This week, I’ve been thinking about sports psychology and our windows of tolerance and some superb books. Let’s get into it.
The New York Times published a piece on techniques used in sports psychology that can be useful in just about any context, for instance, using visualization and cue words to handle stress. These are suggestions worth remembering, but they didn’t get into what I believe is one of the most useful aspects of physical training when it comes to our overall wellbeing. When I think of the benefits of athletics in other areas of our lives, I think first and foremost of the concept of the window of tolerance (a term developed by psychiatrist Daniel Siegel and a topic I wrote about in my book). Each of us has a window of tolerance that represents the mental and biological space within which we are able to manage stressful situations without being thrown off-kilter. Some of us have wide windows of tolerance, meaning that we can manage major stressors without feeling too dysregulated, whereas others have narrow windows that could do with some stretching.1 People who are prone to anxiety can, unsurprisingly, benefit from expanding their window of tolerance.
When we exercise, we tend to push ourselves into physical discomfort on purpose. Our hearts beat more quickly and we sweat. It’s common sense that we can only run faster by struggling through ragged breaths and burning legs. We want to stop because the sensations are unpleasant, but we don’t. The reward is obvious and measurable.
Our ability to withstand emotional discomfort, like anxiety, also requires practice – though success can be harder to quantify. Healthy physical discomfort through athletics can teach us to tolerate uncomfortable sensations, and we can translate this capacity to our emotional lives. Learning to tolerate (rather than avoid) heavy breathing and an increased heart rate while swimming laps can help us to move through a panic attack that includes a rapid pulse, but also, it can help us through the knots we feel in our stomach when we worry we’ve upset someone or as we approach a painful family dynamic. Widening our window of tolerance is inevitably a physical and emotional experience – the two can’t be separated. With practice, whether athletic or in personal relationships or otherwise, we see that sometimes we’re uncomfortable, we have to be uncomfortable, but also, we live through it.
Books:
Pan by Michael Clune
and
Everyday Intuition: What Psychology, Science, and Psychics Can Teach Us About Finding and Trusting Our Inner Voice by Elizabeth Greenwood
I’m reading Pan by Michael Clune, which is being described as “…the great novel of our age of anxiety,” and I think this may be true. As the novel begins, 15-year-old Nicholas has his first panic attack. In attempting to at once understand and escape his panic symptoms, Nicholas looks to mythology and literature and to his friends, and he wonders about the boundaries, shortcomings and possibilities of our minds. “That easy breath – the one I discovered stretched out and warm inside the paper bag – that was the first breeze of spring. Spring is panic’s season. That surprises a lot of people. But panic, as I was to learn, isn’t a disease of death. It’s a disease of life” (p. 22).
Yes. Panic is a disease of life.
Lamentably rare for writing on anxiety, Clune’s conceptions of panic are profound and full of life. Please read this book.
With gratitude to my UK publisher, I also had the great pleasure of reading Elizabeth Greenwood’s Everyday Intuition, which is full of fascinating insights and research on the relationship between anxiety and intuition. Greenwood’s writing is personal and generous and laugh-out-loud funny. And as someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about (and struggling with) how anxiety and intuition coexist, I found Greenwood’s perspective deeply comforting.
A set:
Moomscrolling + Doomscrolling
I loved Jon Allsop’s essay in The New Yorker on anxiety and “moomscrooling,” especially after having wandered into Simply Scandinavian last week, a shop in Portland, Maine that is replete with Moomin books and other Moomin merchandise. For the uninitiated, the Moomins were created by Tove Jansson, whose website is museum-like and well worth a look. Allsop hits the nail on the head, writing: “Over all, my abiding memory of the books is that they are full of life, despite the world’s complications…If the underlying themes can be anxiety-provoking, then the Moomins themselves are anchoring presences—whatever may happen to the world, and whether or not we can control it.”
Mostly, we can’t control it, whatever it is. Uncertainty, which is what happens when we perceive our lack of control, is among the most difficult contributors to anxiety because it is all-encompassing and unavoidable. Researchers in the Czech Republic recently published a study that looks at the unending loop of uncertainty and doomscrolling. They say “…evidence now links uncertainty-inducing media news to negative mental health outcomes.” But we do have recourse, through “interventions aimed at enhancing cognitive flexibility, promoting mindfulness, and developing critical media literacy.” Every day, doomscrolling plays with our (very real) feelings of uncertainty. So what are we doing? Is your phone making you feel alive? What do you want?
I want what I believe most of us want, which is to say, a wider window of tolerance, and more “anchoring experiences” (in Moomin-form or otherwise). I want to feel flexible instead of stuck. I want an ever-deepening awareness of my own intuition, and with it, a capacity to look my uncertainty in the eye.
If you’re interested in learning more about the window of tolerance, I’d highly recommend The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are by Daniel J. Siegel and Widen the Window: Training your Brain and Body to Thrive during Stress and Recover from Trauma by Elizabeth A. Stanley.