Alison Papion, LMFT

You walked into your therapy session. You did the brave, hard work of going somewhere uncomfortable, of letting your nervous system approach something it has been carefully protecting you from for a long time. And then you walked out feeling worse than when you walked in.

Have you ever been completely fine one moment, and then suddenly overwhelmed, shut down, or on edge the next, without fully understanding why? You're not overreacting, and you're not "too sensitive." What you're experiencing has a name: it's about your window of tolerance, and understanding it can change the way you relate to your own emotions. What Is the Window of Tolerance? The window of tolerance is the zone in which your nervous system feels regulated — where you can think clearly, feel...

There is a page near the end of the Processing module of Brave Enough to Heal that I have watched change people. Not in a dramatic, lightning-bolt way, but in the quiet, irreversible way that real healing tends to happen. It's called "A Letter to Your Younger Self," and almost every person who sits with it tells me some version of the same thing afterward: I didn't know I needed that. I want to tell you why this exercise is so powerful, and why, if you've been putting it off, it might be time...