Chapter 7
Guided imagery is as old as psychotherapy itself. However, as a relatively new approach in the United States, it is experiencing a real wave of respect, and is part of the cutting edge in the new mind/body medical procedures. There are many names for this process: visualizations, mental imagery, guided affective imagery, active imagination, and inter-active guided imagery. We call our own approach, IntraPersonal Imagery.
The universal language of the mind is pictures. These pictures provide a connecting link between the conscious and unconscious minds. Psychologist, Dr. Jeanne Achterberg, often describes this process of imagery as being..."the midwife that births feelings from the unconscious to the conscious mind." Freud talked about the unconscious mind as ninety percent and the conscious mind only ten percent of us, and felt that all our true motives and causes for behavior are buried beneath our conscious awareness. The implication was that all of us function from unconscious motivation. Psychologist, Gordon Alport, felt that the unhealthier you are the more you function from the unconscious. The healthier you are the more you function from conscious awareness.
Freud further claimed that "dreams are the royal road to the unconscious" and dreams and their interpretations have been a vital aspect of understanding ourselves since the beginning of time. The difficulty with dreams is, however, that they must be remembered in order to be interpreted and the predictability of when an epiphany or revelation occurs in sleep cannot be guaranteed. Imagery, on the other hand, can be dependable transportation down Freud's royal road. Imagery is a dream in the waking state. The person is equally relaxed as in the dream state but the conscious mind is more tuned in to listen. The dream or imagery can be created at will with no restrictions. This act of creation gives instant access to whatever subject we wish to address, rather than waiting for the dream to decide. Carl Jung called his version of imagery ACTIVE IMAGINATION and discovered that the unconscious mind was in a sense constantly dreaming. Since the individual's attention is focused on the external, he is unaware of the mythic story that is continually developing unless he or she stops to focus on it. Jung remarked:
| "When you concentrate on a mental picture it begins to stir, the image becomes enriched by details. It moves and develops, and so when we concentrate on inner pictures and we are careful not to interrupt the natural flow of events, our unconscious will produce a series of images that makes a complete story." |
Jung's explanation remains one of the simplest and clearest explanations of what guided imagery is and does. Jung further commented that this active imagination process was superior to dreams in defeating the unconscious for a quickening of maturation in analysis. In other words, imagery is superior to dreams in overcoming or defeating the unconscious mind's resistance to allowing buried truth to come to conscious awareness. Bringing this truth to the surface, where it can be acknowledged and properly dealt with, speeds up the therapeutic growth in analysis. Hanscarl Leuner MD, a German analyst, called his basic level of imagery, "A superior short term therapy that closes the gap between symptom-centered procedures and the great psychoanalytic cure."
Symptom-centered procedures refer to types of therapy that focus on immediate results by solving the problem or changing the acting out behavior of the client, without regard for the original cause. The great psychoanalytic cure is the Freudian approach of finding and curing the original source of the symptom, which could take years. What is this simple but mysterious and powerful procedure called imagery? It is a relaxation process that helps a person to shut off the outside world of rational logic, to bypass that censor we call the brain, and enables us to see, experience, and learn from our intuitive, feeling, unconscious nature. Many people are afraid of feelings, fearing they are untrustworthy, essentially bad or destructive, believing that their emotions will lead them astray into their animal nature. However, all of us are complex creatures of intellect and emotion, feelings, and doings. Feelings are the barometer of the soul. They tell the intellect what the issues are; and the job of the intellect is to interpret, understand, and decide appropriate reactions. To function effectively as human beings we need all aspects of ourselves.
When a therapist works with guided imagery, he induces a state of relaxation and then suggests that the client visualize a scene. The therapist guides the client through some experience that results in an insight. Consider this example of a guided imagery session:
| Therapist: | See your mother as an animal. If she were an animal what would she be? |
| Client | I see a rather large cow, contently chewing her cud in a green pasture. There are two little calves nearby, occasionally coming over for milk. |
| Therapist: | What is your overall impression? |
| Client | Passive and quiet. She seems content. |
| Therapist: | What do you like best and least? |
| Client | Best is the peacefulness and lack of stress. Least is that the cow is lazy, unmotivated, fat and indolent, a dirty farm animal with no real purpose. |
| Therapist: | Become the cow. What do you feel? |
| Client | Contented but bored. I feel judged by my daughter. My life doesn't have any real purpose. |
The therapist could have asked the client, "Describe your mother and how you feel about her," but the client's intellect may have struggled with guilt or anger, or perhaps been more superficial in the description. By seeing mother as an animal, the client is able to describe the animal as seen in the moment rather than the actual mother. The unconscious mind gives us subtle information we may otherwise avoid. And there is less guilt: "This is what I saw, not what I decided to see." The value of imagery is that imagery can diagnose a problem, provide options for change, and even promote healing and personal empowerment. Its primary purpose is to allow the body to relax, healing the physical and emotional aspects of self. Any new insights gained during an imagery experience are an added bonus to personal growth.
The next step in the process of imagery is to allow unresolved anger, conflict, and fear, which may be deeply buried in the unconscious, to emerge into the light of conscious awareness. Once seen clearly, these issues can easily be understood and related to more appropriately. This kind of imagery has been successfully used in healing cancer and other illnesses, for pain control, for relieving the emotional trauma of war, incest or abuse, for overcoming phobias, or for habit control such as addictions, as well as just plain understanding of self. This technique is a powerful, fun, amazing form of personal insight that can take us from a place of personal healing to the ultimate empowerment and fulfillment.
Whether through guided imagery or dreams, the unconscious is presenting us with stories filled with symbols. An understanding of their meanings enhances their impact and the importance of the information.
A universal symbol is one that usually means the same to all people regardless of race, culture, time, or place. Students often ask what determines a universal symbol and how does one determine its meaning? From the beginning of time, scholars have studied dreams and the mythology of every culture. All cultures, religions, myths, dreams, fairy tales and movies of today tell the same stories with the same symbolism and meaning. Jung referred to archetypes embedded in our psyches that mean the same for everyone. There is more and more evidence that we may even carry these archetypal symbols in our DNA from generation to generation.
For example, the earth is a prominent universal symbol. It is called mother earth because it plays out the role of universal mother. The seed is impregnated and planted in the ground and grows for a period of time and then it is born. Once born it is fed and nourished by the earth, an exact description of the mother role.
The second type of symbol is a particular or personal symbol and refers to what the symbol means to the individual. For example, George has a dream that he is walking a narrow mountain path and the earth gives way beneath his feet. He slips and falls twenty feet and breaks his ankle. The universal interpretation might suggest that he is walking a narrow path "on the edge" with mother and she disappoints or lets him down so that he breaks an ankle. George says he has an excellent relationship with a very supportive mother, and that interpretation doesn't fit.
The therapist might ask, "What's going on in your life, George?"
He replies, "A climber friend of mine invited me to go hiking next week and I'm afraid I can't keep up or will injure myself."
Now the dream is more personal and makes sense.
Someone else might share, "Last night I dreamed I was attacked by a ten foot black widow spider." The dream is loaded with universal symbols. Black is a symbol of evil or bad. In the old cowboy movies, the guys in the black hats and clothes were the outlaws and the ones in white were the good guys. The black widow spider is a female who is poisonous and kills. Being ten foot tall is a symbol of exaggeration. The dreamer is blowing his fear all out of proportion to reality.
On the other hand, women love this story. They consistently complain of men using them for sex and then casting them aside. Here the female, the spider, gets even for them all. She uses her mate to fertilize her many eggs and when she no longer needs him, for he is only a sperm donor, she poisons and kills him and has him for dinner.
In interpreting the dream the therapist might ask, "Who is the woman who is overwhelmingly scaring you to death?" She could be mother, wife, daughter, sister, boss or even an event such as a final exam. Suppose however, there are no women in your life, the dream can't mean that. A further question might be, "Is that why there are no women in your life, you see them as black widow spiders?" Or after further probing, you're convinced that the universal symbol or interpretation doesn't fit. "So, what was going on at the time of the dream?"
With some confusion, the client might answer, "Nothing really. I'm working 12-14 hours a day and feel totally overwhelmed by responsibility. I don't feel I can possibly catch up or do it right." In this case, the job itself is symbolized by the black widow spider that is overwhelmingly destructive, and is killing him.
The particular interpretation could also be a literal one, where the client has a very real fear or phobia of spiders. But even if the literal meaning is true, the deeper symbolic interpretation underlying the obvious could be that this person feels like a victim in life. No matter how many spiders he kills or problems he solves, he will inevitably wind up a victim or loser.
The objective interpretation is how we see our outside world. That means every symbol in a dream or imagery represents someone or something in the world. Using the black widow spider as an example, the spider objectively represents someone or something: mother, wife, daughter or job. If there were six different symbols in a dream all of them would represent someone or something specific. A literal interpretation would be a fear of spiders.
The subjective interpretation means how we perceive our inside world. All the symbols in a dream or imagery also represent a part within us. Therefore, the black widow spider is the poisonous, feminine, evil side of us. Which is better: the objective or subjective approach to interpreting symbols? The exciting answer is that it doesn't matter. They are highly correlated and either will accomplish the same goal.
That correlation is the basis on which this book is written, The Conflict Between Us is The Conflict Within Me. If you are the black widow spider, evil, dominant, and destructive, who will you marry? The incompatible opposite is indeed a passive, obedient, submissive little wimp.
If you go to therapy to save your marriage and you become less mean and dominant and your partner becomes more assertive and self sufficient, you have both moved to the middle and saved the marriage.
In the imagery process, the couple has healed the black widow spider within. Both have used the external problem to heal the inner one. For point of reference, either one could be so fearful of the spider within that it is denied and disowned. As a result, the individual becomes nice, generous, and passive. This nice person would then marry the spider and the process is reversed.
On the other hand, the woman could go to therapy alone, because her partner wouldn't or because she preferred to work on herself. She learns to deal with her own spider meanness and works towards center by making peace with unresolved anger, which heals the personal spider within. How does that affect the relationship? As she moves towards center, she begins acting differently towards her partner. If her husband responds appropriately and likes the change, he in turn moves to center and the relationship is improved, maintaining balance. One spouse can go to therapy and save a marriage without the other spouse. If, however, your mate is repelled by the changes and your consequential move toward center, he/she will move further away, throwing any balance askew. In that case, one of you at some point will leave because you no longer complement each other's extremes. The balance, however precarious, is destroyed.
There has to be a dance of balance or a dance of distance and polarity. There really is no other choice. When there are unresolved issues within each of us, the tendency is to externalize them within a relationship. All outer conflicts are balanced by inner ones. Cure one and the other heals, too.
Just as there is a connection between the interior battle of dominance and passivity within all of us that externalizes in our man/woman relationships, there also has been a similar turf war between the scientific and therapeutic worlds about what effect the mind and body really have over each other. For over a century, therapists have witnessed clinical, anecdotal evidence that relaxation procedures, such as imagery and hypnosis, promote both physical and emotional healing, but there was no way to measure this scientifically.
Years ago, biofeedback gave evidence that we can control the autonomic nervous system and today, with new modern technology, scientists can now track activity in the brain or use blood samples to prove that behavior, thoughts, and feelings bring about instant changes in the physical body. Where the conflict between heredity and environment raged on for years as to which had the most influence, there is more and more evidence that heredity is not necessarily locked in at birth and that it is constantly interacting with the environment to bring out a new and different self every day of our lives. In the words of best selling author, Caroline Myss, "Our biography becomes our biology." The very way we think, feel, act and believe is effecting and changing our physical bodies.
People have often interpreted the word, psychosomatic as an imaginary illness created in our head. Psycho refers to the mind and somatic to the body. The true meaning is that the mind can make the body ill (or well) and the body can do the same to the mind. All physical and emotional issues are connected. The miracle of guided imagery is its ability to approach all problems from either the physical or the emotional side and yet heal both, often simultaneously.
Most of us would like to credit outside influences--the flu, infections, or disease that are spread from the environment--as the cause of our illness, but even in an epidemic, not everyone gets sick. We all carry germs and disease in our bodies daily and don't get ill. The immune system is designed to kill these germs to keep us well. So why do we sometimes become sick?
In simple terms, we don't listen to ourselves and often violate or contradict our basic belief systems. The body, therefore, goes out of balance and the immune system becomes less efficient. Anything unresolved, such as anger, stress, or pain, creates inner conflict. The various subpersonalities within us start fighting among themselves to solve the problem. The body fights to compensate and keep a sense of order. For instance, your right shoulder tenses up and throws the left hip out of alignment, causing sciatic pain. This is a defensive attempt of the body to balance itself.
Over the years, the authors have found a rather simple, five step approach for using imagery as a healing tool. Guided imagery is used by many people in myriad fashion, as can be said of any medical or therapeutic technique. There is no one right way to do anything.
For simplicity and clarity, the illustrations of imagery that follow will address the physical side of healing, but the physical is interchangeable with the emotional. You could be directed to find an infection or tumor in your body or you could also be directed to locate where your mother resides in your body. The healing process would basically be the same.
The first step in imagery is to induce a relaxed state of being. Recent studies of burn victims have shown that the body reproduces 8-19 new cells in a square millimeter of skin while we are in an awake state. This healing accelerates to 100-150 new cells while we are asleep. Mom was right! When sick, go to bed, sleep, and let the body heal more quickly. Amazingly, when doing imagery, meditating, or during prayer, the healing goes to 450-500 new cells.
Have you ever had a charley-horse? That's the unbelievable cramp in your leg muscle that woke you one morning. Most of us tense up to fight the pain--and the pain gets worse--tension against tension. It is impossible to relax the cramp, so relax into the pain. Relax the rest of the body and the pain can spread out and be released more easily. Prepared childbirth is the same principle: the contraction is needed to deliver the baby, so by relaxing the rest of the body, the pain becomes more bearable.
Look at any painful spot in the body and describe it, such as: tight muscles, red inflammation, a cut or tear, an actual tumor or just a blackened area. Some individuals will not see body afflictions, but will see symbols of the pain instead: fire, demons, an arrow or knife, an iron band squeezing the head, or a knotted, tight rope. The unconscious has a great sense of humor and often uses puns to make a point. If a person sees bugs crawling all over a part of the body, the question might simply be, "What's bugging me in that area?" If a stabbing pain in the rib cage is symbolized as a sharp knife stuck deep between the ribs, one might ask, "Who or what is stabbing me or inflicting pain in my life?" If a client sees a monkey clinging powerfully to his back, he/she can inquire, "Who is the monkey on my back?"
Once we have an image of this physical and/or emotional pain, the next step is to talk to it. Amazingly, the symbol will usually be very happy to respond. There is no wrong way to do imagery. We may see, sense, hear or just know, but answers will be there. Here are sample questions to identify what the pain is connected to, and what can be done to relieve it:
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It is very important to see all pain as a messenger of truth. The pain is either trying to tell us something, or trying to hide something from us. How are we to distinguish between the two choices? The following examples may help.
One client had a twenty year history of migraine headaches that were so severe she considered suicide. This woman was in a very abusive marriage but carried a religious belief that divorce was a sin and, therefore, not an option for her. In imagery, the headache told her the only solution for her was to get a divorce. The day she left her husband, the headaches went away and never returned. Before she learned the truth, we could say the headaches were trying to distract her from a bad marriage and provide distance from an abusive husband so she could stay.
Another woman suffered from chronic backache throughout years in a troubled marriage to an alcoholic. When he died, the backaches spontaneously went away. The body may become ill as a way of creating a dependency to justify staying in the marriage. It is extremely important to get as much information as possible from the pain, before any action is taken.
There are several steps involved with removing pain. Many people are not capable or ready to remove pain, even if they want to. The pain often becomes a part of their identity, "If I'm not a victim of this pain, who am I?" In the words of the famous Carly Simon song, "Suffering is the only way that makes me feel alive." Or, the pain might be protecting them from having to take responsibility for themselves before they are ready to do so.
By removing the pain or symbol, the process has already begun. Sending love and the magic solution continues the healing process to yet a deeper level. Remember, we are not removing a part of ourselves. Infection, cancer, or an emotional pain, are not a part of us. We can now deal with these issues (physical or emotional, including parents, marriages, and careers) from outside the body. When touched by love and the magic solution, the symbol itself will often turn from something ugly and menacing to something smaller, more colorful, and pleasant. If you see red infection, it may turn to skin tone, demons could change to small children, fires are diminished or go out. The body has been given permission to heal itself. Negative energy can be transformed to positive energy as perceptions change and fears subside. Sometimes, the client or the therapist will create a ritual of healing to complete the process, such as floating in a Jacuzzi of the magic solution to cleanse and purify the entire body.
This simple, five step process, can be modified to work with any emotional or physical pain or issue in your life. The imagery process just described may sound mysterious or even preposterous to someone who has never experienced it, but thousands of people have found that this method provides the relaxed, safe, and loving environment which enables healing, restoration, and empowerment for new perceptions, choices, and opportunities.
Research is continually validating that the body knows how to heal. If we will just get out of our own way, we can allow and give permission to our incredible anatomy to heal naturally. Through this process of imagery, we can identify and remove these blocks from our body, whether physical or emotional, and return to health and well being.
We have mentioned that imagery is equally effective for physical healing as well as relationship dysfunction. Earlier in Chapter 7, we gave an example of see your mother as an animal. Let's use that same format for a marital relationship.
We are now going to give you a script for doing your own personal imagery. Read and experience the script. Then take out the CD that comes with the book and listen to track one, which will give you suggestions for getting the maximum benefit from the imagery experience. There are four separate imageries on the CD and in the book. Each one follows a chapter that will prepare you for that particular experience. Experience the imageries in sequence and preferably a few days apart. That gives plenty of time to digest and fully understand each one before going on to the next.
Track two on the CD is the first imagery starting with Patti doing a relaxing induction and the actual imagery experience. Patti will do imageries one and three, and Chuck will do imageries two and four. Set aside fifteen to twenty minutes of complete privacy to do this. Once the imagery is complete, come back to the end of this script where we will share suggestions with you on how you can best understand and make sense of what you have seen and experienced.
See your spouse as an animal. If your spouse were an animal, what would it be? Go with the first animal that appears and try not to edit. Describe the animal as to type, size, color, and attitude. What is the setting in which you find it? What is your overall impression of this animal? What do you like best about this animal? What do you like least about the animal? How does the animal respond to you? What happens when you approach it?
Now, BECOME the animal. See if you can actually be the animal and feel what it is feeling. What do you feel as the animal?
As the animal, look back at the person in front of you. How do you feel about this person? As the animal, make a statement to the person.
Become yourself again. How do you feel about what the animal said to you?
You can change the animal in any way you choose or leave it the way it is.
You can put the animal anywhere you choose or leave it where you found it.
Now, slowly and deliberately, let yourself come back to this room.
Once the imagery has been completed, take some time to write down what you actually saw and experienced. Then come back to this section. Use the script to help you remember the events you experienced. What did you learn about your spouse by seeing him/her as an animal. The type of animal can be very revealing: a grizzly bear or a teddy bear, a cunning fox or slimy snake, overwhelmingly large or small and inadequate. What was the general attitude of this animal? Was it friendly, trusting, angry, loving, dominant or submissive. What was your first overall impression? Remember, there is no judgment here. Whatever you saw and felt is OK, it's your experience.
What you liked best and least can add to the experience. In the worst, there is always a best and vice versa. This can supply important clues to hidden or obscure feelings. One husband described his wife in glowing terms as a beautiful, fluffy Siamese cat, warm and loving, but finished by saying he was always aware that hidden in those soft, gentle paws were claws of steel that could tear him to shreds. His wife saw him as a knight in shining armor on his horse, always ready to defend her, but she never lost sight of the fact he could easily use that sword on her.
Becoming the animal is an important step toward empathy. Experiencing the world of someone else through their eyes can be quite revealing. One woman saw her husband as an angry, wild, hostile bear. When she became the bear, she was shocked to feel frightened and helpless, terrified of being wrong or inadequate.
What was your experience? What did you learn about your spouse, yourself, and your relationship?
