Containment : The need for emotional containers

The concept and experience of containment is becoming a very important one for me lately.  I am aware that WordPress became for me such a necessary container for feelings , reactions and thoughts I was trying so hard to come to terms just under 3 years ago.  In the six months before I had gone through a painful break with a body therapist only to connect with another therapist who was not (I realise now) able to really offer me the necessary containment for very big feelings that had been locked up inside me for many years.  I underwent a painful sinus operation on the 19th of December and as a result was forced to spend the entire Christmas period alone.  Not one family member was willing to be there for me, they all had other things on their agenda.  It was one of the most painful Christmases of my life.

At that time I stumbled across a very powerful blog site called An Upturned Soul.  I found it by googling Mars transiting the eight house which relates to me for the issue of repressed anger and self assertion.  I came across Ursula’s blog and it just happened to be contain a  lot of writing on the issue being raised by narcissistic parents, or coming out of narcissistic relationships.  To cut a longer story short, Ursula ended up publishing a poem of mine an suggesting that blogging may be a platform or container that I could use to express some of what I was dealing with.  I published my first blog on 28 December 2013.

I was so lucky to have that avenue of expression because in the following year my oldest sister died.  WordPress became the place I could pour out my sadness and pain over the loss of Jude and the confusion over a web of complex and entangled relationships that had been my experience resulting in that painful sinus operation.

Fast forward three years and WordPress has seen me through the ending of one therapy, the starting of another, several attempts at body work and finally the move to a new therapist last year who has been able to finally be the solid workable container for me for just under one year now.  However I feel that without the containment of WordPress and without all the fantastic blogs I have been lucky enough to read and share on, support and receive support from I really do not know how I would have made it through the many times of suicidal depression, loneliness and pain that has formed a core of what I went through in the 3 years since.

Today I feel so very grateful to all of those people who have so kindly followed me and also opened their hearts by sharing comments on some of my postings.  I feel so grateful to those who in the depths of their own pain and agony have found the courage to open up and express how it really is and was for them.   The truth is we need each other.  The deepest wounds that happen to us happen to us in relationship, therefore it is really only through finding loving, empathetic relationships that the possibility for deep healing opens up for us.  Sure enough the deep work we do to feel our feelings and own our emotional truth often takes place alone and in silence, however on WordPress many of us find a platform through which to express that pain, a container into which we can pour it all out so that the pain and poison no longer stays trapped in our bodies and souls.

We so badly need these kind of containers, especially at a time of year when deep pain over wounds due to lack of connection can and does open up.  I don’t think it is unrealistic to say that an antidote for that void can be found here.   So everyone lets keep supporting and loving each other through the so called “silly season”, let us also honour how far we hae travelled in the past year to arrive here.