Intentional Leaders Podcast with Cyndi Wentland

The Window of Tolerance: Maintain Composure & Widen Your Capacity for Stress

• Cyndi • Episode 135

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Ever wondered how some leaders seem to effortlessly inspire and guide with clarity? Unlock the secrets to maintaining your cool under pressure with our dive into psychiatrist Daniel Siegel's window of tolerance concept.  Our discussion zeroes in on the sweet spot of composure—the zone where we're neither overwhelmed nor disengaged—and why it's crucial for leaders and individuals alike to operate within this range.

This episode will reveal how the brain's incredible plasticity can be harnessed to expand your window of tolerance and build emotional resilience.  As we dissect the role of the prefrontal cortex in managing stress and maintaining cognitive function, you'll come to understand how your own stress responses can either serve or hinder you in high-stakes situations, particularly in the aftermath of shared traumas like the pandemic.

If you're looking to enhance your ability to face pressures with grace and inspire those around you, tune in for insights that could reshape your response to stress forever.

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Cyndi:

Welcome to the Intentional Leaders Podcast. This whole episode is going to focus on a concept called the window of tolerance. It's a term coined by Daniel Siegel, and I'm going to tell you why it is so important for you to understand this concept not only for you, but to help those around you manage their stress. So in today's episode, I want to talk to you about Dan Siegel's window of tolerance, because this is super cool. I love this whole concept, this framework, and how it has an effect on our leadership impact. He is a clinical professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine. This concept is all about the optimal zone in which we can thrive and function emotionally and cognitively in everyday life. Does that sound like something you might want? I know I do. The reason this is so important to consider is because the window of tolerance is all about our optimal ability to manage the challenges that come up for all of us every day.

Cyndi:

Think about the last time you were derailed by stress, and maybe for you, stress means that you get full of anxiety, you get full of emotion, you get really feeling hyper aroused in your body. Or maybe for you. When you get overly stressed, you tend to shut down. You tend to want to sleep or be quiet or huddle in the corner in a fetal position, whatever it might be for you. How do you manage stress? What happens when you get hooked in to stress and you're feeling stress? What happens?

Cyndi:

The challenge for many of us is when we are in that zone of stress outside of what Dan Siegel coined as the window of tolerance, it shuts down our ability to think things through critically and constructively. Because when we're outside of our window of tolerance, what happens to our nervous system is it starts releasing stress hormones and we don't have access to our prefrontal cortex, which is the executive center of our brain. That is the part of your brain that is right in back of your forehead. It's super important because that prefrontal cortex is our executive functioning skills. It means all the ability to organize and plan. Think about complexity and how do we practice self-control and problem solving. The prefrontal cortex helps us do all that efficiently and effectively. So when you move outside window of tolerance, you don't have access to good critical thinking.

Cyndi:

I think all of this is particularly important for us right now because stress in America is on the rise since the pandemic and we are still grappling with the psychological impacts of the trauma of the pandemic. And if you've read anything about mental health, you probably already know this. But we seem to be experiencing still the psychological effects of the trauma from the pandemic. And when we think about this and many people say, are we back to normal? But what is normal? And are we able to access the parts of ourselves that feel calm and mindful and that allow us to fully process all the things that we need to each and every day in a constructive way? Because for many of us those resources continue to be depleted since the pandemic.

Cyndi:

For me, I think that's kind of crazy right that we've gone through this collective trauma that has lessened our ability to function mindfully and calmly because of something we collectively experienced in our lives. But we don't always think about those things. We just might go through the day and I know some days for me are rickety man like that I react poorly to situations and I think why am I feeling so emotional about this? Why am I so stressed at this particular thing? Why is this triggering me. And then I think about the capacity in ourselves, the capacity in myself to access calm, to access composure, and for many of us, that ability continues to be limited. So I think the window of tolerance is a really cool concept to think about. And it's a cool concept to think about in terms of what is your ideal state, what allows you to stay in a state of calm and mindfulness despite all the stuff that happens to us every single day? And the idea about the window of tolerance is that, if we broaden it, it allows us to manage those challenging experiences more flexibly and more effectively. It means we're in an emotional comfort level, and that's not just important for our emotions. It's important for our emotions, our ability to have the cognitive bandwidth that we need to think things through every day, and also the physical energy to be available for ourselves and others to show up as our best self. The wider our window of tolerance is, it means we're calm, flexible, focused and engaged.

Cyndi:

When we step out of our window of tolerance again, we can get hijacked. We can get hijacked by stress and things that trigger us and most of those things we're not even consciously aware of. So I want you to think back to a time recently where you felt stressed. And what is your typical reaction to stress during this period of stress? For you, did you go into hyper arousal where you felt overwhelmed by that stress? Probably it would have felt like your heart was pounding, your thoughts are racing, you want to fight, you're panicky, you may have difficulty sleeping or difficulty relaxing. Is that what happens to you when your window of stress is compromised? You feel exaggerated around emotional responses, or the opposite of that is, we go in hypoarousal, where we experience reduced energy. That feels and looks like disengagement or feeling numb, or we just disassociate from our emotions and disassociate from things around us. We may have a lower heart rate, lower respiration.

Cyndi:

It's important for you to know where do you go when your window of tolerance is threatened. Do you go to hyper, do you go to hypo? And I know for me. Typically I've always been kind of a hypo arousal. I want to take flight from stress, I don't want to fight. But very recently I had the opposite, that I went into fight mode and I was like what is happening to my brain, what is happening to my ability to manage my emotions? And a key to understanding the window of tolerance is that awareness. It's the awareness of where do you go most frequently and do you know that your window of tolerance is being threatened. And the challenging part of all of this when we're at work, of course, is the big bummer is we're not going to show up well when our window of tolerance is being threatened or compromised. So when our window of tolerance is compromised, not only is it difficult to manage our stress and coping with those stressors, but it's going to have some other impacts on us as well. One it's going to affect our decision making.

Cyndi:

The emotional and cognitive inflexibility that comes with hyper or hypo arousal means it impairs our judgment and our decision-making abilities. We may not be in a position to make great decisions. We may fall into the trap of being overly emotional and we may not be able to optimally cognitively handle the situation we're in, which also may strain our relationships, especially if you're in a leadership role. The ability to understand and regulate our emotions may in fact strain our relationships, both personally and professionally. It also limits our adaptability. Think about all the situations during your day where something changes. If we struggle to navigate that transition, those challenges, effectively, it's going to have a huge effect on our credibility, and if we're not predictable and consistent and calm or have the ability to pivot in those times of change or challenge, we're also going to have less ability to influence others, which is an essential component of good leadership. So many people tell me they want to be a good role model, they want to lead by example. This is a great area to consider. Are you leading by example? By maintaining calm, by being able to manage and navigate your own emotional and cognitive responses to the inevitable changes that come to us every single day? All of this has an impact on our leadership effectiveness.

Cyndi:

When I learned about this concept of window of tolerance, it gave to me a language and a framework to think about, what to do about this, and especially when we think about right now, where we are mental health wise, where this period of ongoing stress and continuous demand on our resources, on our capability, it, leaves you a little bit depleted. We're all, I think, a little bit depleted right now, collectively, when you think about widening your window, what it will take to do that. These are some things that help with widening our window, and number one is being mindful, and I don't know mindfulness is to me sometimes. I thought about that back to yoga. I thought about the mindfulness and the breathing, and I was like, okay, this is just hokey, I don't want to do this. Why do I need to get in touch with my mind? Why can't I just exercise? And I remember feeling that anxiety about just wanting to do yoga, not practice yoga, which is all about mindfulness as well. Can you manage your mind? And this comes back, though, to being self-aware, and if you've read any of my recent articles, or or listened to previous podcasts, I've been talking a lot about self-awareness, because most people believe they are self-aware, but very few people truly are. Mindfulness can help you get in touch with self-awareness.

Cyndi:

Second is grounding techniques, and I'm going to talk more about this in future episodes, because grounding techniques are literally helping you to feel more centered and anchored. So grounding techniques are designed to bring you back to the present, so you can access the cognitive and emotional flexibility that you need to solve challenges and to manage all the stress that you are experiencing in the moment. And a third is self-care. You know, I know, everybody knows that the better we take care of ourselves, the more capacity that we'll have to manage our stress effectively. So these three things mindfulness, grounding techniques and self-care help us to widen our window of tolerance.

Cyndi:

I love this particular concept because, as not just leaders but human beings we have to think about, are we good role models for managing stress?

Cyndi:

Are we able to remain calm in the face of challenges? Or when situations arise each and every day which I know they do do we freak out about them? And I don't just mean like the freak out that may be painfully obvious to other people, although that is also true, but internally, how do you feel about what is going on in those moments of stress and challenge, and are you managing it effectively and constructively? The goal is to continue to widen, widen your ability to stay present, widen your ability to remain calm. And can you do that? Can you change the way your brain works? The great news is yes. Can you get better at managing stress in the moment? Absolutely.

Cyndi:

I think the beautiful part about our brain is that we can create new pathways. Our brain is flexible and adaptable when we consciously try to change these things on purpose. Consciously try to change these things on purpose and I wish I would have known about all of this many, many decades ago around my ability to manage my anxiety, my stress, I think I would have shown up as a more effective leader, a more inspiring leader and as a more capable leader. So I hope, by sharing this concept and doing more exploration about it in upcoming episodes, that you, too, will focus on this for you, that you'll think about your window of tolerance, think about what happens to your body, to your brain, during those times of stress and how can you be more mindful of when those things happen, and begin to think about what to do to widen your tolerance. So, coming up in future episodes, I'm absolutely going to continue to provide you some of the ways you can do this and do this well.

Cyndi:

As William James says, "the greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another, and my hope for all of us is that we continue to strengthen intentionally paying attention to our thoughts, our feelings, our bodily sensations, and that we are thinking about our effect on people around us, and that we can move through those situations of stress and challenge with more calm and more mastery. I am on such a focused journey right now to do this for myself, so I can show up consistently and predictably as my best self, and I hope you want to join me on this journey as well. In the next couple months, I'm going to be offering a free webinar and also a masterclass on emotional agility. If you are interested, check it out by subscribing to our newsletter. Join us so you get all the information you need to navigate this journey of leadership effective.