Book Review: Widen the Window Training Your Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma by Elizabeth A. Stanley

Widen the Window: Training Your Brain and Body to Thrive During Stress and Recover from Trauma by Elizabeth A. Stanley

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Review also available on my site: https://roxannacross.com/2025/07/07/b...

A self-help audiobook, also available in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle formats on Amazon or at your local library, is narrated by the author herself, creating a sense of intimacy between the author and listener, as she knows where to emphasize the material presented in the book.

Stanley uses the analogy of a “stress window” to explain that we can all handle stress, and that our survival (lizard) brain regulates our responses to it. It constantly scans for internal and external threats in a process called neuroception. She uses the example of a caveman chased by a beast, fearing for his life, and his lizard brain taking over in the moment of Fight, Flight, or Freeze mode, which is the survival brain’s three lines of defense for responding to stress that exceeds our window of tolerance. This line of defense is also known as the sympathetic nervous system, or SNS for short.

What is important to remember is that traumas are personal and unique to each individual. However, Stanley’s research seems out of touch or out of date or perhaps even skewed by her bias when she discloses that only the big Ts of traumas, such as but not limited to terrorist attacks, school shootings, natural disasters, and combat, are socially understood. In contrast, the small Ts of trauma are not as comprehended, and this includes sexual assault, child neglect, abuse, and others.

Stanley says society’s views on stress as a badge of honor is the reason why we ignore the little traumas easily, because if I‘m stressed, sleep deprived, and adopt the attitude of:

“SUCK IT UP AND DRIVE ON.”

Because I’m important, I’m busy and overworked, and others recognize this. She uses an example from her time in the armed forces when she implemented a new system and stayed awake for over seventy-two hours, fighting off an infection caused by a sting, using coffee, sugar, and chewing tobacco to get it done. In the end, she received a commendation for her hard work, but was it sane of her to do so? Not giving her brain the recovery time from stress.

Recovery time from stress is managed by the survival brain, known as allostasis. The recovery process doesn’t start until the survival brain perceives safety. Chronic stress impedes the recovery. It doesn’t allow the survival brain to feel safe, building an allostatic load in the system over the long term, which causes dysregulation, affects cognitive performance in the decision-making process, and ultimately leads to stress-related diseases.

According to Stanley, the four best ways of reducing stress are:

Having an active social life
Getting enough sleep
Eating a balanced diet
Exercising regularly

She also recommends journaling and a mindfulness-based mind fitness training program she developed and teaches at various military bases, healthcare facilities, and Capitol Hill. They use this program to identify when we’re carrying a heavy allostatic load and employ the appropriate “ground and regulate” strategies for “discharging” that energy in healthy and adaptive ways instead of using harmful coping mechanisms such as smoking, drinking, binge eating, or compulsive actions.

Throughout the book, Stanley frequently emphasizes the importance of personal accountability, a key component in unlearning learned helplessness. However, the examples she uses are once again out of touch:

“Switch to a four-day work week.”
“Take days off.”
“Have one day every week where you do nothing.”
These are unrealistic and inaccessible to most readers or listeners, and disappointing because they don’t present real solutions for them, but instead shift the burden back onto them.

A reinvention of DBT layered with the author’s prejudices and biases into the material, with top-tier explanations about the body’s stress response system and exceptional skills to regulate it to decrease the long-term negative health consequences. The bulk of the book was helpful, informative, and well-researched and could easily be verified, meriting three stars.



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