Containment: the ground on which we stand

'We deeply need to feel safely held and soothed, aligned, attuned,

and resonant with another non-abandoning being.

It is impossible to exaggerate how much we want this…’ 

Stephen Cope

As we know, humans are vulnerable creatures. Our well-being is hugely dependent on having loving others on whom we can rely. This need we have to be safely held or contained is with us from birth.

Beyond physical survival, this is our primary human need: to belong safely among others and to feel a warmth and reliability in their presence with us. To be held in this way is to feel planted in a good place, in rich and fertile soil that naturally supports our thriving.

Though most acutely necessary in childhood, as adults we also struggle to thrive without knowing we are precious to a few safe, close others. Such connections are foundational: they enable our lives to flourish in myriad other ways. By contrast, when these connections are lacking, we may expend much of our energy in trying to secure them, or in attempting to manage ourselves alone.

[video transcript]

Containment as a Primal Need:

I want to speak about Containment, which is a profound quality and such a deep need for each of us. As I begin to speak of this, I notice that the theme inspires a certain awe. This territory is so essential: so much human pain comes from a sense of being insufficiently held in life; insufficiently loved, nurtured and treasured. Without adequate containment so much can go wrong, leading to experiences of distress, fragmentation, grief, loneliness and dissociation. So it feels quite sobering and grave to dwell with this theme. Containment is a very sacred part of life.

The Impact of Our Early Environment:

When babies come into the world, they come into a container that receives them to widely varying degrees. In those early days and years, when the containment is really reliable and strong and able to bring resources to that little being, the potential thriving and unfoldment of life has a completely different flavour to how life unfolds for a baby or child who arrives into fragmented, challenging, disruptive or mis-attuned environments. I know many of you have a feel for that; you know the depth this reaches and the breadth of repercussions when there isn’t enough holding in this way.

What is the quality of our Containment now?

Many of us know a lot about our history in this area and how we feel about that history. But for a moment, we can also move away from that focus on our early life to explore that quality of containment now, as adults, and bring this into our awareness. We want to sense what and who in our lives brings this feeling and experience of being safely held in the human world. (This sense is not always binary; we may always struggle to feel fully held, but we may know where we feel more safe than usual).

Containment beyond Individual Others

We may also have a sense of containment that comes from sources other than our relationships with others. Many people - particularly those with problematic early life experiences - have a very profound sense of the earth itself, or of something spiritual as a container, some esoteric sense of being held in ways that maybe humans haven’t held us.

Our invitation here is to begin to sense who and what contains us now. Who are the containing beings in our world, and what other resources support our sense of being contained, of being held, of being fully earthed and here, and of it being safe to be here?

Deepening Containment in Adult Life

I want us to really recognize that this quality of feeling held, warm and grounded in life is a quality that can deepen in us as adults, particularly if we are able to recognise that we don’t have enough of it. Many of us are living with a deficit in this way. (Stephen Cope speaks of how he doesn’t know an adult who doesn’t struggle with a hunger for 'more' of this quality). But when we acknowledge how precious, supportive and strengthening this aspect of life is, we can be more deliberate in cultivating a deeper sense of being contained. This will involve noticing and cultivating the spaces, people, activities and ways of being together which deepen our sense of being held. If we do this, it becomes a huge support to everything else in our lives.

We’ll open this up further, but I’ll leave it here for now.