'Containment' and 'Holding'

'Containment' and 'holding' are psychotherapy terms coming from the idea of a mother holding and containing a child's anxiety and emotions and helping him/her to manage them, thereby teaching the child to do this for themself and providing later capacity to tolerate difficult feelings as an autonomous adult. During times of stress we may regress to childlike states and need help from close attachment figures to provide similar containment and holding that we received in early years.

I found this following passage really interesting...it's taken from 'Couple Therapy - The Self in the Relationship' By Jan Grant and Jim Crawley (126:2008)


'Containment is one of the important psychological functions provided by the healthy couple relationship; that is, the capacity of the relationship to act as a container within which the partners are able to express their own experience and to receive and process each other's experience. This may mean receiving at times the other's despair, anger, sadness, depression, or their joy, pride, excitement, or desire; thinking about it; and giving it back in a way that enables the other to now experience themselves as heard and understood, and perhaps to think about their experience differently. For couples where such containment is not possible, escalating emotional distress will often ensue.'

We all need to feel heard and held by our partners, but it can be the case where if we did not receive this holding and containment in early years from our caregiver we may still be looking for a high level of this in our relationships as we have not yet learnt this for ourselves.

This could be experienced as neediness or extreme insecurity by the recipient partner and the relationship may be very volatile, vacillating between extreme periods of bliss and despair. If a couple have found a connection with each other through similar shared childhood experiences of neglect, they may find it very difficult to manage each other's emotional distress.

That's not to say the relationship can't work, but it will require honest and open communication and patience to work through. As always I would see this as an opportunity for learning and healing parts of the self that are often buried deep in our subconscious. However, it may be that you need to find a highly empathic, experienced therapist to work with you both to provide a model and the space for this to happen. I would suggest contacting Relate for more information on finding a therapist to work with.