19/08/2023
Thank you for this, so simple but effective. remember if you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious or distressed talk to someone , parenting can be a hard job sometimes.
Containing Distress: How to help your baby even if you can’t stop the crying
Parents often say to us that there’s nothing they can do to help their crying baby. While you may not be able to stop the crying, there are absolutely things you can do – things to help your baby feel safe and reassured.
Sometimes babies feel frightened, overwhelmed and out of control. It can be distressing for them to feel such powerful emotions when they are only beginning to experience the world. It can also be distressing for you to witness their distress – it is hard not to be affected by it. At these times, you are able to help your baby get her sense of meaning and contain her distress when you identify and reflect on her emotional state. Thinking about her experience provides containment and helps a baby feel safe. Of course, your baby will also need you to soothe her by holding her close, swaddling her, speaking gently with her, rocking her and any other strategies that work to calm her. But in all of these actions, an attempt to reflect on her experience and empathise can be felt by her as containing. Your efforts to ease the crying may not bring about a consoled baby – she may remain distressed. At these times, your understanding and hanging in there with her can be very reassuring, even when she remains distressed. At these times, she will experience that you do not leave her alone to deal with her difficult feelings.
Tolerating your baby’s distressing feelings, as well as your own, helps her cope. If she repeatedly experiences your ability to identify with her distress and to tolerate it, she comes to learn that distress can be tolerated. Containing her this way helps her learn to contain and soothe herself over time. She learns that it is possible to tolerate the distress she is experiencing which helps her feel safe. She learns that bad feelings pass and good feelings can return. Leaving yourself as open as possible to understand what she is communicating and then responding appropriately gives your baby the experience of being understood and comforted. This is containing for her.
