Is Stress Changing Who You Are? It’s highly likely that the toll of chronic stress is silently reshaping you, and without understanding how to manage it, the risks to your wellbeing, family life, and leadership effectiveness are only growing.
I would like to share a model to help explain what might be happening, from a neurophysiological perspective, called the Window of Tolerance.
There are periods when the stress isn’t situational — it’s the world itself that feels destabilizing.
Heart coherence practice isn’t a way of pretending that isn’t true.
It’s a way of not letting the hardness close your heart, erode the warmth and presence that matter most, and alter who you are.
Here’s what it is, what the science shows, and how to practice it.
“The people who have survived trauma teach us about what it is to be human — by teaching us what they’ve lost. And they’ve lost the ability to feel safe enough with another.”
That line from Stephen Porges stopped me cold.
Because I know what that feels like.
And I know what it takes to change it.
I used to take a hit and not only go down — I’d stay down. A hit that most people wouldn’t even register.
This piece is what I’ve learned since then about resilience, the nervous system, the science of inner safety, and why the heart is at the center of coming back to yourself.