When Coping Isn’t Enough: Learning to Build Capacity
Often, I find myself at a crossroads with coping and finding strength. Running through my list of coping mechanisms for tougher or more emotional times has always been a soft landing for getting regulated and to the next hour or next day. Many times, just one more hour is actually all I have in me. Sometimes, it can be like that for days. Repeating. Even frustrating in a way, because it forces me to ponder “why is everyday so exhausting?”
Recently, “capacity” has been a word taking up space for me, and a word many of us are finally allowing ourselves to say out loud.
I don’t have the capacity for that.
I’m at my limit.
I just don’t have it in me right now.
With clients, I offer up the notion of self abandonment when we extend past our capacity, and how knowing your capacity can put a halt to that, release shame, and show clearly that something like experiencing exhaustion is not a personal failure. This language has been useful and necessary.
Honoring our limits is very important. Yet – there’s sometimes a quiet tension underneath this conversation. We’ve done important work naming something such as exhaustion, and realizing when we’ve reached our designated level of capacity. Is that it for us though—naming the same limit, or limit adjacent issues? If we keep being met with the same problem, and deciding it's beyond our capacity to handle, does the problem ever get solved? Do we ever truly heal from this issue? How do we solve it?
Opposed to questioning why everyday is so exhausting, I decided to ask myself: “How long do I only respond to my capacity being reached, rather than considering it something that I can actively build?” If I can build it, maybe I can actively solve or begin to heal from this problem.
What is capacity?
When we are overwhelmed, coping helps us respond and survive these moments. Coping is what we turn to to manage. Capacity, on the other hand, is what defines the maximum amount something can hold or produce. When I think about capacity, I picture the ability to stay present, grounded, and in charge of myself even when emotions or stressors show up. Coping mechanisms are what help me get through the moment, but capacity is what lets me notice what’s happening without shutting down or pushing through blindly. It’s not about being stronger or doing more; it’s about how much I can hold while staying connected to myself.
Considering capacity means considering tolerance. How much we can tolerate often describes the limits of our capacity for most things. Think about trauma, where capacity being low or having a hard limit makes perfect sense. Dealing with chronic stress, grief, marginalization, trauma, and ongoing uncertainty often narrows what our nervous system can comfortably hold. When we encounter seasons like this, accommodation is care. So we open our box of coping mechanisms in order to reduce discomfort and make the next hour or day more manageable.
Healing is more than reducing discomfort though. When we work to heal, we expand what we can tolerate, hold, and stay with—without collapse, and sometimes through discomfort.
I’d like to offer a suggestion, or something to try next time (not every time) you’re at a limit. Opposed to asking yourself, “Am I at capacity?” consider shifting away from a place where capacity language becomes an identity that limits growth, and toward a place where capacity is understood as a phase—a moment in time that you get to choose how to respond to. Ask instead, “What would help my capacity stretch here, without overwhelming me?”
I had to learn that capacity can be a seasonal discussion if I let it. It is dynamic, not fixed. My exhaustion led me to challenge my capacity, and I learned that a hard and fast stop on my capacity limits doesn’t have to be permanent throughout time. In fact, when examining capacity you may find that it is trainable. With the help of intentional exposure paired with recovery, capacity can grow.
Window of Tolerance
Growing capacity isn’t done through overwhelming the self or avoiding challenges altogether. It isn’t pushing through trauma responses or avoiding rest either. It is small, chosen stretches within safety. When we talk about capacity clinically, we’re often talking about the nervous system. And from a nervous system lens, capacity lives inside something called the “window of tolerance”.
Our window of tolerance—the range where we can stay present without becoming overwhelmed or shutting down—fosters our capacity to grow. Our nervous system has a zone of manageable arousal where we can feel, think, and stay connected at the same time, and exceeding this window often triggers fight, flight, freeze or a collapse. Therefore, if we work outside this window, we don’t build strength, we reinforce our survival response. Coping mechanisms come into action because we lean on those to regulate us back to a grounded state or where our window of tolerance lies.
Rather than attempting to take on everything at once, you can engage in approaches like titration and pendulation. Titration means taking in small, manageable amounts of challenge rather than flooding ourselves. This could look like having one difficult conversation opposed to several, or sitting with discomfort briefly before moving to regulation. Pendulation allows us to move between activation and safety, effort and rest. Our bodies learn that challenge doesn’t mean danger through pendulation. Together, these practices teach the nervous system that it can stretch and return, engage and recover—which is a way for capacity to expand without harm.
Create a Practice
If coping has been about getting through the next hour, and honoring limits has been about not abandoning ourselves, then building capacity asks a slightly different question: What helps me stay present without collapsing or pushing past myself? Considering capacity is not an attempt to do more or become the tough one, but about widening the space we have to feel, respond, and stay connected to ourselves.
This is where something such as art can quietly support the work. Slowing the process of building tolerance down, and giving shape to what is often only felt in the body, is why art can be a helpful tool. A tool that serves as a container, not a solution, to explore our own edges without overwhelming them.
Art as a Capacity-Building Tool
With that in mind, I want to share a way to explore capacity in real time, using art as a container for safety and reflection. This art activity can be done alone, or with a partner, to practice tolerance, discernment, and self trust. Skill is 100% not required. This activity will allow you to practice staying with an experience, whether it’s an effort, choice, sensation or uncertainty. It will also ask you to notice when you want to stop or push, and regulate inside the stretch.
Gather up these materials:
9 x 12 inch paper
Two art mediums with different intensities
(for example: pencil + marker, crayon + paint, pen + pastel)
Draw a container that represents your current capacity. There’s no right or wrong way for it to look. It might look sturdy or fragile, be full or empty, open or closed. As you’re drawing, notice what it feels like to imagine holding emotion, responsibility, or demand inside this container.
Once complete, and using the slightly more intense material, add one element that represents a stretch or something that asks the container to hold more. Whether it is a sharper edge, darker line, a tight pattern or some added weight inside or outside the container. This component is a gentle ask to hold just a little more. Clock your internal response as you add this element (breath, body, any urges to stop or push) because this can serve as capacity building in real time. Slow down and see if you can notice the ability to feel challenged and stay present.
Lastly, add anything that helps the container feel supported or reinforced in order to hold this stretch. This process encourages awareness of both challenge and care, offering a visual reminder and way to explore how capacity grows through balance rather than force.
Once complete, spend some time reflecting on your process and what came up. Ask: Where did I feel most stretched? What helped me stay present? Where did I want to quit or override myself? How does this mirror how I approach challenges in my life?
When we slow down to notice, stretch, and support ourselves in this way, it’s easier to carry these lessons into daily life. Remember that rest is recovery, coping helps us get through, and capacity encourages us to stay with what’s here. When we meet ourselves at the edge, questioning limits versus strength, we can take time to notice what is happening in our body and support it, and that can result in capacity growth. That's the process. Not forcing expansion, but pacing it, safely and with intention.