The Hidden Window That Controls Your Stress Response

Ep 152. Every human being responds to life through patterns.

Whether we experience stress, joy, fear, surprise, excitement, or overwhelm, our reactions are shaped by neurological programs that have been built through biology, life experience, environmental conditioning, and learned behavior. These patterns often operate automatically, influencing how we think, feel, and act long before conscious awareness fully catches up.

In many ways, we are running programs.

Some of these patterns are obvious. We may notice ourselves becoming anxious, defensive, angry, withdrawn, or overwhelmed when stress rises. Other patterns are far more subtle, only emerging when we reach the limits of our ability to cope.

This limit is often referred to as a window of stress tolerance.

The size of that window matters.

Individuals with a wider stress tolerance window generally have more options available to them during challenging situations. They can think more clearly, regulate emotions more effectively, adapt to changing circumstances, and maintain access to problem-solving skills even when pressure rises.

They are not free from stress.

They simply have greater capacity to function within it.

Others operate within a much narrower stress tolerance window. For them, everyday challenges can feel overwhelming. Minor frustrations may trigger significant emotional reactions. Social interactions, deadlines, uncertainty, and unexpected events can rapidly activate survival responses such as fight, flight, freeze, or submission.

When this happens, the world can begin to feel exhausting, unpredictable, and unsafe.

The critical question becomes:

How do you know when you are approaching your limits?

The answer lies in recognizing the early markers of stress activation.

Changes in breathing.

Muscle tension.

Tunnel vision.

Racing thoughts.

Emotional reactivity.

Impulsive decision-making.

Difficulty concentrating.

These signals often appear before we fully lose access to our best thinking.

Learning to recognize these markers early is one of the most valuable self-regulation skills a person can develop.

When we become aware of our own stress patterns, we gain the ability to intervene before stress escalates into overwhelm. Instead of reacting automatically, we can begin responding deliberately.

This is the foundation of resilience.

Not eliminating stress.

But expanding our capacity to function effectively within it.

The goal is not to become stress-free.

The goal is to widen your window.

To increase your options.

To improve your adaptability.

And to remain capable when life becomes difficult.

The Running Man Self-Regulation Skills Model is designed to help individuals recognize these stress markers, understand their patterns, and develop practical skills that expand stress tolerance through physiology-first regulation and deliberate practice.

The wider the window, the more choices you have.

And the more choices you have, the greater your freedom.

Take care. Walk well.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Welcome back, folks, episode 152 of the Running Man Self-Regulation Skills Project podcast with me, your host, Dr. Armando Dominguez, PhD in health psychology, licensed professional counselor, and an adunk professor at a local community college. What we're going to discuss today has to do with stress habit patterns or patterning. Now these are things that we'll be broadening on here just shortly, but what we're also really going to focus on is what my window of tolerance is, and do I have a narrow window of stress tolerance, or do I have a wider window of stress tolerance? Now these are things that are adjustable. They're not permanently fixed unless there's some neurological injury that keeps us from actually growing in the direction of widen our window of tolerance in this case that we're going to be discussing. But we'll also be kind of pointing out well, what are the constituents that make up the level of not only stress, but also my stress response? And that's where we're going to start next. So what is our stress habit patterning? That really is going to be how we respond and kind of the sequence behaviorally and also neurologically, probably more correctly, neurologically first, uh, based on our perception of our environmental stress, how we respond to stress. Now, this can vary person to person, and uh you can have children raised in the same household, for instance, let's say we have three, and one may be really chilly and cool when it comes to stress, and they may sit back and be the observer. You have one that will very quickly move in the direction of where the stress is or become hyper-reactive, and then we have one that may actually freeze and feel like they're being overwhelmed immediately because they don't have um the capacity to deal with the stress that they're not aware of. So novelty plays uh a part on how we pattern and how shocking it is, or if there's any danger involved or perceived danger expected. And these aren't things we are taught necessarily, but rather how we uh receive our genetic uh inheritance from not only but our family, immediate family, but also from what we've inherited from our ancestors as passed on through them. So there's some considerations here when we're looking at what my habit patterning is. And if you look at generations of families, sometimes you may see people uh discuss uh, let's say, problem drinking within a family, and they say, well, that's uh genetic. Well, no, it's not, it's learned. Now, are there genetic factors there that we would say epigenetics plays a role? Of course. There are certain um races of peoples that do have a lack of certain enzymes, and they have a a weakness towards uh tolerance against alcohol effects and very quickly can become alcoholics, but without alcohol introduced, you're not gonna have an alcoholic, simple as that. So environmental factors for sure, but uh the learn behavioral patterns. If we see that drinking isn't cultured, and not only does mom and dad participate, but rather grandma and grandpa and uncles and aunts participate, and their kids running around, and this is something that we see replete through many, many cultures, not just here in the United States in particular, but um that is also largely assumptively accepted. It doesn't mean that except set accepted in the sense that, hey, we're choosing this, we want this for our lives, but rather it's something that as a result of our hedonic drives is kind of adopted over time, and uh, even though there may be fallout, and we hear about the negatives and the crime and the violence and all that that comes with it, uh, the behavior itself, the imbibing of of an alcohol uh substance that will soothe the stress in a in a body and cause one to feel uh euphoria, this sort of thing, that's a really hard thing to take away from uh a family, generations of family, by just saying, well, it's not good for you. The health implications apparently don't stop people from using, but yet they do. At the same time, it's the euphoric and the pleasurable and the dopamine hit that we get, the fun and the sexy, and the excitement and the funny, and being able to be most ourselves, so to speak, whenever all the social binds are taken off. And there are times I'm sure you've run into people that are quiet as a clam, and yet whenever they drink, they become the life of the party. So there's some definite not only mind-altering but behavior altering substances there. Um but also what we have to look at is that if there is a social payoff in the sense that people like you more, you're more excited excited and feel more euphoric, and maybe even get social acceptance and validation, you're more apt to return to that behavior, even if it's not great for your health. Even if maybe you don't have a car now, but yet you still like drinking because when you go to the party, even if you go on foot now because you can't give it yourself a ride because you've either wrecked your car or they've taken your license, yeah, that's still worth it somehow. Now, I'm hammering hard on this because I'm not taking an ethical, moralistic high ground, but I'm pointing out that there's a bigger driver there than merely the morals or ethics or the laws or the loss or whatever, because those things aren't preventative of what it is that would be something that may not be so good for us. And it doesn't just have to be drinking. What we're looking at is behavior that is necessarily an adaptive response to whatever stress or stressors I feel within myself as an individual that I may or may not be able to cope with with one mental skills, two strategic skills being to get able to get away from where the stress is or where there's danger, or even then, you know, just having the genetic um benefit of having great health to help me overcome what I'm doing to my body as a result of overindulging, for instance. So, why is this important to the stress pattern habit behavior that we're talking about? Well, it has a lot to do with how we tend to not only repeat behaviors that that are rewarded, but also the behaviors that are punished are the ones that are supposedly going to extinguish or stop those behaviors. I'm not going to repeat that, that hurt too much. Or last time I did that, I got hurt, I got spanked, this sort of thing. Um, those are preventative. It doesn't stop the behavior, but per it makes one take pause, and the behaviors potentially is still in there, so to speak, but um we're just choosing not to do it. Um, or we're choosing to do it if the reward is very high, to the point where we start feeling not only a sense of entitlement, but also whenever we don't get that and we have a sense of depriving the body of it, especially if it becomes a little more of a dependence and addiction issue, we have some big, big issues there. Now, there is something that we have to note is that there's a physiological response behind this. Um I have a friend in um in England, and he's providing great service to the field of addiction science, and he's put put out quite a few papers lately, but the one most recent that is particularly profound to me, and uh it mentions the fact, and most of us don't pay attention to this, that our metabolism changes as a result of substance use in particular. But generally speaking, it can be, and I say generally as in generalized to other types of addictive behaviors or behaviors that give us payoff, our body responds to it and respond in kind in the sense that our metabolism supports that behavior. Whenever we have depression, our metabolism is such that it slows. When we get to the point of the learned helplessness, I can't get away from things, then we're not going to have the requisite energy to get up and do the fight, flight, flee response that we may need in an environment where we're physically in danger. But when we're in a social situation wherever there's emotional pressure, mental pressure, and the sense of value of self going down, that is a different kind of survival, but yet we have a very similar response in the metabolic response to where we won't get up. We're just waiting for it to be over. We endure it and hope it's over. And um the same thing whenever we arouse to pursue and see stimulant behaviors, not just stimulant use as in the sense of drugs, but those things that are exciting, so this is a dream adrenaline uh type behavior, such as jumping out of a perfectly good airplane with a parachute, is wonderful. But then we become um addicted to those sorts of things, such that everything else seems gray and dull and very uninviting, certainly hard to engage with. But let's make this a little more real world. Whenever we're thinking about that stimulant-seeking behavior, we also realize that if you see that often enough, if you have a chronic level of stress high enough, even if it's not damaging to you, but where things are chaotic, things are fast moving and noisy, not necessarily good or bad or indifferent, but there's a sense of dysregulatory nervous system amongst the people you're working with, living with or being reared by, your family in particular, then the body becomes used to it. And what's funny is that we start to relate to stress as being a normal, and we may even rate levels of stress as moderate versus being really high, perpetual, or chronic. That's just, you know, background noise. But it also makes it really hard to engage whenever things are one quiet, two slow, three Pacific, and four, in any sense safe, if there's no threat to, then that's like weird if you're used to having a high chaos environment. But not only that, this actually shapes what our preferences are to the point where it starts looking like personality, not always, but uh something to point out, in that we may start seeking to be in places that are high energy, that we're seeking drama, so to speak. And not so much that we want drama in our lives, but we want to observe it. We become voyeurs of sorts of watching this sort of stuff just to get that. I'm not involved in strictly an observer, but still get kind of that adrenaline rush connection sense wherever the heart and the body start arousing a bit, as if you're in fight fight-flee response. But you want to keep it at a distance, but yet there's this involvement, a cognitive involvement, because whenever we see things, see people doing, there's a vicarious quality there. And uh Bandur, the psychologist, talked about vicarious learning and that we learn by seeing. We learn to do by seeing as much as we do by doing and being directly instructed. And often we pick up things, and it's not just the habituation of stress pattern, because we do have mirror neurons, we do learn how to respond to stress, even if the stress is being responded to in a maladaptive way. We watch, and that is now a program of sorts in our mind that can be brought up as a backup whenever all things are off, when all bets are off, the stress is high. And all my methods of consciously knowing what to do, and this is where if we see something out in our environment, seeing somebody exacting a certain behavior, we may even consider doing those things, even if it's maladaptive. Whenever all things are off, sometimes we'll throw the kitchen sink at a problem as well, if we must, depending on level of stress and how fast things are unfolding. And if I've gotten to the end of all my possibilities of what I know, we may fall into that pattern of behavior whenever I'm under stress. Wherever whenever all bets are off, I'll do anything. And things may even seem desperate, and that's where some big mistakes can happen behaviorally that not only affect my life, but affect me as an individual and possibly my freedom, depending on how severe things get. Now, it's really important to be able to pay attention to what it is that fundamentally we all experience as humans when we stress, and we go through a pattern of uh threat uh behavior or response, and then we're looking at the fight, flight, freeze response. Now, there there is research that has come out that since they've differentiated and spread apart what freezing is, and we have not only a freeze but a functional freeze, wherever I'm not sitting still, but I'm basically in place, either looking and doing that paranoid shifting left and right, not that you're paranoid per se, but rather wherever we've gotten the physiological narrowing of our vision to the front end of what we call foveal focus, uh detail focus that is not meant for motion sensitivity, and we start panning left and right because we've lost our panoramic vision capacity because we have a sudden onset of stress. Heart rate goes up and our our vision narrows. We lose sensitivity to what we hear to our sides. I can't pick up signal nearly as well. I shouldn't have to because I should be outrunning it, if anything. But when we get into a functional freeze, I am basically stuck in place, stressing out, vibrating, high heart rate, and figuring out what's going on going on, and I get stuck in my head trying to figure out what to do next, but I can't actually stuck there versus just the freeze. The other one is flop where we faint, and that can happen within the the freeze response as well. And often that is wherever someone just falls, and if someone is preying upon us, often that makes it harder for them to carry us away, or if it's an animal, they will pounce on us, and rarely is it something wherever we're going to be able to defend ourselves well. But often if we faint in in the middle of getting our neck bitten on by whether it be a saber-toothed tiger or even a mountain lion, something more uh common to our era now, uh then that's where we start going into the dissociative state. And once we get there, this is where often where people that report in the freeze response that they feel like they're floating outside of their body, they've dissociated, uh, or there are some that even have that NDE experience wherever they have that out of body seeing myself being chewed on like I'm a I'm a popsicle. And then I'm not making fun of this, but these are some of the experiences until the animal goes away. And then whenever they do reintegrate their consciousness, so to speak, or their sense of mind, um, then that's whenever the pain onset hits and they're in the immediate moment now. And that affects not only how we experience time subjectively, but also how we experience time physically in the moment, and we can get into that in a little while as well. And it is pertinent what we're talking about. Now, whenever we're looking at pattern, stress, behavior, fight, flight, freeze. Whenever we have functional freeze, once again, we are in motion, but not moving crossing real estate, but rather moving and vibrating in state, basically in the same place that I'm occupying, and then I can either freeze, flop, where I faint, or I can run, fight, and that sort of thing. And now one of the things about the fight-flight response is that one of the first things that falls away, one well, actually, two of the things that fall away, um, if it's not immediate survival, does this have to do with my alimentation? Do I feed and drink and eat? Can I? Whenever I'm under fight-flight, I cannot. That falls away. I don't need to eat while I'm running. Because like running with scissors, that's kind of dangerous. And um, besides, you could choke on water while you're running, not a good thing. That's not great for your breathing system. But uh, all joking aside, uh, also what falls away is the other F that has to do with procreation. I was going to spell it out, but probably better not to because I probably get banned on YouTube. But uh the important thing is that whenever we have the fight flight freeze, that has to do with immediate organismic, my immediate body, my human vessel survival, and keeping it and its integrity in one piece, so to speak. Now, what does this have to do with stress habit patterning? Well, part of it is that this is one that we inherit. And if we have a propensity to be able to meet stress and run, that's a great survival skill. And we have to take into consideration, well, freezing isn't necessarily given up not fighting for one's life, so to speak, but is an aspect, it's a facet of the fight-flight response. And all of us do freeze for a fraction of a moment. Some of us get stuck there, and it's almost like we're going through neutral whenever we're putting our car in gear, so to speak, and we get stuck there. Kind of like our gear shift gets stuck in neutral. And when we can talk about more of a standard uh old style transmission, if we throw that clutch whenever we're between gears, then it won't go. So we have to engage appropriately. If things happen too fast, it may actually supersede our ability to shift gears, so to speak, behaviorally. And um this is something that we have to pay attention to because it will precede our best attempts at our higher order thinking because our prefrontal cortex in that moment's being drained of blood, carrying blood sugar, and therefore we're not going to be able to do the process of thinking, higher order thinking, and besides, it's too slow, too slow for an immediate moment where we must have reactivity versus mindful choice activity because that'll get you killed. On top of that, what we have to look at in the stress pattern behavior is that some of this is learned and conditioned by vicarious learning. Once again, we talked about the situation in seeking drama. Some people will find that cueing, and let's say wanting to ride a skateboard. Hey, I see somebody doing it, they're doing these cool moves. Then you go and get one, realize, well, I can't do those cool moves, but you start by doing what? Learning how to stand. And then you learn how to move and being able to put one foot down, find your balance, this sort of thing. So over time you gain skills, so you start moving more effectively and more efficiently, and with greater uh fluidity and familiarity. And once familiar, then things become second nature over time, and that's the goal. When it comes to stress habituation, often it's very similar in that we have this unawareness of what this behavior is, but yes, it seems to work, and wow, that's new. Now I am I am consciously incompetent. I'm aware it exists, I can do that. Uh well, maybe I can't do it yet, but I'm going to do that if I practice. So once again, repetition to the point of familiarity and gaining a degree of master of skill, so to speak, is what we're after if it's a particularly beneficial behavior, something that'll gain me more social acceptance, validation, or maybe even acceptance of myself and and even higher estimation of myself. Those are important things. Now, when it comes to certain behaviors that are in interpersonal and social, not all behaviors that we take on are particularly good for us. And some of that uh can fall into that stress pattern behavior because we may do things to placate those that may have greater degrees of power, or that may be more physically intimidating, or that promise to bring or or or bear a threat upon us, or do things that can hurt us or or get us to believe that they're going to if we don't do what it is or how it is that they want us to do so that we can stay one within the good graces of them and the safety that they may be maybe providing a tribe, so to speak. So we have to go into what looks like influence and politics that that jumps from that. But uh all of this has to do with the stress pattern behavior that has to do with getting myself a little further into the the the time continuum, meaning tomorrow, the next right now, out of this immediate moment, for instance. And that's not always a comfortable thing. Often there is what we'll call the trade-off, and much of that can be one behavioral, you know, in the sense that, hey, you take care of me, I keep the fire going, uh, keep the fire going whenever you bring food, I help you cook it, and I know how to cook meat, and that way we don't ruin food, that sort of thing. So we start gaining skill and trade-off, and we develop an economy of sorts. And um that's what happens whenever we're within family. We get injected into an economy, and there's a cost that we pay. And often the cost is loss of individuality. Often it is a loss of individual preference, and uh what we may think is good for us and that we like may not be accepted and may be squashed. And often if the pressure's high enough and somebody's resilient enough, they will often leave that space so that they can go and live and express themselves in the way that's best for them. And um there are a lot of folks that go on the road, they leave family because I'm gonna go pursue my life, my dream, this sort of thing. And it used to be, you know, the musician or that was going to Hollywood and all that whenever I was a kiddo, and people going out to pursue their dream and and try to eke out a living somehow so they could make it big if they're lucky to catch that big break. And often this is very reflective of what it used to be long time ago when we were cave people. Whenever tens of thousands of years ago we're walking around on the plane huntering and gathering, and we have to make the choice, and we may even think negatively about things like, man, I'm not feeling fast enough, I'm not strong enough today, and I'm gonna have to stay in the the cave and eat these damn berries instead of going out and getting some meat or f or fish or whatever. And whenever we have to make that call, it's not necessarily a bad thing in the bigger scheme of things, but rather it does point out that we have to make choices sometimes. Sometimes we have to be the lesser in the sense that we we will eat the berries, and it'll do for now. But also know that whenever I am not up the snuff, I may not be the apex predator or the hunter, but I am. Strategic and smart, but if I'm not feeling well, I may be taking away my advantages and that I can't leverage those appropriately. And in a modern day, we see a lot of this, and much of what pulls us back from being able to optimize or max out to the best of our ability, those things that we all want for ourselves. And not that we can't live just a normal everyday low stress life because that may be optimal for you. And there's nothing wrong with that. That can be pretty comfy. Low levels of stress and low levels of stress-borne illness. I like that idea. And there's nothing wrong with that. So what is really cool is that we have to pay attention to that drive. Whenever we make that trade to be part of one family, two of village, three, a society wherever we have to go out, and it's not so much that we're betraying ourselves, but we have to put what it is that our true self is and our our preferences, uh, not on the shelf, so to speak, but aside for a moment. And that's not betrayal, but for some it feels like a betrayal because they really want to work on things and they think oh that we only have a certain amount of energy and hours in a day that limits our ability to use that clarity and that creativity to the best of our abilities, and we don't want to lose that. We know that there's a trade-off there. Sometimes it's painful. Often the pain of loss is covered by the use of substances or behaviors that may not be good for us. And doing things and going around with people wherever they will validate us to a degree, but not in all senses. So that means that we're living a partial life, and that not the wholeness of our humanity and our capacity is being recognized, but only those parts that are useful and beneficial to, let's say, a work environment, but yet they don't really know the real you. And and that's okay. We have a separation of professional versus personal, but sometimes that can leave us wanting, because that may be the only place we get exchange with people. We may leave some live some pretty lonely lives for that matter, pretty isolated, not by isolation by intention, but rather just by the way things are rolling out, and not anything that we may like, uh, but we may have to do it because that's what's working, and that's what's keeping me alive. So there's always a trade-off of sorts. Now, the point I'd like to make, and this is going to be closing the podcast here in just a moment, we're going to be talking about stress tolerance windows. Now, the stress tolerance window has a lot to do with what I can tolerate, and that's very well founded. The foundation of it is level of stress and arousal. My stress window, if it's really narrow, I also have a very narrowed cognitive bandwidth. That means very little I can deal with thinking-wise as much as I can physical-wise, uh, as far as stressors go, will be very limited depending on my level of arousal. If I have a lot of anxiety or stress, fear or panic, uh potential for panic and worry, or get triggered easily, not only by people, sounds and sudden changes, then my stress window is very narrow. It doesn't mean I can't handle any stress, but whatever it is that I'm doing day to day that would be considered normal, low stress, and not anything threatening because I'm familiar and I live within this, yet somebody else is like it's overwhelming, then that's going to limit my capacity to function well and probably run me into the point of hypervigilance, isolation, and fleeing or fighting for that matter. Now, if I have a wider window of stress tolerance, that means that I'm a little more at ease and I don't feel threatened by whatever it is that's going on. I'm able to disengage or be stay disengaged in the sense that I don't take it personally and I'm more of an observer, more like a third person versus even a second person having a an opinion about someone else's experience and trying to make sense of it empathetically. Uh what I'm saying is that sometimes whenever we look at things and I am centered and I am breathing and my uh breathing is calm and largely hypogastric or abdominal, where my stomach is opening and closing and my lower ribs are opening and closing nice and easily as I breathe, then my level of stress more than likely will be indicated by my structure, wherever my back is probably more upright and and comfy, not tense, but rather not one where I'm hunched over and covering my center, whereas my shoulders might be curled forward when I'm really anxious and stressed, versus open with a chest open to the world, so to speak, that allows me to actually breathe fully. And those are things that would be indicative of having a wider stress tolerance, not only physical, because I feel more comfort in the physical environment, but also mental. I can think about things and weigh them out. I can make sense of things. Also emotionally. I can deal with someone that may be coming in a little stress, or somebody that's really at ease and comfy, or maybe even particularly euphoric without being taken off center and being able to appreciate what's going on, and who knows, maybe even be helpful. But these are some ideas that are very closely tied to level of stress, arousal, my degree of feeling threatened, or even a sense of or even a belief of being threatened or about to be threatened, um, because that will determine how much I have to tolerate uh as far as width goes versus how little I can tolerate as far as if I have a narrow window of stress and how well I'll perform, generally speaking, what I call my life, or in decision making whenever things count the most. So these are really important things. Now just some ideas I'd like to plant for the next podcast is that we have stress-born perception of time and also our conception of time and then our experience of it versus experience meaning I have a mindset about it and have thoughts and opinion versus just a perception how I experience it at the perceptual level non-thinking, and then we have the thinking concept, my ideas of what past, present, future are. And there are some interesting facts that go along with that that determine how well we respond and how well we can stress regulate in stressful environments, and we'll be discussing that probably in the next podcast. But for now, uh we've covered a lot on our stress pattern behaviors, kind of what we get our pattern behavior from and what shapes us a little bit and what it might look like in the middle. And what I'd like you to do is if you have a chance, go to my YouTube channel and like, subscribe, and share if you can. And it's uh the Running Man Self-regulation skills podcast there. I'd like to see that channel grow. And uh this podcast is also available on Spotify, iTunes, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music, and all other places that you consume your podcast. Please share this with folks. And what I would like to tell you is I appreciate you listening on this fine Father's Day, and I'm extending a happy Father's Day out to all the fathers and dads out there, and may your way be made clear. And for those of you that are listening today, hey, reach out to me, give me some feedback at the email at Running Man Get Skills Project at Gmail. I'd love to hear from you. Take care. Walk well.