During the course of her pioneering research into coping with adversity, prolonged stress exposure, and trauma, Dr. Stanley has worked with neuroscientists and stress researchers to test her game-changing resilience training program among U.S. military troops. She’s taught these tried-and-tested methods to thousands of individuals who work in high-stress environments.  Reflecting on her own experiences of stress, trauma, and recovery, her approach is at once personal and wide-ranging. With plenty of stories from the people she’s trained, she explains the science of how to direct our attention to perform under stress and recover from trauma. 

The more we can access agency over our own situation, and rewire our mind and body, the more we can widen the window within which our “thinking brain” and our “survival brain” work together cooperatively. By building our resilience in this way, we can train ourselves to make wise decisions and access choice — even during times of incredible stress, uncertainty, and change.  Widen the Window takes on the “top-down” thinking brain-dominant tools that still dominate most performance enhancement and resilience programs — and mental health care practices — in America. As she explains, the newest scientific findings about the brain, nervous system, and body suggest these techniques are incomplete, especially for recovery after trauma. Stress arousal and recovery are survival brain jobs. Thus, widening the window requires targeting the survival brain with “bottom-up” strategies, which many mainstream techniques neglect.