Just over a year ago, I took the VIA Character Strengths assessment and learned that one of my lowest traits was self-regulation. Three months into men’s work, I didn’t know it yet, but my capacity to contain my own experience was about to be pushed to its edge.
Containment is the capacity to hold your own experience; all the fire, ache, and thought — without repressing it, leaking it, or collapsing into it. It’s the strength I didn’t know I lacked until life began testing my ability to stay with myself rather than reach outward.
This is the beginning of a multi-part exploration. One I am choosing to write from the inside out.