The Window of Tolerance in Academic Coaching: Three Updates I Can’t Stop Thinking About
I recently wrapped up the Finals Without Freakout masterclass, and while the Zoom room was full of energy and "aha" moments, my brain didn’t get the memo that the class was over.
Instead, I’ve spent the last two weeks in a state of deep cogitation (my new favorite word—highly recommend). It’s that restless, exciting feeling when you realize that as good as a framework is, there’s a deeper layer waiting to be peeled back.
Before I let you in on three “missing pieces” about the window of tolerance that I’ve been chewing on, let’s do a quick 30-second catch-up on the core concepts we laid down in the class:
The Triple Threat: Why Finals Feel Like Too Much
The first was the Learn/Do/Feel framework — the idea that overload during finals isn't one thing, it's three:
cognitive overload (working memory at capacity),
logistical overload (too many moving parts to manage), and
emotional overload (the anxiety, the dread, the shutdown).
Each type has its own science and its own strategies — useful any time of year, but especially at exam time. But they're not independent — they affect each other in ways that matter. Cognitive overload can tip a student into dysregulation; dysregulation shrinks the working memory capacity students need to think clearly. Each type feeds the others. This is especially true for neurodivergent students, whose working memory and emotional regulation systems are already working harder than average.
Mapping the "Window of Tolerance"
The second was a new mini-lecture on the window of tolerance — a concept developed by psychiatrist Pat Ogden and later expanded by Dan Siegel — describing the optimal zone of arousal where a person can think, feel, and respond flexibly.
I used it to give coaches and students a shared language for nervous system regulation:
what it looks like to be inside your window, and
what it looks like to tip into hyperarousal (panic, racing thoughts, everything feels urgent) or hypoarousal (numbness, shutdown, "I can't even start").
This language is particularly useful for ADHD-wired students, who may have heard "just calm down" their whole lives without ever having a framework for what regulation actually looks like.
I also shared a way to have students draw these nervous system states — and multiple coaches appreciated the more visual approach to teaching. One coach put it this way: "I normally speak to my students about fight, flight, or freeze, but having them draw the emojis seems way more understandable somehow." Yay!
So: Anti-Boring framework sharper, nervous system piece added, zoom room full of engaged coaches. Good day.
But then, starting the day after the masterclass, my thinking began to deepen even further — particularly around the window of tolerance, and some important nuances we hadn't yet named. Sheesh! Can't my brain give me a little break before cogitating further?
Here are three aha’s I couldn't stop thinking about — shared here for masterclass participants and anyone else who wants to come along for the ride.
Aha #1: Signals and Triggers Are Not the Same Thing
During the masterclass, after sharing the new drawing activity that helps students understand the window of tolerance, I introduced a series of questions to help them recognize how those states show up in their everyday lives — and especially at exam time.
When I shared these questions afterward with my colleague Simon, he pointed out something worth clarifying: when it comes to teaching students about the tendency to leave the window of tolerance, it helps to distinguish between signals and triggers.
A signal is what dysregulation looks like — the observable symptoms that tell you (or your student) they've moved outside their window. Racing heart. Snapping at a sibling. Staring at a page for 20 minutes without taking anything in.
A trigger is what caused the shift — the specific input or circumstance that moved them out of their window. A daunting study guide. A text from a friend mid-session. Realizing three exams land on the same day.
Knowing your signals helps you notice when you've left the window. Knowing your triggers helps you anticipate and plan how to respond to them.
(Masterclass participants: I've updated the chart at the end of the handout to include both terms — worth a second look.)
Aha #2: The Faux Window — When "Fine" Isn't Actually Fine
This one also came from Simon — and after we got off our phone call, I immediately went to research it.
Coined by somatic therapists Kathy Kain and Stephen Terrell in their 2018 book Nurturing Resilience, the faux window describes the experience of appearing to be within your window, calm and functional, when you're actually in a low-grade shutdown state that just looks like okayness. Managed numbness, rather than genuine regulation.
Simon wasn't sure the faux window would feel relevant for student coaching — but egads, it does. How many of us have had students say they're fine, clearly believing it themselves, when they are anything but?
If you work with students, you've probably seen this. The calm, compliant student who seems ready to work but somehow nothing sticks. The one who says "I'm fine" in a tone that doesn't quite convince you. That may be the faux window.
It might be worth adding a small teaching moment to our window of tolerance mini-lecture — sharing the concept with students and seeing if it resonates. I don't have a clean coaching protocol for it yet, and honestly, I'd love for Anti-Boring Lab members and blog readers to experiment with it and report back. Does the idea of a faux window resonate with your students?
Got a hard student coaching question? Bring it to the Lab.
More info about our free monthly-ish Q&A calls is in our library.
Explore the Free Library →Aha #3: The Window Isn't the Same for Everyone
While doing my follow-up research on the faux window, I stumbled onto something that felt worth naming. Like a lot of models that come out of Western clinical psychology, the window of tolerance was developed primarily with white clients in mind.
Several clinicians and scholars of color have been pointing this out for years:
Resmaa Menakem, in My Grandmother's Hands (2017), argues that for Black bodies, what the white clinical tradition calls "dysregulation" — heightened vigilance, activation, fight-or-flight — is often an accurate response to a genuinely unsafe environment.
Dr. Jennifer Mullan, in Decolonizing Therapy (2023), make a related point: asking people of color to regulate themselves back into a "window" that was never designed for them can itself cause harm.
So when we teach students about the window of tolerance, we want to hold their identities in the picture, too. For some Black and brown students, a narrowed window isn't just about individual history or stress — it's about navigating racism and racial hostility every single day.
For neurodivergent students, there's a related but distinct drain: when school is designed for a brain you don't have, staying "in your window" takes a constant effort that other students don't have to spend.
And for students who hold both identities, those experiences compound each other.
I'm naming this because it matters, and because our Lab community is predominantly white — including me — and many of us work with students whose identities and experiences differ significantly from our own. These lenses belong in our frameworks, not tucked into an optional add-on section — which is honestly how this blog entry is treating it. We'll be going much deeper in 2026–2027 with a dedicated identity-aware coaching series. Consider this a preview. And if you're as compelled to do right by this topic as I am, feel free to grab Rebuilding Students' Learning Power by Zaretta Hammond and Decolonizing Therapy by Dr. Jennifer Mullan — which is exactly what I'll be doing.
Still Cogitating
If I had to put the current state of the framework in one sentence: overload is cognitive, logistical, and emotional, it happens inside a nervous system with a specific window of tolerance, and that window is shaped by individual history, current circumstances, and the structural realities of the environments our students are navigating.
That's more complex than what I taught in 2025. It's also more accurate.
This is what we do in the Anti-Boring Learning Lab — a community built around academic coach training and executive function coach training that doesn't stop at technique. We apply frameworks, then question them, then bring in new research and new perspectives and figure out what needs updating.
If you want to go deeper:
Start free. The cognitive overload mini-lecture at antiboringlearninglab.com/resources is a solid grounding in the working memory piece of this framework — just know it reflects an earlier version, and this blog is where the updates live.
Join the Lab. If you want to be part of the ongoing conversation — as the identity-aware coaching series takes shape, as we keep asking what the research actually says — Lab membership is where that happens. Learn more here.
Watch for the May webinar. Details on an upcoming free webinar and the summer Anti-Boring Toolkit Certification cohort are coming soon.
Your Turn
If you’re moved, I’d love to hear your own thoughts about the following:
Does the signals/triggers distinction deepen how you might talk to students about their nervous systems?
Have you encountered the faux window—the student who seems fine but maybe isn't? How might you name it directly with students?
And how are you already thinking about the ways structural and identity-based factors shape your students' capacity to learn? Especially in academic and executive function coaching? I’d love to know.
Share in the comments, or bring it to the Lab. This is exactly the kind of conversation we're built for.
And speaking of the Lab — we occasionally offer FREE office hours for those of you who want to follow up on the ideas that I blog and post about. More information is in the Visitor’s Center. You can sign up at the link below (and then you’ll be on our newsletter, too, so that you’ll get pinged when we do another free event).