Containment Visualization

So, to begin…

First… become aware of your breathing. Not doing anything to change your breathing at this point just noticing your breath. The natural inhale…and exhale. Just becoming aware…You can keep your eyes open or you can close them at any time.....it's up to you.

And next, allow yourself to notice anything that feels "ok" in your body.  Maybe it's your elbow, pinky finger or your toes.…and just allow yourself to breathe into those places while you say thank you.  When you're ready, you can ask this area of your body to teach another area of your body that feels less "ok"  how to be more "ok" and if it says yes, allow it to teach the new area how to be ok.  If it says no, thank it for being ok and move to a new area.
 
Once you have at least 3 areas that feel ok you can move on to the next part, creating a container. If 3 areas don't get there, simply thank the ok areas for being ok and go to the (*) end of the session.

Next we are going to begin the process of creating a container. So, the first thing I would like you to do is imagine a container that is big enough to hold difficult thoughts, emotions, memories, body sensations, or images…and with this container, I want you to imagine that there is a lid…a lid that can seal off these difficulties and a way to keep the difficulties in without them getting out. But also a way for you to open them, open the container…so that you can access them if you need to in the future. So some people have the idea of a chest, or a safe, or a tupperware container or some sort of box or container that they can imagine putting the difficulties inside…
 
So once you have this container in your mind’s eye…I ‘d like you to practice seeing yourself opening the container and closing the container. Just to kind of get used to the imagery in your mind’s eye…

Next, I would like you to imagine a swimming pool…and on the top of the swimming pool there has collected a lot of debris. And I want you to imagine taking a pool  skimmer and skimming the top of the pool, collecting all of the debris into the pool skimmer…and I want you to imagine emptying that debris into the container. And then closing the lid and just setting the container to the side.

And now what I want you to  imagine is at the end of each day that you take a moment to allow all of the disturbances that happened throughout the day whether its traffic, an argument, a difficulty with a kid…or any particular challenge that you had throughout the day… I want you to imagine as if it is just like the debris that accumulates at the top of the pool…it’s kind of like that for the difficulty that is accumulated at the end of the day…and I want you to imagine taking that pool skimmer and skimming up all of that difficulty…you may have to skim through a couple of times… and collecting all of that debris and difficulty and shaking it off into the container, closing the lid to the container, and putting the container to the side… and knowing that in the morning, or at another time, or during your therapy session you can come back and pull the disturbing things out of the container if you need them but if you don’t, you can leave them in the container until a later time.

*So let’s just take a few more moments here… to… take a few deep breaths at your own pace. Inhaling in through the nose…exhaling out through the mouth. Inhaling...and exhaling… Inhaling… and exhaling…

Containment Visualization for Stress and Trauma

Full Spectrum Therapy