Dr Dan Siegel devised the popular concept of the "window of tolerance" to help people understand whether their level of arousal was appropriate to the environment or task at hand. The Window of Tolerance is a fantastic tool when working with individual's who may have faced trauma and as a result find themselves dysregulating on a frequent basis.
The first diagram guides clients when learning about the concept of physiological arousal in response to trauma triggers within our environment (such as, limiting beliefs, physiological sensations, sounds, smells or situations). Trauma triggers and their hyper or hypo arousal response may lead to an array of harmful behaviors (e.g., addiction, isolation, self-harm, poor decisions etc.)
Giving your client a colorful, visual reminder helps to consolidate important therapy teachings and fosters thought about behavioral responses between therapy sessions. The second handout reminds your client to consider how they feel throughout the day. Are they dysregulated? Are they over-aroused? If so, why? What happened? What helped them to soothe?
These colorful, visual reminders not only encourage learning between therapy sessions, but clients are prompted to record times when they have become hyperaroused or hypoaroused. Why did this occur and how did they react? Examples of 'regulating techniques' that may be useful are also offered.
Goes fantastically with our Acceptance Commitment Therapy Tool Kit and/or our Schema Therapy Tool Kit.