When you’ve lived through trauma or high stress, your nervous system can become wired to scan for danger at all times. Small stressors start to feel like big ones. Ordinary overwhelm can tip you into shutdown or panic. This doesn’t mean you’re weak or broken—rather, your nervous system is simply doing what it learned to do to survive.
EMDR Therapy helps change that. It doesn’t just give you coping tools (though those are helpful too). It helps your brain process past experiences that are still stuck, so your body stops reacting like you’re still in the middle of the worst moment of your life. Over time, this allows you to feel safer in the present and builds your ability to tolerate discomfort—without spinning out, shutting down, or needing to numb out.
Get In TouchThe Link Between Trauma and Low Tolerance for Stress
Many people think trauma means one big, catastrophic event. But trauma can also come from ongoing experiences like emotional neglect, constant criticism, or living in an environment where your needs weren’t safe to express.
When you go through something overwhelming and your body doesn’t get to fully process it, that experience can get stored in your nervous system. It’s may feel like your brain and body didn’t get the message that the danger is over.
So when something even remotely similar happens—someone raises their voice, you get a critical email, your partner pulls away emotionally—your nervous system reacts like it’s happening again.
This is why some people feel like they “should” be able to handle stress better, but instead feel hijacked by anxiety, anger, shame, or even numbness. They might avoid situations that could trigger them, or push through while being numb or dissasociated. Their window of tolerance—what they can handle without feeling overwhelmed—is narrow.
What Is EMDR Therapy
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It’s a structured therapy that helps your brain finish processing overwhelming memories that were too much to handle at the time. During EMDR Therapy, you bring up a distressing memory or belief while engaging in bilateral stimulation—often through eye movements, tapping, or sound alternating from one side of the body to the other.
This back-and-forth stimulation helps activate both sides of the brain and allows the nervous system to reprocess the memory in a more integrated way. Instead of staying stuck in fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode, the brain gradually re-learns that the event happened in the past, the present is safe, and you survived.
As that stuck trauma gets processed, the body no longer reacts with the same intensity to triggers. And when your nervous system isn’t constantly overreacting to perceived danger, your capacity to handle real-life stress grows.
How EMDR Helps Expand Your Window of Tolerance
The “window of tolerance” is the zone where you can think, feel, and act from your true self—where you’re not overwhelmed, but you’re also not numb or shut down. When you’ve lived through trauma, that window often shrinks. EMDR Therapy helps widen it in a few ways:
1. Reducing the Intensity of Triggers
When past trauma hasn’t been processed, present-day triggers hit hard. A conflict with a partner might not just feel upsetting, but terrifying, humiliating, or rage-inducing. EMDR helps lower the emotional charge of triggers. Instead of being pulled into a trauma response, you start to have more room to pause, reflect, and respond differently.
2. Building Internal Safety
EMDR Therapy also helps clients access moments of safety, resilience, or calm—even if they were brief. By weaving these into the therapy process, the brain starts to associate safety with the present, not just the past. This builds internal resources you can draw on when you feel overwhelmed or stressed.
3. Reprocessing the Root of Overwhelm
Many people struggle with overwhelm because they’re unconsciously carrying the weight of old beliefs like “I’m not safe,” “I’ll be abandoned,” or “I can’t handle things.” EMDR helps identify and shift those beliefs at the root level. As the body begins to believe new messages—like “I can handle this,” “I’m not alone,” or “I have choices”—your tolerance for difficult emotions naturally increases.
Real-Life Changes Clients Notice
Clients often say things like:
- “The same things used to send me into a spiral, but now I can take a breath and stay grounded.”
- “I still feel anxious sometimes, but it doesn’t take over my whole day.”
- “I’m finally able to have hard conversations without freezing or over-explaining.”
These are signs that their nervous systems are becoming more flexible and resilient. EMDR doesn’t erase stress—it helps you meet it without being hijacked by it.
Begin EMDR TherapyWhat About High-Achievers and Overfunctioners?
If you’re someone who’s always been the responsible one, the overthinker, or the emotional caretaker, you may have a wide functional tolerance for stress but a narrow emotional one. You might look calm and competent on the outside while feeling like you’re barely keeping it together internally.
EMDR can help with this. It allows these overfunctioning parts to rest, while you connect with deeper, often exiled parts that carry fear, sadness, or pain. By healing those parts, you stop needing to work so hard just to feel okay. You start to trust that you’re allowed to slow down and still be safe.
What EMDR Therapy Is Not
EMDR is not about re-living trauma. In fact, it’s designed to help you access memories in a way that feels manageable and contained. A skilled EMDR therapist will go at your pace and help build internal stability before processing anything intense.
It’s also not a quick fix. EMDR is powerful, but deep healing takes time. Think of it as rewiring your nervous system so it stops reacting to the past and starts responding to the present.
Supporting Yourself Between Sessions
As EMDR Therapy helps expand your tolerance for stress and anxiety, you may also notice parts of you that resist change. Some parts may feel scared to let go of hypervigilance. Others may try to numb out or avoid feelings. This is normal.
Gentle practices like grounding, movement, and compassionate self-check-ins can support your system as it integrates the work. You don’t need to force yourself to be “better” right away. You’re allowed to go slow.
You’re Worth It
You deserve a life where stress doesn’t run the show. EMDR Therapy can help your nervous system settle, so you can face discomfort with more strength and softness.
If you’re ready to feel more grounded and resilient in the face of stress and overwhelm, EMDR Therapy may be a good fit. Reach out for a free, 15 minute consultation today.
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Emma Kobil is a trauma therapist practicing online with feminist women and thoughtful couples in Colorado and Florida. Her philosophically informed therapeutic approach focuses on helping creative and perfectionist women and couples heal. Learn more about Emma, or schedule an appointment, at mindfulcounselingdenver.com.
