Containment (imagery)

Because our main goal is to stay within the window of tolerance, we need to learn how to regulate ourselves within the yellow area.

We distinguish between self-regulation and relational regulation. Most people favor one or the other, but it is important to be able to use both in order to react appropriately in different situations.

 

Self-regulation

There are a great number of ways to self-regulate.

One of them is “containment”.

Oxford dictionary defines containment as “The action of keeping something harmful under control or within limits.”

If there is a stressful picture on your mind, thoughts that cause anxiety, maybe strong feelings about a certain situation or you are having a flashback, you can take these things and contain them, separate them from the moment and keep them for later, when there is more time and calm to look at them properly.

 

The most common way to do this is the containment exercise using a safe or vault.

For this exercise you imagine a container, any container that feels safe to you, that could be a safe, a chest, a box, maybe a small vault… You can place all that is “too much” in that container and lock it away. You can imagine this container to be in a house, maybe a bank or another brightly lit place.

It helps to go into detail when you imagine your container. What is it made of? What is the size and shape? What color does it have. How can it be locked and opened? Is there a key or a code or maybe a password?

You can transform whatever you want to place in the container into an image. Maybe you put it on a DVD or tape. Maybe Photos. Maybe it just looks like a colored shape to you. You can imagine writing a thought on paper and place that inside the container. Choose whatever seems to make sense to you at that moment.

Make it a conscious step to place your thoughts, feelings, pictures or other inside the container and lock it well. Imagine stepping away from it, check if there is something to add, then leave the building and continue with life.

This will not contain difficult things for you forever. It’s not meant to. Sooner or later you will have to look at it. This exercise gives you the freedom to decide the “when” and “where”, not the “if”.

If you have DID, NEVER try to put a part of you into a container like that. You wouldn’t want anyone to do that to you either.

It works best when all of you can agree to contain a subject for some time.

 

Other pictures you could use for containment:

• fill a balloon with what stresses you and let it rise out of sight

• keep things under water

• place things in a freezer and defrost them later (especially helpful when a flooding program was triggered)

• place them on some kind of vehicle that transports them away from you

• imagine to place them in a computer file and file them in a folder within another folder

 

Another method of containment is to write things down (short) or draw a picture and imagine that by doing this you fix the problem to the paper where it can stay until you come back to read it.

You could combine that with a small aspect from relational regulation and send the file to your T. Imagine that it is waiting for you at your Ts office and there is no way you could get to it before your next appointment. Your T keeps it safe for you for now.

 

With some practice this can become a powerful tool to keep you from getting overwhelmed in stressful situations.

Find out about the BASK-Safe

and other ways to store worries

the jumping box

and containment for DID Systemwork