Open Window, Open Mind: ADHD and Understanding Your Window of Tolerance

The window of tolerance framework is a game-changer for the ADHD community, helping us understand why our nervous systems become so dysregulated, so quickly—and what can help get you back in the “sweet spot.”

ADHD and Understanding Your Window of Tolerance

Tuesday, 8:16 am
The traffic on this morning commute is killing me. Why have I only moved 200m in the last 15 minutes?!

Tuesday, 8:19 am
If I have to hear one more car honking, I am going to lose it! Why did I decide to wear this wool sweater today? The fabric is itching me so badly I feel like I might SCREAM!

Tuesday, 8:23 am
Great—my stomach is rumbling now, too, because I had to rush out the door without breakfast. And I won’t be able to grab a bite until my meetings finish at 2:30 pm.

Tuesday, 8:25 am
God… my head is POUNDING. I slept horribly, my partner and I had a fight that still feels unresolved, and I feel like I might be overreacting, but why did it make me melt down when I saw that the dishwasher wasn’t emptied when I got home from work yesterday?

Tuesday, 8:30 am
Ugh. I just spent all day on Sunday “getting my life together,” so why is it only Tuesday morning and I feel like I am going to explode!? What is wrong with me!? Am I broken?

Pause. Take a deep breath.

This moment where it feels like a tiny gremlin is clawing its way out of your insides? I get it. I know that feeling of overwhelm, I know the hopelessness trying to reset every week, and how disheartening it is when you feel like you’ve failed yet again and it’s impossible to come back from….

Pause. Take another deep breath, and hold it.

Do you want the great news or the bad news first? Breathe out… Twist my arm, I’ll give you the great news first: you’re not crazy! You’re not making this all up in your head! You’re not incompetent and destined to live a life full of non-stop stress!

The bad news: If nothing changes, nothing is going to change.

“But I’ve Tried Everything!”

I know what you’re thinking right now: “Why the heck should I keep reading, I’ve already tried everything? No matter what, I always feel like I am stuck in a ditch, trying to put pedal to the metal to get out, but I’m just stuck spinning my tires in the mud.” I get it. But what if I told you there is a simple framework we can build off, to help give you more space in your day to feel like a human being again? One that’s not about doing “more,” being “better,” or working “harder;” but about slowing down, regulating the rush, and tuning in with what your body is communicating with you?

My name is Rebecca, and I am a Registered Psychotherapist. I also have ADHD! And believe me, I’m very familiar with that cackling gremlin. I know the deep shame of working so hard just to keep everything together, but finding myself unable to hack it anyways. There were times when I thought maybe I just wasn’t meant to be a functioning member of society. If I felt everything as deeply as I do—and everything in my environment impacted me as it does—maybe it would be easier to just isolate myself and shrink away from the pain of daily living with a neurodivergent brain that lacks any understanding of how to integrate this diagnosis into my life!

—until I learned about the Window of Tolerance.

The Window

I’d like you to imagine that your nervous system has a sweet spot or zone; a “window” where, when you’re in it, daily activities feel doable. Inside this window you can experience stressors in your day-to-day life and still regulate yourself just fine. You might get stressed, annoyed, or even overwhelmed, but when you’re in your window, you’re in the perfect place to tolerate the ups and downs. Things like heavy conversations feel a lot less explosive and a lot more solvable–and, frankly–are a lot easier on your nervous system. When you are in your window of tolerance, you can manage stressors and emotionally-charged situations with more ease and confidence.

When the Window Slams Shut

Now imagine your nervous system experiences any kind of trauma, anxiety, or—say, I don’t know—you live in a society built for neurotypical minds and every day just the act of existing is a constant grind… Then it’s all too easy for your window to start to close—and it can close fast!

You may not even realize it’s happening. Your window is getting narrower and your body is working overtime, trying to keep you in that sweet spot. When your window is smaller, suddenly it’s a lot easier to step outside the sweet spot and find yourself “above” or “below” your window (more on that later). A sound, a negative comment, someone cutting you off in traffic; they can overwhelm your tolerance and make you feel ready to explode! When that happens: you’re outside of your window of tolerance!

When you’re outside, even seemingly insignificant things can feel like an impossible, emotionally charged struggle. Let’s look at that fight you had over the dishwasher not being emptied. Take a moment to tune into what your body was communicating with you:

• Exhausted after working all day and commuting home (Somatic Cue: eyelids heavy, brain foggy)
• Hungry because you hadn’t eaten since 11am (Somatic Cue: stomach grumbling, low energy levels).
• Stressed after being assigned a new deliverable at work that you’ll have to stay up late to complete (Somatic Cue: shoulders pinned to your ears with stress tension, sweaty palms, pit in stomach).

Guess what? You were outside of your window of tolerance!

And that’s not a place where constructive, resolution-focused discussions happen. I’m not saying the conversation about the full dishwasher wasn’t important and didn’t need to happen—but I am saying that maybe that conversation that turned into a catastrophic blow-out fight might’ve gone differently if you had waited to have it when you were inside your window instead.

Get Back Inside First

If you paused to take account of your body’s state and recognized you were outside your window—because you were exhausted, hungry, and stressed—you could take measures to step into your window before having the conversation about how upset and disappointed you were about the full dishwasher. Maybe you:

• Eat a small snack
• Change out of your work clothes, take a hot shower, and change into something cozy.
• Do a 10-minute guided meditation
• Take your dog out for a walk around the neighbourhood

Choosing to have the conversation after spending some time mindfully bringing yourself back into your window of tolerance gives you the gifts of clearer thinking, a mind and body that is primed for creative problem solving instead of conflict, and a quieter mind that is capable of seeing different perspectives. It gets a lot easier to have tough conversations when that angry, overstimulated gremlin isn’t trying to claw its way out from your insides!

Outside the Window: Emotional Dysregulation

Emotional dysregulation is when your feelings show up in ways that feel too big, too fast, or too hard to manage. It’s not that the emotions themselves are wrong or inaccurate, it’s that your nervous system has trouble staying within a range where those emotions feel tolerable. When you’re dysregulated—aka outside of your window of tolerance—you might swing from calm to emotionally flooded in seconds, feeling like you are frantically oscillating between 0 and 100; you might shut down and “freeze” or react in ways that simply don’t feel like you. It’s the difficulty of staying connected to and regulating your emotions, so you can cope with stressors and mindfully respond to your environment, rather than just react. Now, let’s take a look at two different kinds of emotional dysregulation: hyperarousal and hypoarousal.

Hyperarousal

When your nervous system goes into “overdrive,” you are considered above your window of tolerance.

When you’re in this state, you might feel wired, tense, jittery, or red-hot. You might notice your heart racing, your mind spinning, or like your senses are turned up to 100. In this state, you might be experiencing a fight-or-flight response. This can feel like panic, aggression, anger, or generally feeling like what you are experiencing is “too big” to manage, or you just can’t “turn off” your mind.

In this state, basic autonomic nervous system functions like sleeping, eating, and even relaxing can suddenly feel impossible.

Hypoarousal

When your nervous system goes into a “hibernation”, you are below your window of tolerance.

You might feel like you are frozen in time or ice-cold. Everything in this zone seemingly slows down or shuts off completely. When you’re in this state, you might feel numb, flat, disconnected, or like you have no energy to get off the couch (procrastination and dissociation live here)! Picture this like you are moving through molasses, where even basic things like sleeping, eating, or talking to another human being can feel like too much.

This is your nervous system’s way of protecting you by going into a “low-power mode,” but it often leaves you feeling stuck and isolated.

Why Does Any of This Matter to ADH-Me!?

Individuals with ADHD, ASD, and other forms of neurodivergence often have extremely sensitive nervous systems. What this means is we are more affected by sensory input in our environments, which can have a powerful shrinking effect on our window of tolerance, especially when gone unrecognized.

When we think about the neurodivergent sensory experience in relation to the window of tolerance, it’s easy to see there are an endless combination of possibilities that will send us outside our optimal window:

• The ticking of the clock in the background might be fine for everyone else at work, but for neurodivergent people that ticking can be ear piercing.
• That wool sweater you’re wearing is absolutely adorable—but the scratchy fabric against your skin is what’s making you feel like you need to throw your coffee out the window on the Gardner Expressway.
• Your coworkers may not notice the muffled radio noise coming from the construction crew on the street, but you can hear it, and it’s making working this afternoon impossible.

And here is the important part: when we are outside of our window, we lose access to something incredibly important––our executive functions.

Executive Functions

Ah, Executive Functions, my old, truant, often volatile friends. On a good day, they help my racecar brain feel like it is driving without any friction, effortlessly hopping from one task to the next, juggling all that I need to juggle expertly without dropping a single ball. On a not-so-good day, they are the very bane of my ADHD existence.

Executive functions are skills like planning, organizing, prioritizing, time management, and task initiation; all of the super important things that help someone feel like a functioning person—one could say these are the skills that help us feel like we are successfully “adulting.” Inside our window of tolerance, all these tasks are quite manageable, and these skills will feel easy to access. But when we find ourselves outside of our windows, either in hyper- or hypo- arousal, we have very limited access to these functions; like we’re driving with the emergency brake on while trying to climb a hill.

Our True Goal

Here’s the thing: the goal isn’t to live calm, cool, and collected lives 24/7. That is simply not real life, and I think I’d be a pretty terrible therapist if I told you that life is meant to be sunshine and rainbows all the time.

The goal is to notice when you have swerved outside of your window, and to gently steer yourself back into that sweet spot. Think of it like driving: there’s a middle lane where you can cruise steadily, there’s a fast lane that is speedy and tense, and there is a slower lane on the right that doesn’t feel so chaotic and urgent. Sometimes you might drift into the fast lane, experience fight or flight and feel panicked and overwhelmed. Other times you might stall out in the slow lane and shut down or feel numb. But all of these lanes are okay; each has their place in our survival.

Our goal is to gently guide ourselves back into the middle lane, the sweet spot—our window of tolerance.

Back in the Sweet Spot

Now that we understand what’s going on in our ADHD brains, and have our goal in sight—how do we get there? The key is that we can’t regulate what we don’t notice! So, to start, we need to learn how to pause, recognize, and guide ourselves back into the window.

What Do You Notice?

Let’s pause here. Slow down with me, just for a moment. Put the words aside and let’s connect with your body.

Notice what is happening right now. Do you feel like you’re in your window? Do you feel calm enough, connected, and able to focus? If so, beautiful. Ask yourself, why? What is helping you feel in your window of tolerance right now? Maybe it’s the quiet of the room, maybe it’s the rhythm of your breath, maybe it’s just the safety of reading these words. Hold onto that, resonate with it, and acquaint your nervous system with this sense of safety.

And if not, if you are outside of your window, if maybe you feel a tinge of that inner-gremlin starting to peak out because you’ve been reading for so long, let’s gently get curious about what might be happening.

Are you feeling hyperaroused? That’s the racing heart, buzzing body, anxious or on edge kind of energy. If that’s you, what’s your cue? Maybe your shoulders are pinned to your ears, or your thoughts won’t stop spinning. If so, let’s try something to down-regulate:

• Take a slow sip of water, noticing how it feels in your mouth when you swallow
• Try a few minutes of deep, diaphragmatic breathing
• Place a hand on your heart and repeat the words, “I am safe.”

Or maybe you’re feeling hypoaroused. That’s the flat, heavy, shutdown, dissociated feeling. Like you’re really far away and disconnected. If that’s you, what’s your cue? Maybe your eyelids are heavy, your thoughts feel foggy, or you feel a little numb. If so, let’s try something to up-regulate:

• Put on your favourite up-beat song
• Open a window and gently stretch in front of the sunlight
• Try calling a friend

Wherever you are in your nervous system—hyperaroused, hypoaroused—the point isn’t to return to your window immediately (ah, if only it were that easy)! It’s just to notice. That awareness and knowing whether you are inside or outside your window of tolerance can be your first step towards balance and rhythm.

Give the Gremlin a Hug

I’ve found the window of tolerance framework to be a massive gamechanger for myself and the ADHD community. It provides an understanding of why our nervous systems become so dysregulated, so quickly.

If you feel like you’ve tried it all, if every day feels like Groundhog Day where you are living with the same sense of hopelessness day in and day out, if you are ready to throw in the towel—then maybe, just maybe, slowing down, regulating the rush, and tuning into what your body is communicating can help you find your way back to your window. Give your dysregulated, inner gremlin an extra tight hug: they were only ever trying to communicate with you (not get you to throw your coffee off the Gardiner)!

If you found this article helpful and you would like to explore a tailored emotionally-focused therapy for ADHD adults, please consider reaching out to me at Transforming Emotions and booking a free psychotherapy consultation today. And if you’d like to learn more about the nervous system’s effect on your mood, executive functions, and why CBT isn’t for everyone, you can read my related articles:

When Your Body Speaks: Nervous System 101

Executive Functions: Working With Your Brain, Not Against It

Why CBT Doesn’t Always Work for ADHD (and What Might Work Better)