How can we hold space for our partners?

In our close relationships, we often project onto each other emotions such as anger, fear, feelings of worthlessness, or abandonment that they struggle to tolerate within themselves. When these emotions are vented directly, the relationship can quickly spiral into a cycle of blame, defense, and counterattack. However, when containment is present, these intense experiences are received as they are, reflected upon, and returned in a more tolerable form, which can help us and our partners feel more emotionally regulated, understood, and close.

Containment occurs when we observe, listen to, make sense of others’ intense, often difficult-to-manage emotions, and reflect them in understandable, gentle words. It is more than just calming someone else’s emotions; it is allowing their emotional processing to move from one person’s inner world into the shared space of the relationship. Intense experiences that cannot be named or made sense of often circulate within a relationship and manifest themselves through behavior. In those moments, being able to observe, listen to, and reflect back our partner’s emotions can help them regulate their emotions and have an “emotionally corrective” experience, where they internalize ways to tolerate their own intense emotions. Similarly, in the therapeutic process, our therapist’s naming and holding of our emotions can create a similar processing space and a new emotional experience for us from where we can start to contain our intense emotions ourselves, both individually and as a couple.

For this reason, containment can be viewed as more than just a technique for reducing conflict. It is a fundamental process that enhances the couple’s ability to think and feel together and a way of processing that transforms the relationship into a safer, more intimate space. In this therapy sketch, we will explore the containment function and how it can help our relationships and ourselves.

What is containment?

We start to contain and hold each other’s emotions very early on. It starts when we are babies and cannot yet express our pain or desires, and our caregivers come to understand us by simply observing us. It starts even before we know what the emotions we are experiencing mean. We come to understand them by watching what our caregivers mirror back to us. We see that when we’re sad, our caregiver often feels sad too. When we’re crying or stressed, our caregiver becomes irritable and stressed too. When we smile at them, they smile back at us. In these moments, they give us verbal and physical cues. We learn what these emotions may mean and how to handle them by seeing how our caregivers will respond to what we just showed them. When we feel good, we learn through smiling and hugging that these are comforting and positive experiences. When our caregiver asks, “Are you hungry? Does it hurt? Do you need sleep?”, it helps us begin to understand why we may be feeling these emotions. When we’re stressed, having them hold us and calm us down makes us learn how to comfort and calm ourselves. Especially when our caregivers observe, listen to, and transform distressing, stressful, and intense emotions, then relay them back to us in a balanced and supportive way, this lays the foundation for our own emotional regulation capacity. This observing, listening to, transmuting, and projecting back the feelings of someone is called “containment” or “holding” (Bion, 1962; Winnicott, 1960). According to the main containment and holding perspectives, when we see that our caregivers tolerate our distress and discomfort and that these tolerations do not disrupt our caregivers’ own emotions and minds, we also start to contain our own feelings in the same way. That is, containing or holding another person’s emotions by observing, listening to, transmuting, and projecting them back (such as acknowledging and expressing in understandable words) actually promotes emotional processing and growth in that person.

However, when we grow up, our caregivers may not always be able to contain our emotions the way we need them to. They may not understand us or comfort us the way we desire. Or, for some of us, this type of containment and holding might be even largely missing due to experiencing a difficult childhood, such as when we experience neglect or more traumatic experiences. This can cause us to not learn how to process our own emotions appropriately and also to internalize misrepresentations about emotions, people, life, and the world. For example, growing up, if our feelings of anger were met with even more escalated anger or irritability from our caregivers, rather than being tolerated and acknowledged, we may start to develop a negative relationship with expressing and feeling our anger. Because our early relationships create significant templates for our future relationships, these emotional patterns carry over into our adult relationships. And perhaps just as importantly, our brains tend to recreate relationship dynamics with new people, enacting early emotional exchanges with our partners, to the point that we may sometimes project or induce feelings into others. This can lead to additional misunderstandings and conflicts with our partners, leaving us drained and feeling as if we are running into a dead end.

Containment in couples

In relationships, the problem is often not the emotions themselves, but what we do with them. Many couples find themselves caught in cycles where feelings are quickly reacted to rather than understood. One partner expresses, the other defends, withdraws, or tries to fix. Over time, this can create distance, even when both partners are longing for closeness. This is where containment comes into play. Containment happens when our partner stays with our emotion without immediately trying to fix, suppress, or run away from it. At certain points in a relationship, a dynamic of “container” and “contained” can emerge:

Contained: One partner may become immersed in an intense emotional experience, such as hurt, anger, or helplessness, and may have limited capacity to reflect on or organize that experience internally.
Container: If the other partner can remain present without becoming defensive, withdrawing, or prematurely resolving the situation, they may take on a containing function. This involves receiving the emotional experience, tolerating its intensity, and holding it in a way that allows it to become more organized and understandable over time. This holding of our partner’s emotions through listening, observing, and reflecting not only helps our partner regulate their intense emotions in that moment but also helps them grow their capacity to hold those emotions. In this way, our containment provides them with a new emotional experience that can help compensate for the lack of containment they may have experienced previously.

It’s important to note that containment is not about taking complete responsibility for the other person’s emotions, attempting to control them, or tolerating abusive behavior in the name of emotional holding. Rather, it is about a gentle, grounded way of holding our partner’s emotions by listening, observing, and reflecting our partner’s discomfort back in simple, clear words when we feel the capacity to do so.

This kind of presence can support emotional regulation in the moment, and over time, it can also help our partner develop a greater capacity to contain their own emotional experiences and also hold and contain our emotions when we need to. That is, these roles are not fixed or one-sided. It does not mean that one partner is consistently the “container” and the other the “contained.” These roles shift over time, with each partner able to hold and be held at different moments, helping each other grow their independent containment functions.

What can support containment in couples?

When you are experiencing intense conflict, trauma, or long-standing relationship difficulties within your relationship, you may feel too drained to create a space where any of your emotions can be held. At those times, couples therapy could support you in ways that promote emotional regulation in both you and your partner, so that you can develop the emotional tools that you need to experience a more fulfilling, intimate, and trusting relationship.

For example, in couples therapy, the therapist can also provide a containment function by listening to, transmuting, and reflecting the intense emotions of you and your partner, helping you begin to regulate your emotions and develop your own containment capacity so you and your partner can more independently regulate them over time (Berg & Jools, 2017).

Takeaways:

Containment begins early in life through caregivers who help us understand and regulate our emotions by observing, mirroring, and responding to us.
This process of holding and reflecting emotions supports emotional development and later self-regulation.
When containment is missing or inconsistent, we may struggle with emotional regulation and carry these patterns into adult relationships.
A similar function of containment also occurs in our relationships, such as when we can stay with our partner’s emotion without fixing, avoiding, or escalating it.
One partner may temporarily hold while the other is contained, supporting emotional regulation and the development of containment capacity in themselves.
Containment is not about control, responsibility, or tolerating abuse, but about a grounded emotional presence when possible. Similarly, these roles are not fixed, and they can shift over time between partners.
In couples therapy, the therapist can also provide a containment function by listening to, transmuting, and reflecting the intense emotions of couples, helping them start regulating their emotions and develop their own containment capacity so they can more independently regulate them over time.

References

Berg, J., & Jools, P. (2017). Containment and its challenges, 60-75. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315114200-5.
Bianchini, B., & Dallanegra, L. (2011). Reflections on the Container–Contained Model in Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. 1. https://doi.org/10.33212/cfp.v1n1.2011.79.
Bion, W.R. (1962). Learning From Experience. London: William Heinemann Medical Books. [Reprinted, London: Karnac, 1989.]
Flaskas, C., Mason, B., & Perlesz, A. (Eds.). (2005). The Space Between: Experience, Context, and Process in the Therapeutic Relationship (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429483295
Glasgow, R. (2017). Holding and containing a couple through periods of high intensity: What holds the therapist? Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy, 38(2), 194–210.
Glickauf-Hughes, C., & Cummings, S. (1995). Use of Containment in Supervising Couples Therapy. The Family Journal, 3, 149 – 154. https://doi.org/10.1177/1066480795032014.
Morgan, M. (2018). First contacts: the therapist’s “couple state of mind” as a factor in the containment of couples in consultation. , 17-32. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429472602-2.
Winnicott, D.W. (1960). The maturational processes and the facilitating environment: Studies in the theory of emotional development. The International Psycho-Analytical Library, 64, 1–276.

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