We usually talk about the window of tolerance as a measure of how much pain we can handle. But it also covers our capacity for joy, pleasure, and love. If good things trigger anxiety or self-sabotage instead of relief, your window may need to expand, not shrink to fit what feels familiar. Most of us learned the concept of a “window of tolerance” as a way to talk about our capacity for distress. Grief, fear, anger, overwhelm. When something pushes us past our window, we flip into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. The work, we’re told, is to widen that window so we can stay present with hard feelings instead of getting swept away by them. That part is true. But it’s incomplete.
Your Window of Tolerance Isn’t Just for the Hard Stuff
