Trauma--Window of Tolerance

I was told to google search trauma and window of tolerance. This sort of explains my symptoms.

 

The window of tolerance is when you feel fine and can handle the stress that life throws at you. Then on each side of the window of tolerance you have hyperarousal. One side of hyperarousal involves anxiety, anger, and overwhelmed where you feel like you need to fight or flee. The other side of hyperarousal involves being spacey, zoned out, numb, or frozen. The body wants to shut down. You can't choose to stop this when it happens.

 

I've been dealing with both sides of these extremes in withdrawal, as I'm sure many others have too. Such torture. When do we tolerate stress again?

Anybody have any thoughts on this? I'm starting to wonder if this is where all the anger is coming from. Literally looking at a pile of dishes at my house makes me enraged.

BBB,

 

My stress tolerance was very low for five years.  Just recently I’ve noticed I can handle stress better.  My symptoms from stress included horrible ruminations, rapid pounding heart and a drugged feeling. 

 

Sofa

Have you tried going to any yoga classes? Yoga is all about gently building up stress on your body, managing the feeling while still breathing and releasing tension in your body, and then letting it go. I've gone to yoga all throughout WD and it's been a huge help for me in having a better tolerance to stress.

No, I should start practicing yoga on my own though. I have some DVDs.

Looking at a dish causes me terror!

 

I think that is a similar thing just hitting g different part of the brain.

Learning how to relax my body and just let my thoughts happen changed everything for me.  It's not easy though. 

 

I am not sure where the anger is coming from.  I woke up in the night last night, and got angry at my husband because I stayed up doing something that I know he would like.  And didn't get to sleep as soon as I wanted to.  And it was very hard for me to calm down, even though I logically know it was my choice to stay up and do that thing.  Even though, getting angry was actually making it harder to get back to sleep.  Even though I wasn't even sure my day would be ruined from not getting those extra 30 minutes of sleep. 

 

I feel like my anger comes from a place of not being able to calm down easily.  Like whatever is supposed to happen when you calm yourself down is severely broken in my body.  It's gotten better, but it is still a challenge. 

Greencup, exactly. Something is broken in the brain or body and will not allow you to calm down. That is where the anger is coming from. That's exactly what I was posting about with that information about having no tolerance to stress. You just feel screwed in the head.