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How can we hold our overwhelming emotions?

Trauma is often intrusive. Events from the past intrude on our present moment with memories, flashbacks, emotions, and sensations that do not belong there. When this happens, we are left with confusion that blurs the line between past and present, emotions and memories that are tangled like a knotted thread with no clear end. Our bodies and minds can feel as though they are betraying us, leaving us feeling out of control. This repetitiveness and reexperiencing of trauma is one of the major setbacks in our psychological change as well. It drains our inner resources in the moment and prevents us from finding a space within where we can simply be, even briefly, to understand, integrate, and cope. That is why, in therapy and in daily life, we may intentionally create moments that help us contain the flood of emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and memories related to our painful experiences. In this therapy sketch, we will explain what “containment” is and how we can begin engaging with it.

What is emotional dysregulation, and how can it show up in our lives?

Our emotions, thoughts, sensations, and beliefs often feel so private and idiosyncratic. They live within us, coming and going in waves. Yet they also guide us immensely, shaping what we choose to do, how we behave, even how we relate to others. At times, these inner waves grow so large and intense that they feel uncontrollable, leaving us overwhelmed and helpless. This kind of dominance our inner experience can have over our decision-making, actions, and relationships does not go unnoticed. It can create consequences in the present that keep us stuck in ways we simply don’t want or like to be.

This experience is known as emotional flooding, and it can be an expected part of life; most of us will feel this way at certain phases. However, some challenges we experience can turn this overflow of emotions into our more typical state. For example, when we go through traumatic events, one of the key ways they affect us is by making us constantly reexperience uncomfortable memories, images, emotions, and sensations in the present, even though the events themselves are long past. Sometimes emotions become so intense that they cease to be mere fleeting feelings and instead take root in everyday life. If that is the case, you may find yourselves constantly on edge, easily irritated, tossed about by emotions that shift in an instant, or as if you can never fully relax.

Because living with intense, flooding emotions all the time is both physically and mentally a very painful, difficult, and energy-demanding task for our bodies and minds to constantly be in, sometimes we also find ways to keep these emotions away. We numb out and feel nothing to avoid feeling so deeply and intensely. We dissociate and put a kind of glass between ourselves and the rest of the world so that we don’t get hurt again. But when we detach this way, we often also detach from the emotions and sensations that we wish to experience, such as joy, fun, cheerfulness, and happiness.

We can experience these types of emotional dysregulation when we go through significant distress or experience trauma. What happens is that reactions or defenses once developed to endure significant distress or traumatic moments don’t leave us when those events pass, and they continue to disrupt our regulation of safety and responses to threat, preventing us from engaging with our emotions in a more integrated way (Porges, 2007). That is why, in therapy and in daily life, we may intentionally create moments that help us contain the flood of emotions, thoughts, beliefs, and memories related to our painful experiences, so that they don’t become overly intrusive and debilitating, or so that our bodies don’t completely shut down. This way, we can create opportunities for ourselves to process and integrate what’s going on.

What is containment?

Containment is a method often used in psychotherapy to help us intentionally “set aside” difficult memories, emotions, and thoughts, creating more stability and better mood regulation during and between sessions, allowing us to address and integrate difficult experiences in a more manageable way. It is frequently used across different modalities and achieved through explicit visualization exercises. For example, in EMDR therapy, it is utilized in a manner similar to the following steps (Murray, 2011):

  • Foresight is about understanding why we use a container technique and how it helps us, so we can make the following steps more effective. For example, in therapy, our therapist can inform us about the ways our intense emotions might be affecting us. Or, reading the first part of this article can have a similar informative effect. Murray (2011) likens this to having too many open files on our computer screen, which eventually freezes or shuts down. Similarly, becoming intensely aware of our flooding emotions can lead to dysregulation, so we purposefully try to set these aside and return to them later when we can.
  • Insight is about constructing and strengthening our container in our visual imagery.
    • Construct the container: We can start by getting ourselves into an alert, comfortable position. Either with eyes closed or open, we start imagining a container of our choice, ensuring it is strong and safe, with enough space to hold our uncomfortable experiences. We make sure it has a way to close, like a lock. 
    • Strengthen the container’s visual in our minds: We can then try to describe what it looks like, either to ourselves or out loud. What color is it? How big is it? Where do we put it? What kind of lock does it have? Once we feel comfortable enough doing this, we may move on to filling out the container.
    • Fill out the container: To fill out our imaginary container, we can start by picking something mildly uncomfortable to get ourselves familiar with using it, so it doesn’t become too much of a task too soon. Then we find a way to visualize putting that uncomfortable memory, emotion, sensation into the container. For example, you can either put it yourself, get someone else’s help, or simply skip to the part where it’s put into the container if it feels ungrounding. Once we feel comfortable enough doing this, we may move on to closing the container.
    • Close the container: Once we feel we have taken the time we need using the container, we can imagine closing it. Again, we can imagine a way to close the container securely. Once we feel comfortable doing this, we can start paying a little bit of attention to how it makes us feel, without trying to change it. For example, does our attention go to our breathing? Do we feel uncomfortable in certain parts of our bodies? And then we can start to gently return to the present moment and let ourselves finish this step.
    • Testing the container: If we feel comfortable doing the previous steps, we can also try visualizing to bring out what we put into the container. First, we can decide what to put out. Then we can choose a way to incorporate that into our visual imagery, with as much detail as we are comfortable with. If this step feels unsettling, we can always try to refocus on the container’s details rather than on the uncomfortable memories, emotions, or thoughts. Once we feel comfortable doing this, we can start paying a little attention to how it feels in our bodies, without trying to change it. Does our attention go to our breathing? Do we feel uncomfortable in certain parts of our bodies? And then we can start putting stuff back into the container and securely close it. Once we are ready, we can return to the present moment and finish the exercise. To ease into finishing, we can use deep breathing to signal that we are done with the exercise. 
  • Hindsight is about actively using the container in daily life when we need to, once we feel comfortable completing the steps explained in “insight.” This active reuse can sometimes require us to imagine additional visual aspects of the container to help refocus. Similarly, we can try to stay consistent by also visualizing opening the container when we want to address the uncomfortable experiences we have placed into it.

Containment doesn’t mean avoidance.

Containment is a trauma-informed approach that prioritizes our safety, avoids retraumatization, and allows us to find a pace of processing that works for us. It helps us build our capacity to stay in the present and not become unnecessarily occupied by the disruptive memories, emotions, and thoughts. 

However, containment doesn’t mean avoiding what is uncomfortable altogether, and it doesn’t replace the task of understanding and integrating the difficult parts of our lives that are required for bringing psychological change. Instead, it helps us safely hold our emotions without them becoming so invasive. It restores our sense of control and agency, helping us relate to what we feel more intentionally rather than being ruled by it. This way, we can make choices in the present that are more aligned with our values and what we wish our lives to be.

Containment isn’t always easy.

Letting go of the things we have been holding so tightly can feel as difficult as keeping it all together in the first place. What we sometimes experience as resistance is actually our nervous system’s effort to remain within its “window of tolerance.” The window of tolerance refers to the optimal range within which we can manage emotional arousal, experiencing neither extreme overwhelm nor shutdown (Siegel, 1999). When we step outside this window, emotions either become too intense and overwhelming or flooded. Therefore, when our mind and body sense they cannot tolerate the intensity, they may increase control, avoid the situation, or withdraw (Corrigan et al., 2011; Siegel, 1999).

From this perspective, resistance is not merely an ‘obstacle’ but also a form of protection. It may serve as a way for us to protect ourselves from an emotional weight that we are not yet able to bear. The literature on trauma and emotion regulation also indicates that such avoidance and control strategies are often aimed at protecting the system from becoming overloaded (Corrigan et al., 2011). 

Takeaways

  • Trauma responses can persist after the event, disrupting our sense of safety and emotional regulation, and intruding into the present with memories, emotions, and sensations, leaving us confused, overwhelmed, and drained.
  • Emotional flooding happens when inner experiences become so intense that they feel uncontrollable and start shaping our lives in unwanted ways. To cope, we may numb out or dissociate, but this also disconnects us from positive emotions.
  • Containment is a technique that helps us set difficult thoughts and emotions aside so they don’t overwhelm us in the moment, while knowing we can come back to them.
  • Containment doesn’t mean avoiding our emotions, thoughts, or beliefs altogether. Rather, it helps hold these experiences in a safer, more controlled way through certain visualization steps, without them becoming too disruptive in the present moment, so we can choose when and how to address them more deliberately.
  • Containment can be achieved through various practical ways. For example, it can involve following a visualization exercise in which we first construct a secure container, then gently practice putting difficult experiences in it, and securely close it, while also paying attention to our bodies and how they feel.

References

Murray, K. (2011). Clinical Q&A. Journal of EMDR Practice and Research, 5(1), 29.

Porges, S. W. (2007). The polyvagal perspective. Biological Psychology, 74(2), 116–143. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2006.06.009

Corrigan, F. M., Fisher, J. J., & Nutt, D. J. (2011). Autonomic dysregulation and the Window of Tolerance model of the effects of complex emotional trauma. Journal of psychopharmacology (Oxford, England), 25(1), 17–25. https://doi.org/10.1177/0269881109354930

Siegel, D. J. (2013). An Interpersonal Neurobiology of Psychotherapy: The Developing Mind. Healing trauma: Attachment, mind, body and brain, 1.

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This page is also part of the Roamers Therapy Glossary; a collection of mental-health related definitions that are written by our therapists.

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