Emotional Regulation

Feelings and emotions are powerful messengers of our internal experience, capturing in an instant our sense of self in relationship with the environment. But when feelings and emotions become too intense, they impair our ability to communicate, learn and effectively take action.

The Window of Tolerance

Psychiatrist Daniel J. Siegal, developed the concept of the ‘window of tolerance’. According to his theory, each individual has a ‘window’ of tolerable emotional experience. When one is ‘in their window’ they are capable of effective thinking, action and relating.

An individual’s window of tolerance, is defined by a range of intermingling factors – temperament, upbringing, self-soothing capacities, trauma or psychological tendencies. The W.O.T is also affected by context, so that a person who might be hungry, surprised, emotionally or physically exhausted, is more vulnerable to becoming dysregulated and exiting the W.O.T (Siegal, 1999, p.255).

This simple diagram helps to visualise what happens when we start to feel emotionally ‘out of control’ or debilitatingly ‘flat’.

In the ‘window’ physiological arousal remains manageable, whilst also dynamic enough to experience emotions whilst remaining thoughtful. When an individual exits the window and becomes hyperaroused, their sympathetic nervous system is overactivated and they may experience being emotionally overwhelmed, a rapid heart-beat, shallow breathing or a stress headache (Siegal, 1999, p.254). When an individual becomes hypoaroused, the parasympathetic nervous system dominates, so that the individual may feel a decreased heart-rate, breathing, fatigue and a feeling of ‘emotional shutdown’ (Siegal, 1999, p.254).