Tolerance

“Be tolerant with others and strict with yourself” -Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“In trauma work, and also with sensory sensitivities, I often use a concept called ‘the window of tolerance’ — a metaphorical box that can change in size depending on how much we are able to tolerate at any given moment. So for instance (put rather simply), when I am feeling calm and rested, and feel like I have enough control, my window of tolerance for noisy environments can be quite big — I can put up with a fair amount of noise without getting overwhelmed into meltdown or shutdown (or fight/flight/freeze). When I’m feeling really stressed, exhausted, etc, or I’ve had to put up with it for a while, my window of tolerance for noise gets smaller, and it takes much less to overwhelm me and push me outside of that zone where I feel okay. No one who is not me can tell me what the size of my window of tolerance is at any given time — only I can sense that for myself, and sometimes it can take work to improve on that sensitivity, especially when I’ve been encouraged to disregard it and push through it a lot throughout my life.” -Sonny Hallett, Medium essay “Endurance”

Instead of demanding more respect from others, perhaps demand more tolerance from yourself. For that is something within your control.

And you may find that the more you increase your internal tolerance, the less you need external respect or validation.

P.S. – This Medium essay which features the quote above.