How Understanding Emotional Containment can Help with Anxiety

Ever felt like your emotions are too much?

Maybe you find yourself overthinking, struggling to switch off, or feeling on edge for no obvious reason. If so, you might be lacking emotional containment—a skill that helps you manage feelings without becoming overwhelmed.

Let’s break it down.

What is Emotional Containment?

Emotional containment is your ability to hold, process, and manage emotions without them spilling over or feeling too intense. Think of it like a sturdy container: when it’s strong, emotions stay manageable. When it’s weak or missing, emotions flood in, making you feel anxious, reactive, or completely drained.

Many people with anxiety struggle with emotional containment. Instead of feeling emotions and letting them settle, they either:

• Overthink them – analysing every detail to gain control.
• Suppress them – pushing emotions down until they resurface as stress or exhaustion.
• Seek external reassurance – looking to others to help them ‘contain’ feelings.

The result? Constant mental noise, heightened anxiety, and a sense of never quite feeling in control.

Why does a Lack of Emotional Containment Lead to Anxiety?

When emotions feel overwhelming, the brain tries to manage them in the only way it knows how—through thoughts. This is why anxiety often shows up as overthinking, worry, and racing thoughts.

Here’s how it plays out:

• A difficult feeling arises.
• Instead of processing it, you analyse it, trying to ‘think’ your way out of it.
• The brain doesn’t find a solution, so the cycle repeats.

Without containment, emotions feel too big to handle, leaving you feeling powerless and mentally exhausted.

Where does Emotional Containment Come From?

While childhood experiences shape our ability to contain emotions, stressful life events, trauma, and even ongoing highpressure environments can weaken containment over time. The good news? Just as it can be impacted by experience, it can also be rebuilt through intentional practice.

For many of us, emotional containment is something we absorb in childhood. When we’re young, we look to the adults around us to help us regulate big emotions. If they respond calmly and teach us how to manage feelings, we learn that emotions are safe and won’t overwhelm us.

But if emotions were dismissed, ignored, or felt too big for the adults around us, we may have grown up without the tools to contain them ourselves. This can leave us feeling like emotions are unpredictable or something to be feared—leading to anxiety, overthinking, or shutting down altogether.

The good news? No matter what your early experiences were, you can strengthen emotional containment as an adult.

Signs you Might Struggle with Emotional Containment

• Feeling overwhelmed by emotions, even small ones.
• Finding it hard to name or describe how you feel.
• Overthinking as a way to avoid emotions.
• Feeling disconnected but still experiencing anxiety.
• Looking to others to help you ‘hold’ difficult feelings.

How to Strengthen Emotional Containment

Try this: Close your eyes and picture a sturdy container—maybe a strong wooden box or a glass jar. When emotions feel overwhelming, imagine placing them inside, knowing you can return to them when you’re ready. This simple visualisation can help create a sense of control.

The good news? Emotional containment is a skill. With practice, you can improve it and feel more in control of your emotions.

1. Name what you feel – Simply labelling an emotion (‘I feel frustrated’) reduces its intensity and stops it from spiralling into anxiety.
2. Create a mental container – Visualise a strong, safe box inside you, where emotions can sit without overwhelming you.
3. Practise sitting with emotions – Instead of avoiding feelings, pause and notice them. Try journalling or deep breathing.
4. Self-soothe without external reassurance – Learn to regulate emotions through grounding techniques, movement, or selfcompassion.
5. Strengthen emotional boundaries – If you absorb others’ emotions easily, remind yourself: ‘Their feelings are theirs to hold, not mine.’

Final Thoughts

Emotional containment isn’t something you either have or don’t— it’s a skill that can be strengthened at any stage of life. You’re not ‘bad at handling emotions’—you just need the right tools, and those can be learned.

Anxiety often isn’t about having ‘too many’ emotions—it’s about not knowing how to hold them safely. If emotional containment wasn’t something you learned early on, that’s okay. You can start now.

Try naming how you feel today and see what happens. Small steps can make a big difference.

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References

• Borkovec, T. D., Alcaine, O. M., & Behar, E. (2004). Avoidance theory of worry and generalized anxiety disorder. Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Advances in Research and Practice, 77-108.
• Gross, J. J. (1998). The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Review of General Psychology, 2(3), 271-299.
• Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind. New York: Bantam Books.