Outside My Window of Tolerance

Freeze, dissociation, and collapse. Those words cover a broad range of responses to threat. I’m grouping them together because they are other manifestations of being outside your Window of Tolerance. Sometimes when fighting against a threat has not been successful, you can’t use flight to get away from the threat, and fawning does not end the threat, you instinctively employ one of these other responses. These behaviors may have helped you survive abuse or trauma, so don’t think of them as weak. They are your nervous system doing what it was created to do: keep you alive.

Understanding my Window of Tolerance has been a game changer for me. Looking back, I recognize that I began my marriage employing the fight response to address the abuse. That response just made me look like an angry wife, so it shifted the blame and focus for our friction on me. I remember wishing the minister would ask me why I was angry! I thought surely he would help me if he knew how my husband was treating me. But, I was mature enough to know not to blame someone else for my behavior or to get defensive when someone points out a negative behavior, so I worked on my anger. 15 years later, that same minister who had worked off and on with us as a couple and sometimes alone with my husband told me he recognized I was much less angry, so there’s that. I was not safer, but I was less externally angry. 

Flight was not a long-term solution, but there were times I simply had to get away for an afternoon or even a whole night. I couldn’t afford to do that more than a couple of times over decades and it was hard on my kids so that response wasn’t beneficial. I learned to fawn with the best of them. Sadly, I had church leaders and a biblical counselor who equated my ability to silently withstand the onslaughts of verbal, emotional, financial, and spiritual abuse with my willingness to obey God. No one asked about or thought of my safety. I am a high performer since birth, but no amount of performance was enough. You can’t “people please” a person who refuses to be pleased. I just ended up exhausted.

It makes sense in hindsight why I went through decades of freeze, dissociation, and collapse. They sometimes were mistaken as depression (although I was depressed often as I endured an abusive marriage). Some situations seemed to render me completely unable to speak or do anything in response. Later, I would think of what would have been ideal to say. The reality is my “perfect response” would have been irrelevant; my husband was not going to listen to me, logic, decency, or (to be honest) the Holy Spirit. The freeze response may have kept the situation from escalating (although that didn’t always mitigate the abuse), but being voiceless is not a healthy way to live. Some situations were so painful that I dissociated. I have had memories come back up - even one today - that I can now bring into focus and acknowledge what had actually occurred. It’s been like turning a camera lens for the memories to become clearer; in the moment it was too overwhelming to experience the circumstances. And collapse…I can feel that in my body as I write the words. Emotionally, it felt either completely numb or it felt like despair - tomorrow will be the same as today.

It may help to be aware of these responses if you recognize that what you are experiencing or your body is perceiving is a lack of safety. I have come to recognize how these feel in my body. When I want to shut down, go blank, or give up, I need to become mindful and get back to the present. That’s not to say that I don’t encounter threatening situations now, but it means I can address the situation at hand rather than bringing decades of harm and danger with me. I have new resources now that I didn’t have during my marriage and I move my way back into my WOT; that’s a skill I didn’t have and didn’t even know existed for decades. There are resources to find your way back into your WOT – I’ve done it and I continue to do it when my body instinctively reverts to old survival skills and coping strategies. A safe friend or skilled professional may be helpful.