„I am good for nothing“
Many trauma survivors experience this thought one way or another.
In most cases this is a limiting belief. If you tried you could find proof that there is at least something you do that is ok.
There is one situation when this is true.
And that is when you are outside your window of tolerance.
Then you actually are good for nothing.
Let me explain.
Hyperarousal and hypoarousal, both experiences outside the window of tolerance, have an effect not only on your emotions and your body, but also on your mind.
With hyperarousal you get frantic. Thoughts are racing, but they are going in circles. You keep having the same thought over and over again. This doesn’t get you anywhere.
With hypoarousal thoughts slow down or stop altogether. Your brain freezes. This surely can’t get you anywhere.
Psychologists found out that problem solving heavily relies on your creative abilities. You need access to your knowledge and memory and current observations to create a new solution for the stressful situation. Access to these works best with medium arousal levels. It stops working when you are in hyper or hypoarousal.
If you are facing a stressful situation, maybe you got bad news and need to act as soon as possible to avoid disaster, the first thing you need to do is step back and calm down.
It doesn’t matter how urgent the situation is, how possibly life threatening or devastating the results could be. Outside your window of tolerance you are in no condition to make good choices or come up with a solution. Your brain isn’t functioning.
If you want a quick solution you better get back into the window of tolerance quickly! Every minute you waste on freaking out is lost. You won’t find a solution. Problem solving is blocked.
This is against our intuition that tells us that we need to DO something quickly. No. Right now you need to calm yourself down. That way you can make sure that your actions make sense.
Actions taken while in a freaked out state might even add to the problem or get you into danger.
Your brain is good for nothing in that state.
We have currently been in a situation that kicked one of our protectors out of her window of tolerance. Her hypervigilance absorbed all her attention. The body was shaking badly. She was frantically trying to find a way to help another part and hit the wall over and over again and got fully absorbed in that cycle. She felt the urgency to take control to fix the situation but was so out of herself that we weren’t able to function anymore.
Her ability to protect us was zero at that moment.
It wasn’t until she calmed down that we were able to remember that we actually know how to handle that situation. It was knowledge we had not needed in a while. Too tense we had failed to remember.
We lost a full day to going crazy. A full day someone inside waited for help and didn’t get it.
Don’t make the same mistake. You hear stressful news that needs a solution fast, you make yourself calm down first. No exception. Especially when it is something big and serious, you need to calm down first. There is nothing like „too important to take the time to calm down“ Saying that is like saying „I would rather run around in circles for hours, emotionally unstable, stressed and overwhelmed and unable to have a clear thought or ever find a solution.“
Always calm down and then work from inside your window of tolerance. Everything else is good for nothing.
More about the window of tolerance
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