The Container Method for Processing Trauma, PTSD and Intense Emotions

Do you tend to avoid thinking about  difficult emotions or memories? Or have you heard that it's unhealthy to  just stuff down all the hard things? In this video I'm going to present a  helpful strategy to use in order to slowly and deliberately work on distressing  memories and emotions.

And it's a resource that trauma therapists use all the time  to help people process trauma. [Music] [Music] As a therapist, it's very common for people  to come in and tell me that they have stuff in their past that they haven't been able to  heal from. And a lot of times they've dealt with it by avoiding it or never talking about  it, and with good reason because most people don't have the tools to slow down overwhelming  emotions.

So when they think about their trauma or they get hit with a big trigger they try to  deal with it all at once, and this can be super overwhelming. So that's why a lot of people get  stuck just avoiding their trauma. And while this is protective and it has helped them function in  their daily life, it doesn't help in ultimately healing and lessening the impact of these past  traumatic experiences or the difficult things that have happened to you.

So in this video  I'll teach you one of the tools that you can use to help you process difficult and painful  memories in a gradual way to move through them instead of just avoiding them. And it's called the  container method, and it's a really important tool for helping people work through their trauma.  So um let's start with a client story.

A woman in her 30s recently began therapy for the first  time as an adult, and she spoke about years of complex trauma due to instability and drug abuse  in her family of origin and also in her previous marriage. Uh she had faced abuse and neglect from  her drug-addicted parents, and she'd been in an abusive marriage for several years. So in her  words, she was an expert in not dealing with her complex feelings of years of abuse and neglect and  hurt and danger and pain.

There were just too many situations in which she wasn't having her needs  met or even acknowledged. And not only that, she was in danger some of the time. Um but Freud said,  "Feelings buried alive never die," and all of that unprocessed pain was really interfering with her  life.

So she would have triggers at work or she was overwhelmed with anxiety or she'd have these  physical symptoms of stress and fear and anxiety, and she was having a hard time building healthy  relationships. So now she's really struggling with depression and anxiety because of all this trauma  that she stuffed down. But when she tried to think about those memories or to process that trauma,  she'd feel so overwhelmed that that also made it hard to function.

So she was stuck in this kind  of in- between place where not talking about it made things worse and talking about it made things  worse. So what can you do to slowly work through these painful memories and, you know, memories of  trauma? And one method is containment.

So this is a psychotherapeutic strategy to create an actual  container in our minds that will be the holding place for our painful memories and feelings.  And the purpose of this skill is to create a place in our minds that we can safely store the  difficult memories when we aren't quite ready yet or quite able to process through those  feelings. Now, you might be thinking, like, "Hey, wait a minute.

Is Emma telling us to avoid  our feelings? " Um great question. It it can seem counterintuitive to like stuff all the bad  things into this container.

But we - I I'm not teaching you to sweep it under the rug. What  we're really doing is putting these memories away for safekeeping so that you can access them when  you're ready to in a healthy way. So the purpose of the container is to be a temporary placeholder  for the difficult memories and emotions that we're not ready to face.

So let's think of this from  a medical example. If someone breaks their leg, they might use crutches or a wheelchair while  their leg heals. The goal is not to use those crutches forever; it's just as part of the process  of healing.

And in combination with the crutches, you use physical therapy to help the leg get  stronger so that you can put weight on it again. So we don't want to use crutches forever, and  we don't want to rebreak our leg by walking on it too soon. So we allow the bone to get stronger,  and we use support, and then eventually we'll get to where we can walk without support.

With the  container exercise the goal isn't to get really good at stuffing your emotions into a container,  but rather to give yourself some time and space to get the skills you need to be able to work through  those feelings little by little in a healthy way within your window of tolerance instead of getting  overwhelmed by them. So let's say, for example, like you live in a small town, and so does someone  who's abused you. There is a realistic chance of running into them unexpectedly.

Or let's say  you served in the military, and loud noises, the smell of smoke, or the sound of a siren will  trigger like a huge PTSD response. Or another example: you work in EMS and you have come face  to face with some terrible scenes at work. Now, these situations where you get triggered by  running into someone, by hearing a loud noise, or at work having to deal with death or  gore, these situations could happen anywhere, right?

You could be at the pharmacy. You could  be at a party. You could be at work.

You could be alone. Or you could be with toxic people. And  none of these locations are necessarily ideal for working through trauma and the associated  fight/flight/ freeze response that comes with it.

So the goal of the container exercise is that  the container can hold these triggers for a time until you're in a safe space to talk about them  and think about them and pull them out and work through them. The other time this exercise can be  helpful is like with that woman who had so much trauma as a child. Um if you have so much trauma  that you can't work through it all at once, what we're going to do is we're going to choose which  parts of it we pull out of the box at a time, and then we're going to put the rest in, wrap it  up, save it for later.

And that helps us chip away at trauma like one memory at a time. The container  method is also a short-term strategy that can help you get through the day until you can use your  long-term strategies to process emotions. So um if you're not sure what I'm talking about when  I'm talking about processing emotions, I mean, I do have a a course on this, a 30-part course,  but it includes things like getting support, journaling, um therapy.

Um there's just a lot of  skills you can use. But when you're traumatized it's hard to remember those. So uh last  disclaimer: uh like many therapeutic strategies, this is one where we would probably be more likely  to say, "Don't try this at home.

" Like if you have intense, overwhelming memories or feelings,  whenever possible please access a therapist. Um and at the same time I understand that many  of you can't access a therapist. So although the container skill is something you usually do with  a trained professional, a trained mental-health professional, you can learn to use the principles  of it on your own when necessary.

Okay. So how do you do it? Let me teach you.

So in this video I'm  going to describe to you how to use it, and then if you want to practice the actual exercise,  like check out my other video. It's a guided walkthrough where you can just listen to the  exercise part. And the link is in the description.

So what you're going to do is you're going to  create in your mind a visual image of a safe, secure place. It could be a locked filing cabinet,  a chest with a padlock, a bank vault, a castle keep, or any type of container that feels safe  and secure for you. Next, you're going to imagine your traumatic memories as items.

Um they can be  concrete things like a letter, or you can keep it vague, like a swirling mist. And if you want you  can identify a traumatic experience that you want to work on later. Um if you have many it's okay  to like write a list of them and put those in your container for safekeeping later as well.

So  now just go ahead and visualize yourself putting those memories into your container, and then secure the box. Secure the container. You're going to lock it.

And it's important to remember that  you are in control of this box. You hold the key, and you decide when to open it and when to close  it. Now, for some people this is actually great to do in a practical, physical way.

So I might have a  client draw a quick picture of a traumatic memory and then physically take that piece of paper, put  it in a file folder, and then put that in a filing cabinet, and then we'll lock that cabinet. And  next time they come to therapy we'll say, "Hey, do you want to pull that that file folder out or  not? " And they'll decide.

Um for other people they might use a journal or they might use a shoe box  or Post-it notes or a therapy journal that they keep locked or secure somewhere. They might do  this container exercise in a very physical way. Um you could also use this like in journaling. 

Like okay, I'm having these huge emotions. I'm overwhelmed. I'm going to write it down.

I'm  going to brain dump it all into my journal, and then I'm going to put my journal away and  I'm going to go back to work and do what I need to do. So you can do this exercise. What I'm  trying to say is you can do this exercise in two ways.

One is a guided visualization where you  simply visualize those memories getting put into your castle keep or whatever container you've  chosen. And the second way to do this is to make a physical note of that memory, put it on a  Post-it note, put it in a letter, whatever it is, and then put that in a physical place, in a  filing cabinet or some other locked box. So those are the two ways to do the container exercise.

And again, the goal isn't to store these things forever; the goal is to empower yourself to open  them when you're ready. And with practice, and as you build up a bunch of skills, you can get really  good at doing this on your own. Um you'll get so good at processing your traumatic memories that  you'll know, you'll have confidence in yourself and your abilities.

Next time a big trigger comes  up or next time a big memory comes up you'll know what to do to work through it. So again, this  exercise helps us slow down the intensity of these emotions and memories so that you can stay in  your window of tolerance. This is the optimal zone where you're able to work through memories instead  of getting overwhelmed by them or just shutting down.

As you build up your internal skills, when  these triggers and these new experiences come up you'll think, "Oh, I know what to do with this. I  can put this in a container, and then I'll process it later when I'm in a safe place, like with my  good friend or with a therapist. " Uh my friend and fellow therapist Lindsay, she told me this story  about a client who walked into a session and said, "My mom showed up on my doorstep last Friday,  but I put her in a container.

But we need to talk about that today. " And that's an example of  how to use that mental container exercise. Now, this client understands that we don't have to  process every experience in the moment, but she also understands that we do need to process it.

So  for some people, putting their feelings in a box is the only skill they have, and when they use it  too much without working through their feelings, pretty soon their mental house is overflowing  with too many boxes. So I'm thinking of - like some of the common examples of this are police  officers, military, EMS, doctors. They get so good at stuffing things in boxes that they don't  realize that they're storing too much trauma, and they become emotional hoarders.

And all of those  unprocessed feelings are interfering with their life. It's not that the container is a bad skill;  it's that it can't be your only skill. And I think that's why a lot of police or EMS or military and  doctors, they have such high rates of divorce or suicide or PTSD because they're just over-relying  on this skill, and they're not opening up those boxes and clearing them out.

So back to opening  up the box: when we process through trauma, of course this can be painful, so it's best to  do it very slowly, using tools like grounding skills and nervous system regulation, willingness,  journaling, and with the support of a therapist. It's also great to use interventions like EMDR,  rapid resolution therapy. And you can also build up resilience by adding in positive coping skills  like exercise, talking with a friend, or doing a relaxing hobby - so building up your internal  resilience with self-care.

If you are going to use the container exercise, again, it's important  to schedule in some time when you do plan to process through those memories and emotions. Um  I recently read an example of someone who used the container exercise in a physical way for her  anxiety at work. So she'd be trying to do her job, and random worries and anxiety would come up. 

So she'd write those fears or those worries on a Post-it note, and then she'd stick those Post-it  notes in a jar, and then she'd go back to work. And then at the end of the week, on like a Friday,  she would open up the jar and look through her Post-it notes and clear them out. And by Friday  a lot of those worries and problems had already solved themselves by then.

And then the other  notes she would just like talk about them with a friend or journal about them. And by doing that  she felt way less anxious um during the week, and then by the end of the week she was able to work  through her fears and anxieties. And that way they didn't just build up and build up and build up. 

And for her, this helped her kind of overcome her anxiety. Okay. So let's go back to the client from  the beginning of the video.

So her years of of trauma with her family of origin and her marriage  made her a perfect candidate for the containment exercise. Uh she was able to start this gradually  with her therapist. And some weeks she would have a specific memory she'd want to work on, and then  another session she would just work on what was going on that week.

And with the support of her  therapist she was able to face these painful memories and these emotions in these like small,  manageable doses. She learned skills to soothe her physical anxiety, and she built up self-care  skills to recover after processing trauma, because we all know that can be really exhausting. So by  practicing containment in therapy, eventually she was able to feel comfortable using containment on  her own, and she really built up the confidence in herself and her ability to work through her  trauma because little by little she was healing, she was getting better.

So what do you think about  containment? Have have you tried this before? Does it work?

What do you use for your safe container?  Go ahead and comment below. Let me know what you think about the containment exercise, and let me  know if there's any other trauma interventions that you're interested in learning about.

Okay.  Thank you uh so much for being here. Thanks for watching.

Oh, yeah, I just remembered um to tell  you that I do have a free grounding skills course. So if you are dealing with a lot of trauma, go  ahead and check that out. You'll learn a lot of skills to uh regulate your nervous system.

So  okay. Thank you for watching, and take care.