Sometimes we know how we want to deal with things as parents. We know what we need to do and what we should avoid doing. We can picture it in our mind's eye. We'll have that calm conversation. We'll genuinely listen to what they have to say - make sure we've understood the situation properly. We'll be clear on our values, maybe insist on some 'bottom lines' in a way that leaves room for negotiation - that allows our child to find their own solutions.
Somewhere along the way we lose our calm. We might have noticed the subtle eye roll or the shift to a more defensive body stance. We might not. We might have noticed our heart rate increase and our jaw get tight. We might not. We might just be wondering what on earth happened. How did we start off so calm and rational then end up impulsively dishing out threats and consequences like a person possessed?
We all have a window of tolerance - that calm and rational space where we can be curious, genuinely listen, weigh things up, pause. We all have triggers that send us out of our window of tolerance. When we're outside of our window of tolerance we tend to become more impulsive, more rigid, more controlling, we lose empathy, and we can't think so clearly.
We move to the edge of our window of tolerance, or outside of it, because the smoke detector in our brain (the amygdala) picks up on threats. It's just the way human beings are wired. When we feel threatened we move into a more defensive position and it's all unconscious. At the extreme we move into fight, flight or freeze. We can't just move back into our window of tolerance as an act of will. We move back into our window of tolerance when our nervous system knows that we're safe. It takes time and sometimes deliberate action on our part.
This is why, as parents, it can really help us to understand our nervous system. We sometimes refer to the things that send us out of our window of tolerance as 'danger cues' or 'triggers' and we refer to things that being us back into our window of tolerance as 'safety cues' or 'glimmers.' As parents we often know all the things that our kids do that drive us crazy but we don't always pay so much attention to all the other things that narrow or widen our window of tolerance. When we know what our triggers and glimmers are we can make better sense of ourselves. We can move stay in our window of tolerance for longer and we can get back there quicker. We can develop more self-compassion for the times we don't behave in the way we wanted to behave.
When we understand what narrows and widens our window of tolerance, we can take better care of ourselves.
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