Oct 19, 2026 · 37 min · 9 segments
This episode of Joy Recovery Radio is a little different. Every Monday night Roy teaches live inside the Integrity Circle, and this is one of those teachings, shared so you can hear what actually…
We're talking about how to stay in hard conversations.
How do I stay in my body? How do I stay in the room? How do I stay present with my partner when the conversation gets seemingly impossible? In order for us to understand this, we're going to begin with a little bit of science and I'm going to try to make it as simple as possible.
You probably heard about it before.
We're going to call out the window of tolerance.
I'm going to let this image here illustrate.
So the window of tolerance is going to be this white space right here.
And above it is our survival response.
And below it is our survival response.
The psychological term is hyperarousal or hypoarousal.
And that's not talking about sexual arousal.
It is talking about psychological arousal.
This would be our fight instinct.
This would be our freeze or our flight survival instinct.
This is fire.
This is ice.
When we are above our window of tolerance, we are in fight mode.
When we are below, we shut down, we freeze, or we flee.
then we are in the blue.
We are in the ice.
This is where we attack.
This is where we avoid.
This is self-protection.
We're focusing on ourselves.
We feel like we need to defend ourselves.
We go on the counterattack.
We're talking about how to stay in hard conversations.
How do I stay in my body? How do I stay in the room? How do I stay present with my partner when the conversation gets seemingly impossible? In order for us to understand this, we're going to begin with a little bit of science and I'm going to try to make it as simple as possible.
You probably heard about it before.
We're going to call out the window of tolerance.
I'm going to let this image here illustrate.
So the window of tolerance is going to be this white space right here.
And above it is our survival response.
And below it is our survival response.
The psychological term is hyperarousal or hypoarousal.
And that's not talking about sexual arousal.
It is talking about psychological arousal.
This would be our fight instinct.
This would be our freeze or our flight survival instinct.
This is fire.
This is ice.
When we are above our window of tolerance, we are in fight mode.
When we are below, we shut down, we freeze, or we flee.
then we are in the blue.
We are in the ice.
This is where we attack.
This is where we avoid.
This is self-protection.
We're focusing on ourselves.
We feel like we need to defend ourselves.
We go on the counterattack.
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