Containers and being contained (tbc)

Jam jars, tea cups, boxes, lakes, seas, the sky.  Containers: things that contain.  Without the container the contained, the thing inside wouldn’t exist.  A river cannot exist without its’ banks.

Shipping containers are like a large shoe box, often 20ft long 8ft wide and 8 ft high.  They are made from corten steel so that even when they rust they remain waterproof: they can contain the space and protect the contents.

In Winnie the Pooh,  Pooh had told piglet that it was Eeyore’s birthday and that he was giving him a pot of honey. Piglet had gone home to fetch a balloon to give to Eeyore and on the way over he had tripped and burst the balloon so that all he ended up giving Eeyore was a bit of rubber. Meanwhile Pooh was bringing the pot of honey but had felt a bit peckish and had eaten the honey on the way over.  When Pooh gave Eeyore the empty jar he said “Here is a useful pot for putting things in”.

Eeyore was delighted and told Pooh that his new balloon, the one that Piglet had given him would fit into his pot.  Pooh said a balloon won’t fit in your pot.  Eyeore says “My balloon can.” and he picks the burst ballon up with his teeth and puts it in the pot and takes it out again.

We all need a pot to put things in, a container where we can hold onto good feelings and be nourished by them.  Without a container we can’t hold onto anything and we don’t know who we are.  Where do we put the good feelings, our sense of self, our contact with experience if we don’t have a pot.  To develop a container is to know you exist, that you are living this moment of experience.

Bion wrote about the container and the contained.  The mother/carer in a state of openness takes in and absorbs the undigested experience of the baby/infant.  The infant learns that their experience is containable and that it makes sense or communicates something; it is telling the child about their experience of the world.  The carer digests the experience and hands it back to the infant in manageable bite size chunks: like a bird regurgitating food for their chicks.  Both male and female birds do this.

Containers need to be very strong, not rigid but accommodating.  Undigested experience which can often lead to overwhelm needs to be held by the big strong other. We have to see that the other can hold us: they are not freaked out, they can manage, it’s ok and then bit by bit we learn to contain ourselves.

Building one’s own container is experiencing being held and learning to trust in another’s mind, that they have got it and you can rely on them so that bit by bit you learn to contain parts of yourself.  As adults, feeling contained is learning to trust that we can contain ourselves, that one part of ourselves, the strong competent part can hold the panicky young overwhelmed part, realising the panicky part is not all there is.  It’s realising or being able to see that the panic is a feeling, a wave passing through us rather than a permanent fearful thought.  The frightening thought is this is how it always is, I will be in this forever, things will never change. When we realise it’s a wave, a physiological process moving through us, it becomes workable.

What is the opposite of being contained, not being contained, everything spills out and is lost: like a cup of tea. Without the cup, the tea would spill out and could not be consumed.  The tea wouldn’t exist it would be a mess, something to mop up.

In child development we need the feeling of being contained, being understood, psychically held to feel safe and to grow a sense of who we are, that our experience makes sense and is workable.