{"id":33962,"date":"2017-02-08T06:00:50","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T14:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=33962"},"modified":"2018-05-15T10:27:20","modified_gmt":"2018-05-15T17:27:20","slug":"resilience-and-overwhelm-how-full-is-your-container","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/resilience-overwhelm-how-full-is-your-container-0208174","title":{"rendered":"Resilience and Overwhelm: How Full Is Your \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcContainer\u00e2\u20ac\u2122?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"WaterSomatic psychotherapists<\/a>\u00c2\u00a0often use the informal metaphor of a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153container\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in describing a person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s state of overwhelm<\/a> or resilience<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a simple concept: If Janelle is experiencing a lot of stress, and\/or her system isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t very resilient, then one can say her container is overflowing, or close to it. On the other hand, if she successfully deals with her feelings and the external situations that cause them, she would create more \u00e2\u20ac\u0153room\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in her figurative container and she wouldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be so vulnerable to becoming stressed out. She could also work with a therapist<\/a> in order to develop affect tolerance and self-regulation<\/a>. She would then be making her container larger and less brittle, increasing her resilience across many life situations.<\/p>\n

The container can be filled by our response to events earlier in our lives that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve repressed and not dealt with. Researchers and clinicians working with intergenerational trauma<\/a> believe our containers hold the trauma passed down to us from the experiences of earlier generations. Such experience includes but is not limited to systemic racism<\/a> and oppression<\/a>. The field of epigenetics<\/a> looks at changes in gene expression (which pieces of our DNA strands are being expressed, and which aren\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t). These changes are thought to be responses to the environment, either current or historical. On the other hand, our containers can also be filled by present-day, acute stressors that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re all too aware of. In practice, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s usually a mix of both, and they can be interrelated.<\/p>\n

[fat_widget_right]<\/p>\n

Sometimes it isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t immediately evident how full the container is becoming, because we are experts at hiding this from ourselves and the world. When talking about this with a person in therapy, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll often use the metaphor of my coffee cup. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a metallic travel mug, and when I hold it up, you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t immediately tell how full it is. It could be nearly empty, or it could be close to overflowing. (It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a visual example. No fair trying to gauge my mood<\/a> in order to figure out how much coffee is inside me rather than still in the cup!)<\/p>\n

If the level inside the cup gets too close to the top, it overflows easily. This overflow would represent having a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153meltdown\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: panic attack<\/a>, relapse<\/a> into addictive behavior<\/a>, major depressive episode<\/a>, etc. Sometimes this surprises the person, as they hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been consciously aware of the rising level in their container.<\/p>\n

Psychology<\/a> is the study of human thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. It shares some overlap with sociology, political science, anthropology, etc. However, most clinical psychology focuses on the individual and their cognitive, developmental, marital, or family dynamics. After many years in this field, I would guess that the majority of what\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s discussed in therapy rooms does not focus on larger cultural, sociopolitical, large-scale economic, or environmental factors. Or such factors may be acknowledged, but therapeutic interventions usually focus on the micro (person\/family) rather than the macro (environment). In that sense, therapy can be a bit myopic at times.<\/p>\n

If the level inside the cup gets too close to the top, it overflows easily. This overflow would represent having a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153meltdown\u00e2\u20ac\u009d: panic attack, relapse into addictive behavior, major depressive episode, etc. Sometimes this surprises the person, as they hadn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t been consciously aware of the rising level in their container.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, just because we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re repressing<\/a> something doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not affecting us and filling our figurative containers. The emerging fields of ecopsychology and ecotherapy<\/a> assert that humans have an ecological unconscious. That is, since we are born of earth and our entire existence depends on our fragile biosphere (and the other species we share it with), anything threatening our planet causes stress<\/a> and anxiety<\/a> in us. Just about everyone I talk with has tremendous anxiety about the future of our environment, and for good reason. This often invisibly adds to the total \u00e2\u20ac\u0153volume\u00e2\u20ac\u009d inside our containers; and since people often tend to feel helpless about large-scale events, it may increase their tendency toward immobility and dissociation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For some people, it might be a useful exercise to write out a list of all the things they can think of that could be impacting their stress levels. However, for many other people, if their container is filling up, then the exercise of looking at everything at once could send them into depression, immobility, or even panic (\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Oh, my god, it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much worse than I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d thought!\u00e2\u20ac\u009d). Somatic therapists are trained to gauge a person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s autonomic stress response on a moment-to-moment basis and intervene as needed, coaching the person in taking on a manageable amount at any one time, and using that experience to grow stronger.<\/p>\n

In my opinion, the goal of therapy is to increase a person\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s self-regulation, which increases coping, health, joyfulness, and myriad other desirable outcomes. People who are able to self-regulate tend to be more aware of their overall stress levels, including \u00e2\u20ac\u0153whole-world issues.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d They may be less prone to anxiety, depression, and immobility, so they can engage in effective self-care<\/a>, including taking action to better their lives and the greater world.<\/p>\n

References:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Bell, A. (2016). What is self-regulation and why is it so important? Retrieved from https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/what-is-self-regulation-why-is-it-so-important-0928165<\/li>\n
  2. Sashin, J.I. (1985, April). Affect tolerance: A model of affect-response using catastrophe theory. Journal of Social and Biological Structures,<\/em> 8(2): 175-202. Retrieved from http:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/0140175085900089<\/li>\n
  3. Shulevitz, J. (2014). The Science of Suffering. New Republic<\/em>. Retrieved from https:\/\/newrepublic.com\/article\/120144\/trauma-genetic-scientists-say-parents-are-passing-ptsd-kids<\/li>\n
  4. Smith, D.B. (2010). Is There an Ecological Unconscious? New York Times Magazine<\/em>. Retrieved from http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/01\/31\/magazine\/31ecopsych-t.html<\/li>\n
  5. Weinhold, B. (2006, March). Epigenetics: The Science of Change. Environmental Health Perspectives, <\/em>114(3): A160-A167. Retrieved from https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC1392256\/<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In somatic psychotherapy, the analogy of a \u00e2\u20ac\u0153container\u00e2\u20ac\u009d can be used to visualize one’s resilience to distress. Self-regulation helps keep it below capacity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3022,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[542,623],"tags":[31,431,25,27,365,239],"class_list":["post-33962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured-articles","category-issues-treated","tag-psychotherapy-practice","tag-emotional-overwhelm","tag-psychotherapy-issues","tag-psychotherapy-models","tag-somatic-psychotherapy","tag-stress"],"acf":{"author_show":false,"author_name":"","author_role":"","author_avatar":null,"author_profile_url":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3022"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}