Holding In a Time of Chaos

The prominent Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott wrote extensively about the experience of being held and it’s links to secure mental health. The concept of holding starts from the earliest days of life. The infant’s first experiences are of a bodily nature, held within the maternal. This sense of holding eventually develops beyond the body sense and into the psychological sense. Being held in mind can mean having needs considered and provided for. Young children continue to need a primary care giver to hold their needs in mind, needs for love expressed via feeding, play, attention, empathy. If there is excessive disruption in holding, needs are not met, love is disrupted via relational trauma or other kinds of trauma - perhaps there is loss, stress parents are distracted, fighting, drinking, drug taking. This can create a belief in the child that his or her needs won’t be met. The child believes themselves to be ultimately unsafe in the world. This then establishes a deep seated anxiety which many prominent psychoanalysts have argued is ultimately an uncontained death anxiety. Needs not met, means vulnerability. Perhaps this is a parallel now to much of the anxiety that is spreading throughout society with COVID 19.

As we grow and have our needs met we internalise this sense of holding, the maternal transcends the mother and becomes more to do with our direct environment. As we hold ourselves in our immediate lives we trust our systems, our jobs, our councils, our communities to take up the mantle of the maternal. When these fail, when the systems we unconsciously rely on and are held by collapse, a deep and primitive anxiety can be unleashed. I believe the panic buying we have seen is an example of this anxiety. People are seeking to be held and have to their basic needs met. However, this panic means that others are missing out.

I feel that the question now is, given that the maternal (the systems and routines that we live our lives within) has collapsed for many people in many ways, what can we do for ourselves that can help us to continue feeling held? How can you make sure you are secure enough to reduce anxiety? What can you ethically do to self hold? Please consider the concepts discussed and perhaps write in the comments section ideas and strategies to self hold. We can best hold others, when we feel held ourselves.