Pain Tolerance

While survival mode is sometimes necessary, it’s almost never pleasant.

To escape survival mode, we need to build a case to ourselves that we can meet our needs over time.

One of the big issues with compensation mechanisms (connection, control, order) described earlier is that they reinforce our beliefs that we cannot meet our needs unless we meet certain stringent conditions.

We aren’t OK unless that person is present, unless we don’t make any mistakes, unless we are the best…most people instinctively respond to these limitations by trying to fit within them. The result is that they narrow the window in which they are “OK”.

In such a narrow window of operation, behavior becomes ever more rigid to color within the lines. Life becomes smaller and distress becomes more frequent. This creates a vicious cycle where distress narrows tolerances, which increases distress, until life is so narrow it becomes hard to live at all.

To escape this mode, we have to reverse this narrowing process. This means learning through experience that we are OK in a wider range of circumstances – even, and especially, when our stringent, rigid expectations aren’t met. We need to “widen the tolerances” – expand the range of circumstances where we are OK – and become more robust to the natural ups and downs of life.