Window of Tolerance | Katie Sammann Psychotherapy

I’ve been reading Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson’s new book, The Yes Brain, and wanted to share one of the concepts from the book that I found to be really helpful. It’s based on the concept of the window of tolerance. The description I’m giving is about children, but adults too have a window of tolerance and of this all applies to us grown-ups too.

The basic idea is that we have a window of tolerance, where we feel safe, calm, good, happy, in control - basically where we feel comfortable and feel like we can manage everything. This is the green zone. When something pushes us out of this zone we don’t feel these pleasant emotions anymore, and start to feel bad. If we go into the red zone, we often feel over-energetic, over-stimulated, overwhelmed. This can lead to outbursts of anger or frustration, lashing out at others or ourselves. We might feel like we’re going to explode! However, sometimes when we get pushed out of the green zone we feel sad, low-energy, disappointed. This can make us want to withdraw and spend more time alone, or not want to do things we usually like to do. We might feel like we want to melt into a puddle. This is called the blue zone.

When things don’t go our way, we can get pushed towards red or blue zones. Your child might tend to go red more than blue or more blue than red. Perhaps it doesn’t take very much for your kiddo to leave the green zone. For these kids (but really for all kids) we want to make their green zone bigger.

To beef up their green zone, we want to help them develop some coping skills so when things don’t go their way, they know they can handle it. There are a ton of different options, and you might need to try a few to know what works for your child. It could be a saying a positive affirmation to themselves, squeezing a stress ball, getting a hug from a friend, or practicing breathing exercises.

Once children learn these new skills, they can use them when they feel themselves starting to leave the green zone. Once they can use them reliably, their green zone gets bigger!