it being loneliness? These are things you learn about yourself over time. As you define that, that’s how you start to see your long-term capacity stick and get rooted into your patterns.

All of this is to say that you don’t have to get it perfect. You just have to come back to yourself. Regulation is not about never getting dysregulated. That would be impossible. As humans, we are going to become activated and we’re going to shut down at times. The goal is not to never get dysregulated. Instead, it’s about noticing, pausing, and returning to ourselves in a way that feels loving and builds trust. Noticing, pausing, and returning over and over again is what this is really about.

As a recap, these are the main things I want you to take from this talk, if anything at all. Your window is your capacity to stay present even when life feels hard, and it can be a beautiful thing to develop. We also know that stress, trauma, and challenging experiences can narrow the window by making us feel unsafe and like we don’t belong in the world. Because of this, we can shift into our survival states more easily. With support and practice, our tolerance for distress can grow, and we can learn to handle more and more without shutting down or reacting. It’s not about staying regulated; it’s about noticing, pausing, and then returning to yourself—bringing yourself back into your window and doing what you need to feel that sense of calm and safety again.

That is really the takeaway, and that is where I close. Thank you. I will pass it over to Nicole.

Thank you. For those of you who need to leave now, I want to say thank you so much for joining us and remind you that you’re always welcome to join us for these talks, and I hope you have a wonderful evening.