Expanding Your Window of Tolerance: Explaining and Understanding Chronic Anxiety

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Your hands are trembling. You feel nauseous and you begin to feel dizzy. You think you’re going to faint. Drenched in sweat, you tell yourself to calm down, to just take a breath. But you can’t breathe. You feel like you’re dying.

Fear overwhelms you. You want to run, escape the situation as quickly as you can.

Problem is, you can’t. You’re sitting in class and you’re having an anxiety attack.

Anxiety is a difficult mental illness to understand if you have never experienced it yourself. It is a lot more complicated than just temporary stress.

Anxiety is an all-too-common occurrence for many post-secondary students. A certain level of anxiety is normal, even healthy. But when anxiety becomes a day-to-day part of someone’s life it can make simple tasks like going to class or doing an assignment unbearably difficult.

Anxiety disorders are categorized into six parts: panic disorder, agoraphobia, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). GAD is the broadest disorder in the group and therefore the most common. According to a report by Statistics Canada, GAD affects three per cent of Canadians annually.

Living with chronic anxiety is like constantly living in fear, said Dr. Tatiana Zdyb, a clinical psychologist at Archways Centre for CBT in London. The physical symptoms are so intense that many sufferers end up in the hospital fearing a severe emergency.

“It feels like you’re having a heart attack,” Zdyb said.

For anxiety sufferers, it all comes down to a little part of the brain called the amygdala, also known as the fear centre. This complex system is better known as the “fight or flight” response. It tells the body to prepare itself because danger is present.

During an anxiety attack the amygdala is triggered, but the problem lies in the fact that there is no acute danger present. The brain goes into overdrive, unable to process the emotions it is experiencing.

“When we’re not panicking or we’re not feeling anxious our brains are nicely integrated, and everything is working together in partnership,” Zdyb said. “But what happens when experiencing too much emotion, especially fear coming from the amygdala… the prefrontal cortex, or the rational part of the brain, just goes offl ine. That’s what’s happening when someone’s having a panic attack. You’re experiencing so much emotion that you can’t concentrate, can’t think clearly.”

Zdyb said anxiety can severely impact a student’s ability to learn and absorb information. Things like processing speed, concentration and memory are affected during an anxiety attack because the brain is not properly functioning. Zdyb suggests giving students dealing with anxiety more time to do assignments or write exams so they do not feel overwhelmed.

Dr. Chris Watson is also a clinical psychologist at Archways. He said the feelings of terror are a daily experience for some, and the toughest part about not treating anxiety is its cyclical nature.

“Some students find that the physical sensations of anxiety and the catastrophic thoughts can be so intense that they cannot push themselves to attend classes,” Watson said in an email. “This can then lead to a further increase in anxiety about missing class and not being able to catch up, which can then lead to more missed classes and a vicious cycle ensues.”

Even the simplest tasks become unmanageable when having an anxiety attack. This can make life for students especially difficult. Post-secondary education is already hard enough, but having to deal with chronic anxiety can make it almost impossible.

Thankfully, Fanshawe has options available for students who are struggling to manage their mental illness.

Shirley Porter, a counsellor and the coordinator of counselling with counseling and accessibility services at Fanshawe, has seen students having to leave school because their anxiety became too overwhelming. She said the physiological reaction is sometimes hard for other people to understand and that it’s more than just “mind over matter”.

“[Anxiety] is a survival reaction, it’s terror in that moment,” Porter said.

With a new book about to be released called Surviving the Valley: Trauma and Beyond, Porter has a simple explanation of the effects of anxiety when it comes to managing emotions. She calls it the Window of Tolerance. This page explains the Window of Tolerance with a helpful graph.

The line that travels across the graph like a roller coaster represents intensity of emotions, ranging from feelings of pain, sadness and despair to love, happiness and joy.

Within the graph are two parallel dotted lines that form a window on the graph. This is what Porter calls the Window of Tolerance. “Emotions that fall within this window are tolerable and can be managed with existing coping strategies,” Porter wrote.

When someone is dealing with stress the Window of Tolerance narrows. Things that you could have otherwise managed now become unbearable or overwhelming.

Porter said the goal of counselling is to provide students with healthy strategies to expand their window so it is as large as possible, so less things become unmanageable.

Counselling and accessibility services offer students various forms of assistance that will best suit their needs, whether that is providing recommendations to professors for extensions, counselling, referrals to medical professionals or other academic accommodations.

Some accommodations are legally mandated under the Human Rights Code, so if a student is struggling with their mental illness, there are many different avenues to work around them.

Porter gave an example of a simple common accommodation made for many students she works with. During exams, many students are triggered into an anxiety attack when they see other students get up and leave. For these students, Porter recommends allowing them to write their exam in a quiet, isolated space. This simple change can be the difference between succeeding and failing in school.

Porter acknowledges that Fanshawe College has taken initiatives to promote mental health awareness to reduce the stigma, but it’s still there.

“If you had cancer and weren’t feeling well and couldn’t go out with your friends I think there would be much more support and empathy than if you were to say ‘I’m dealing with anxiety and can’t go out because it would just make it worse’,” Porter said.

Anxiety can have a serious impact on a student’s life at Fanshawe. The best way to deal with it is to take advantage of the services offered on campus. Counselling and accessibility services will be offering a number of workshops throughout October and November in a collection of seminars called Passport to Wellness. Some of the workshops include a knitting circle, laughter yoga, a drum circle and more.

There is nothing shameful about acknowledging a mental illness. Accepting the fact that you are struggling is the first step towards healing.

“With physical illnesses we trust the body will heal itself, so if you fall down and scuff your knee a scab will form eventually and the more you pick at a scab the less likely it will heal,” Zdyb said. “But with emotional injuries we get right up in our heads and we pick and pick and pick, and it just gets worse. So I tell people, just think of it like a physical scab. Just let it heal.”

Please contact counselling and accessibility services in room F2010 at 519 452 4282 for help.

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