For a long time going to bed was a fearful experience for me. I hated the stillness. It maps back to traumas from my childhood where sleeping wasn’t safe. The anticipation that something unsafe could happen often trigger fight, flight and freeze responses (see polyvagal theory.) I carried them around for most of my adulthood. Often avoiding depression by filling my schedule with work or social activities to skirt having to “sit in it.” This is what’s called a small window of tolerance.
Wine and tv at night became habitual sedations as I struggled to tolerate my trauma responses. Remember, victims of chronic trauma, especially childhood trauma, can erratically experience all of those responses at once, or respond with fight, flight or freeze in a disorganized manner. A more secure response, goes up and down the ladder in succession.
Awareness of your responses and an ability to take a step back when triggered takes practice. That awareness results in an increased window of tolerance. It’s never perfect or predictable and these are natural responses. Your body is trying to protect you. However, since we are no longer cavemen, some of these responses can be misguided.
A few months into therapy, I felt stagnant. “Ok, wonderful therapist of mine, you’ve given me all the tools, and long definitions but I don’t know how to use them?” I felt like I was staring at all different puzzle pieces of my life and couldn’t figure out how to put it back together.
For example, I KNOW that time I texted homeboy 60 times after a bottle of wine was protesting behavior as the result of a triggered anxious attachment style. Now what?! It happened, I feel awful, I’m shaming myself and the “I’m unloveable” story loop played in my head like a scratched record.
“But Melissa, now you have choices, sure, this time you chose to text someone who was ignoring you. You didn’t have choices as a child and as an adult are learning that you do. Awareness allows you the power to choose.”
Our windows of tolerance grant the ability to sit in uncomfortables things, choices, modalities, and triggered trauma. Through the power of tolerance we can evaluate situations and move forward through choice. In the above example I let my scared inner child throw a tantrum. Today adult Melissa, can sit in her anger, meditate, and realize that someone who ignores her isn’t in alignment with her goals, doesn’t meet her communications needs and healthily move through the experience.
Did that take three to four shorterm fuckbuddies, quite a few tinder dates and some not so classy wine fueled text conversations before it was cemented in my brain. YES! It took almost 8 months.
Building that window of tolerance takes patience, and I recommend the budhist teacher Dharma Punx. He spends the first half of his podcast teaching and the second half is a mediation/ visualization designed around what the topic of the week is.
Mediation is not easy so be gentle with yourself. I once spent two week procrastinating on listening to a podcast of his on procrastination because I was afraid to sit in stillness. Like exercise, when I finally completed it, I immediately saw results in my work performance.