Your Trauma Therapist by Lauren Auer, LCPC is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. For more content follow me on Instagram.
The question I keep getting after people start to understand that not all discomfort is a growth signal (last week’s piece, worth going back to if you missed it) is some version of the same thing. Okay, but then what do I actually do? How do I build more capacity without accidentally sending myself into a spiral?
That’s the right question. The answer is more specific than “bit by bit” tends to suggest.
What the window of tolerance actually is
Picture a band of arousal inside of which you can actually function. Alert enough to respond to life, calm enough to think clearly, still able to access your own judgment and make sense of what’s happening around you.
Above that band is hyperarousal: panic, racing heart, the urge to fight or flee or say something you’ll regret.
Below it is hypoarousal: numbness, shutdown, a kind of flatness or distance from yourself that can look like calm but isn’t.
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