Can You Handle Your Feelings? Understanding Affect Tolerance

Affect tolerance refers to an individual’s ability to effectively manage and cope with their emotions without becoming overwhelmed or reactive. It is the capacity to withstand and regulate intense emotional experiences, both positive and negative, in a balanced and healthy manner. Life comes at us in full force, igniting feeling affects. Life is a feeling experience. We naturally react to inner and outer experience. Feeling reactions are part of an adaptive process to successfully navigate the dynamic changing circumstances of life.

However, sensitivity to feeling affects varies across people, times, and circumstances. Some people are naturally more susceptible to overwhelm. Others hardly recognize the changing emotional landscape within their own bodies. Daniel Goleman wrote in his best selling book Emotional Intelligence that “at the extremes, this means that for some people emotional awareness is overwhelming, while for others it barely exists” (Goleman, 2005).

T. Franklin Murphy explains, “Too little sensitivity and we miss large swatches of the world within and the world without” (Murphy, 2023). Most of us experience feeling affects within a normal range, meaning we feel event and respond to adapt. Experiences vary along with our capabilities to process experiences. Some experiences overwhelm and other underwhelm.

A much higher percentage of individuals in hand to hand combat, during a bloody conflict, where survival is at risk, succumb to the high stress level and suffer either a short or long term maladaptive reaction. Low stress experiences typically demand much less emotional resources and most individuals manage these momentary frustration and move forward. Basically, on average, we can tolerate the arousal of affects for most day to day events.

Of course, as the level of stress increases, we begin to see a divide between those that effectively manage the stress and those that can’t.

What is High Affect Tolerance?

Individuals with high affect tolerance are often able to navigate through challenging situations without being significantly derailed by emotional responses. They tolerate a wide range of emotions without feeling overwhelmed or shutting down. This doesn’t mean they are emotionless, but rather that they either are naturally less sensitive to affect or they have developed strategies to cope with and regulate emotional experiences to keep feeling affects within a their individual window of tolerance. Typically, those that have high affect tolerance have a workable combination of natural disposition and effective regulation techniques.

We unconsciously appraise and affectively react to events. Irwin G. Sarason wrote, “Two factors seemed to be important influences in the appraisal process: the general tendency to react with anxiety to problematic situations and coping styles” (Sarason, 1988).

Basically, the more sensitive we are to feeling affect, the more coping techniques we need to employ.

Empathy and Affect Tolerance

An important aspect of affect tolerance is we must first be able to tolerate our own feeling experiences before we can effective exercise empathy when dealing with the feeling experiences of others. Close contact with others naturally creates a passing on of emotions. In psychology we refer to this as emotional contagion. Ulla Holm and K. Aspegren wrote, “An important prerequisite for empathetic ability is affect tolerance, which requires awareness of one’s own feelings” (Holm & Aspegren, 1999).

Basically, if others’ emotions arouse strong emotions in us that we can’t tolerate, we find defensive mechanisms to intervene, and we disconnect from the emotion and the person expressing the emotion. Empathy deficit disorder may be closely associate with limited affect tolerance.

Why Do We Differ in Our Ability To Tolerate Feeling Affect?

Several theories revolve around the individual differences in arousal to experience. Certainty, much of personality differences can be attributed in arousal sensitivity. Those easily aroused tend to withdraw and exhibit an introverted approach to life. Other theories focus on brain mechanisms such as the behavior activation and Behavior inhibition systems.

Much of these individual characteristics are products of biological programming. They become the foundation and building blocks for all future development. We continue to develop, learning how to deal with our own emotional givens, throughout our lives in a reciprocal manner.

Emotion researchers suggest that “emotional sensitivity is determined by any variable that influences people’s initial emotional response to the situation, including qualities of the stimuli that people encounter (e.g., highly arousing stimuli are likely to trigger emotions more rapidly than mildly arousing stimuli), person characteristics (e.g., highly neurotic individuals may enter negative states more quickly than less neurotic individuals), and the broader situation (e.g., during an economic crisis, threatening thoughts may spring to mind more easily)” (Koole, Van Dillon, & Shepps, 2016).

A lot goes into the ultimate affect reaction to life. To improve our ability to respond more effectively, widening our window of tolerance, we must identify those areas within our realm of control.

Improving Affect Tolerance

Developing a healthy affect tolerance is important for overall well-being and effective functioning in various aspects of life. It allows individuals to experience and express emotions without being consumed by them, leading to better decision-making, improved relationships, and increased resilience in the face of adversity.

We improve our ability to manage affect through two approaches. First we minimize the things in our life that heighten stress. This may be unhealthy relationships, toxic home and work environments, overburdened finances, and dangerous surroundings. We should also identify the circumstances that tend to heighten stress and change the variables. This may include eliminating or reducing consumption of unhealthy or intoxicating substances, exercising, and all the other basics of wellbeing.

The other avenue we should explore is improving coping techniques, and building skills to better regulate emotions during those unplanned spikes of affect. A key element of healthy coping is building supportive relationships.

The Role of Healthy Relationships

In a recent book, the two directors of the Harvard longitude study, Robert J. Waldinger and Marc Schulz Ph.D., wrote that, “Good relationships are significant enough that if we had to take all eighty-four years of the Harvard Study and boil it down to a single principle for living, one life investment that is supported by similar findings across a wide variety of other studies, it would be this: Good relationships keep us healthier and happier. Period” (Waldinger & Schulz, 2023).

Healthy relationships help steady our ship, provide extra resources for managing emotions (dyadic regulation), and allow us to work through problems with the secure knowledge that we will be caught if we fall.

Other Coping Behaviors

Some other coping behaviors to help regulate affect and increase our tolerance are:

• mindfulness
• exercise
• cognitive reappraisal
• problem solving
• distraction (temporary)

---

Basically, we need avenues to break the chain of affect raising rumination. In states of high arousal, the chain of effects compound and increase in magnitude. Consequently, healthy coping mechanisms help slow the momentum, allowing us to regain our footing.

Associated Concepts

• Allostatic Load: This refers to the chronic stress-induced wear and tear on the body, disrupting our ability to maintain balance and increasing vulnerability to health issues. Frequent stress, failure to shut down stress responses, and inadequate stress response contribute to allostatic load.
• Coping Skills: These encompass psychological and behavioral strategies for managing stress, emotions, and challenging scenarios. Effective mechanisms include problem-solving, mindfulness, physical exercise, seeking support, artistic expression, healthy lifestyle choices, cognitive-behavioral techniques, and seeking purpose.
• Frustration Toleration: This refers to an individual’s ability to withstand and cope with frustrating or challenging situations without becoming overwhelmed or distressed. It is the capacity to remain composed, patient, and emotionally stable in the face of obstacles, setbacks, or delays.
• Emotional Dysregulation: This refers to excessive emotional arousal that disrupts healthy decision-making and exceeds an individual’s tolerance window. It can arise from faulty biological mechanisms, environment factors, and traumatic experiences.
• Emotion Lability: This condition is characterized by rapid, intense, and inappropriate emotional shifts, can stem from brain or psychological disorders, as well as medication reactions. Symptoms include extreme emotional swings, inappropriate emotions, and difficulty regulating emotions. Treatments involve medication, therapy, and mindfulness.
• Primary and Secondary Coping Skills: Primary skills directly address stressors, while secondary skills help manage emotions related to stress. Balancing health, relationships, and finances, along with mindfulness practices, enhances resilience and emotional well-being amid life’s challenges and uncertainties.

A Few Words by Psychology Fanatic

Enhancing affect tolerance is a multifaceted journey that can significantly improve our emotional well-being and overall quality of life. By engaging in mindfulness practices, we cultivate an increased awareness of our feelings and responses, allowing us to navigate life’s challenges with greater ease. Emotional regulation skills empower us to respond thoughtfully rather than react impulsively, fostering resilience in the face of adversity. Additionally, implementing effective stress management strategies—such as regular physical activity or relaxation techniques—can mitigate overwhelming emotions before they escalate. Seeking support from understanding friends, family members, or trained professionals further enriches this process by providing valuable perspectives and coping mechanisms tailored to individual needs.

Ultimately, managing affect within our unique window of tolerance is not merely about enduring discomfort; it’s about embracing the full spectrum of human emotion while maintaining balance and perspective. This skill can be cultivated over time through consistent practice and self-awareness. As we learn to tolerate our own feelings more effectively, we enhance our capacity for empathy towards others—a vital component for nurturing meaningful relationships. By prioritizing these strategies in our daily lives, we pave the way for deeper connections with ourselves and those around us while enriching our experiences with compassion and understanding as we navigate the complexities of life together.

Last Update: July 9, 2025

References:

Goleman, Daniel (2005). Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ. Random House Publishing Group; 10th Anniversary edition.
(Return to Main Text)

Holm, Ulla; Aspegren, K. (1999). Pedagogical methods and affect tolerance in medical students. Medical Education, 33(1). DOI: 10.1046/j.1365-2923.1999.00332.x
(Return to Main Text)

Koole, Sander L.; Van Dillon, Lotte F.; Shepps, Gal (2016). The Self regulation of Emotion. In Handbook of Self-Regulation: Research, Theory, and Applications. Editors Kathleen D. Vohs and Roy F. Baumeister. The Guilford Press; 3rd edition.
(Return to Main Text)

Murphy, T. Franklin (2023). Emotional Sensitivity. Psychology Fanatic. Published: 4-24-2023; Accessed: 10-2-2023.
(Return to Main Text)

Sarason, Irwin G.(1988). Social Support, Personality, and Health. Editor Michel Pierre Janisee. in Individual Differences, Stress, and Health Psychology (Contributions to Psychology and Medicine). ‎Springer; 1st edition.
(Return to Main Text)

Waldinger, Robert J.; Schulz, Marc (2023). The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness. Simon & Schuster.
(Return to Main Text)