Are you feeling overwhelmed or struggling to manage difficult emotions? The Container resource is a powerful tool designed to help you create a safe mental space to temporarily set aside stress, giving you room to focus and heal. This simple yet transformative technique can provide immediate relief and empower you to regain control in moments of emotional intensity. Curious to learn how it works?
The Container is a powerful tool to help you manage overwhelming thoughts, feelings or memories in a safe and constructive way. This practice allows you to temporarily “set aside” difficult emotions or experiences, creating mental space for you to focus on the moment.
This grounding tool can help you interact with your emotions or memories in a way that feels safe and manageable. This allows you to treat your inner experiences with gentleness and compassion instead of “stuffing them down” or “pushing them away”.
The idea is to create a mental “container” — something you can visualize and use to temporarily hold difficult feelings or images that may arise. This container can take any form that feels safe and comforting to you. It could be a box, a chest, a safe, or any other object that feels strong and secure. Visualize your container – it’s color, size, shape, texture. Make sure there is a secure way it can be closed until a time when you can safely come back to it. Once you have your container clearly in your mind, decide on a name for your container.
Try mentally placing a recent disturbing emotion or memory into your safe container. See how it feels to imagine pulling the energy of this emotion out of your body and into your container. Do this, not with judgment, but with compassion towards the difficult feeling.
Using your container will allow you to feel more emotionally stable and grounded. If you start to feel overwhelmed by emotions or memories, you can “place” them in the container, allowing you to temporarily set them aside and take a break from the intensity. You decide what to put in the container, how to store it, and when you are ready to address it again. You can use your container at any point during a therapy session or outside of therapy if you need to feel more in control of distressing emotions. You can “lock” it, “seal” it, or “store” it in a way that helps you feel secure. You will come back to the container when you have time and feel supported (maybe in your next therapy session). The container tool can support you in maintaining a sense of calm and control, allowing you to process distressing experiences at a pace that feels safe.
Below you will find writing prompts and a guided meditation. We invite you to explore this resource in the format that works best for you.
Constructing A Container
Worksheet
-adapted from Landry Wildwind
1. Develop a container that will help you manage some of the troublesome feelings and memories you have. The container should be strong enough to hold whatever you put into it. The inside of the container should be comfortable enough that the material you put into it will be willing to stay until you are ready to work with it.
2. Take a moment to think about what your container will look like. (There is no right answer.) __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
3. If you knew your container could hold some of your troublesome feelings and memories, how would you feel?
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4. Focus on your container and those good feelings. What do you notice?
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5. What word or words best describe your container? __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
6. Imagine some mildly disturbing recent memory and notice how your body feels. Imagine putting that memory into your container. Notice how differently it feels.
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The Container is a simple yet effective tool. Practicing this technique can help create a sense of control and calm in your daily life. The more you practice, the more natural this practice will become.
If you’d like additional support, our compassionate and experienced therapists are available to help you explore tools like the Container more deeply or address other challenges you may be facing. Together, we can tailor strategies to meet your unique needs.
Meditation
