There is a crucial part of emotional regulation that has to happen somewhere between identifying a feeling and expressing it. Because it is physical in its nature, not a mental concept, it makes it difficult for me to explain it with words. So I will use pictures in the hope that you can translate them into the inner sensation needed.
When we talk about containment in the context of emotion we usually think of the imagery exercise of putting a memory or emotion into a container to store them for later.
The word containment is also used in body work and means something different. It describes our ability to hold an emotion inside of us, our body being the vessel, without overwhelming our nervous system/vagal brake and sending us into dysregulation.
I like to imagine having a bowl with some kind of liquid inside my center that I balance well so nothing is spilled.
A healthy body is able to tolerate even strong emotions and higher arousal levels without losing control. It taps a little into sympathetic arousal but that doesn’t become the dominant force, it can stay relatively grounded in the safe and social system. Thinking of the polyvagal ladder, it means resting the weight on ventral vagal activation (Bob) with one toe down in sympathetic arousal (Izzy). Bob and Izzy can share a moment but for containment Bob has to be the stronger one. When Izzy takes over we spill the emotion.
The same is true for Bob and Moe (shutdown). Bob can tolerate a certain level of Moes influence without getting overwhelmed. We often see this in mourning. If Moe starts to dominate the liquid freezes in our bowl, we might get stuck there or turn numb instead of regulating the emotion.
The extent in which our Bob can tolerate Izzy or Moe without being overwhelmed is called our window of tolerance.
Emotions are a certain set of physical sensations our body creates (as opposed to sensory stimuli from the world around us) to help us navigate life. Trauma patients usually numb themselves for these sensations because they have been overwhelming in the past. It creates a cycle of reinforcement. We end up with strong Izzys and Moes in our body but the vagal brake, what gets us up the ladder to meet Bob, is pretty weak.
The highly sensitive people among you might be able to feel the containment of other people – or the lack of it. Some people feel like they spill their emotions all over the place in some kind of cloud or aura. Being unable to contain the emotion means that our expression will not be controlled and well-guided but impulsive and often destructive to relationships or our life. So before we express we should always contain. Often our efforts in containment naturally lead to good expression.
We can use the concept of containment to increase our capacity to hold emotion inside and balance them to improve the vagal brake and increase our window of tolerance.
This is not done by just trying to feel everything at once, that would just be overwhelming, the bowl runs over.
Instead, we need to practice mindful awareness of our body to slowly deepen the bowl. If we want to get good at managing our emotions we cannot keep up the avoidance of our bodies. (This is true for all of trauma healing, sorry.)
We need small steps, short periods when we focus our awareness on our experience and breathe through the discomfort of the sensation, trying to hold the emotion and make room for it inside. We can turn to a distraction to practice calming down after the exercise. It doesn’t need an overwhelmingly long practice to make a difference.
This is often called ‘staying with the emotion’ and I dislike this expression. It sounds like being stuck and invites to dwelling on it for longer than is good for us.
What containment really feels like to me is like I am creating space inside myself, deepening the vessel of my body so there is room enough for all I am feeling. It feels like embracing the sensation so nothing can spill. For me the key to manage that is my breath. Sometimes it feels like the deeper down I can breathe the more room my breath creates to hold the emotion.
I am sorry this is so vague, it is the best way I can describe it.
Emotions we mindfully hold inside for a while (or again and again for short periods) start to change. Instead of being a force that costs us effort to avoid dysegulation they become more integrated into who we are, offering a sense of strength. We practice with every-day emotion and when we have enough space for them, we can make even more room to reprocess trauma.
I believe that this is where post-traumatic growth happens, this inner strength and posture that is so admired, that lifts people above their past to become greater than anyone could ever imagine. I think it is all the space we create inside of us so the unspeakable can be held and transformed.
More about mindfulness for emotional regulation
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