Do you feel overly sensitive? Are you panicked one minute and tapped out the next? You may

be living outside your window of tolerance. Welcome back to Savvy Psychologist. I'm your host,

Dr. Monica Johnson. Every week on this show, I'll help you face life challenges with evidence-based

approaches, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment. Today's episode is all about neuroception and the

window of tolerance. Don't worry if you've never heard these terms before. I got you. I'm going to

break them down for you. What is neuroception? Neuroception is your nervous system's ability to

scan your environment and label cues and behaviors as safe, dangerous, or life-threatening.

In response to this, a level of arousal is activated that is best suited for the circumstances.

Essentially, your nervous system is trying to scan your environment and promote the best adaptive

response. As listeners of this podcast know, things don't always work out the way they were intended.

You can have fault-tea-neuroception or fault alarms. We may perceive neutral cues as dangerous

because they remind us of traumatic experiences from the past. For example, a certain smell,

rude behavior, or loud noises. As a result, our arousal can either be too high or too low based

on how our body falsely perceives the danger. This can lead to problems in our daily lives

and our relationships. There are many common triggers for neurocepting danger,

such as a history of physical and sexual abuse. We can have poor attachment in our early lives

with attachment figures failing to help us regulate our emotions or being the source of much

of our anxiety. Important people not paying attention to us can be a trigger. Other triggers may

include people being angry with or disappointed in us, criticism, feeling pressure to excel,

receiving messages that we aren't good enough, or various types of loss, for instance,

divorce, abandonment, or death. Being sensitive to these triggers and having false alarms can

affect our window of tolerance. What is the window of tolerance? The window of tolerance is the

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