Imagery is like deep sea diving

Addressing psychological problems at their core

If you have chronic psychological problems (neuroses, disorders, complexes or whatever you call it) and are unable to get rid of them, such as long-term depression, persistent trauma-related and other unpleasant experiences, you might want to try a different approach. Instead of trying to get rid of it, try making contact with it ‘inside’.
You can do this by going to the feeling of the problem, in your body, in your inner world and giving it your attention. What is your feeling or image of it? Maybe you get a visual image, maybe a physical feeling or sensation. Start giving this attention to get to know it, contact it, without trying to solve it. Like meeting a stranger for the first time, with curiosity, without prejudice . . . With persistent mental health issues, it is often like what old stories and fairy tales tell, something in you wants to be found, felt, healed or liberated.
Imagery is a very appropriate method for this: by consciously choosing with sufficient ‘I-strength’* to engage with the ‘problem’, to contact it carefully, to discover and begin to feel what it needs or may have to offer you at its core.

* I-strength is the psychological ability ‘to deal with inner states, emotions and energies’ or to put it in another way, the psychological ability ‘to cope, manage what happens to us inside and in the outer world’.

Something pulling me down

Kees has a chronic depression. ‘I can’t move forward, it’s like something is pulling me down,’ he says. And also: ‘when I get up, it’s often like there’s a gloomy fog’.
When asked where he feels this most in his body, Kees puts his hands on his stomach and chest. When he is then invited to bring his attention under his hands, to feel and perceive with his inner senses, after a while Kees says he thinks he sees a kind of chain. The therapist has Kees explore this image further and advises him to follow the chain downwards, if he can handle it. At first Kees thinks this is a precarious undertaking, he is afraid of the deep. But with the help of an imaginary diving suit, flippers and an oxygen cylinder, he finally dares to take on the trip down.
At the bottom of the sea, Kees discovers to his surprise that the chain is attached to the wreck of a ship. In the closer examination of the wreck, Kees gets the curious feeling of having come face to face with a piece of his past, the failures in his work and marriage.
There are flashbacks and several times the imaginative experience is gently interrupted, a pause is taken to cope with the emotions that have arisen.
Then, as Kees continues his investigation, he discovers that there is a wonderful light in it, a light he had not seen before. This light becomes very important to him, warming him inside. In the following sessions, he manages to loosen the chain. It relieves him and in the weeks that follow his emotional state improves. In the following months he gradually regains the élan to make plans again and take steps forward in his life.

A symbolic, meaningful dimension

Imaginatively ‘going inner to meet’ a psychological problem is not a cognitive, rational process, it is much more of a dreamlike journey full of emotion and symbolism. The content and dynamics of the inner self, the psyche, is a purely symbolic, meaningful world, a world in which there can be obstacles and monsters, but also fairies, counsellors and guides, hidden treasures, elixirs and sometimes miraculous light. Every inner image in it represents psychic energy in a symbolic way, or rather every part in our imagination is a symbol and can lead us to resolution and inner vitality.
The imaginative encounter with a difficult content within ourselves can be threatening or fearful at first, but because you choose to go there of your own free will, you can prepare yourself and take all kinds of measures and call for help along the way, just like a traveller who enters an unknown territory well prepared. Kees in the example above put on an (imaginary) diving suit and flippers.
Sometimes during such a process it then turns out that there are valuables to be found at the bottom.

Another example, in which a client has a confrontation with a scary animal. It reminds me, the therapist in this case, of the fairy tale of the princess with the golden ball. In that story, the princess lost her golden ball, which fell into deep water. But luckily there is a frog who fishes up the ball for her. The frog, however, wants a reward in return.
It is psychologically interesting that there are several variants of the reward in this ancient story. In one variant, the frog wants to sit at the table with the princess, to eat. In another variant, he wants to kiss and make love with her. And in yet another variant, the princess gets so furious that she throws the frog to pieces against the wall.
In all cases, the frog turns out to be an enchanted prince, whose liberation can only come about because the princess makes real contact, for better or worse.

Thea suffers from an eating disorder. She has recurrent binge eating, sometimes pulling open the fridge and eating whatever is at hand, other times vomiting and trying to lose weight.
When I, the therapist, ask her to go inward to the feeling of binge eating, after a while she gets the image of a hideous reptile. Thea finds the beast scary and disgusted. I then suggest to her to take the time to breathe calmly again, before to look at ‘the beast’ again. She does so, and then reports seeing her father’s eyes in the beast standing in front of her. It startles her.
We discuss her father’s role in her life and how it is apparently connected to her eating disorder.
I suggest to Thea to continue and to contact the reptile again, to meet it attentively. My expectation was that Thea would begin to befriend the reptile, to begin to come into harmony with it, but nothing of the sort. Thea becomes furious and says she wants to attack it, destroy it, banish it from her life. With great force, she attacks the pillow I give her for it, pounding on it with all her might, and Thea screams that she wants it out of her life.
Afterwards, she says it is the first time she has expressed herself like this, she feels liberated.
After a week, and again after a month, we discuss how things have gone for her and whether the liberated feeling has continued. Thea says that being able to express her anger so fully has been a breakthrough and that she has now found the strength to resist her binge eating; she succeeds by trial and error. Her self-confidence has grown.

Self-reinforcing, creative resources

To get to grips with chronic psychological problems, imagery offers surprising creative and non-verbal tools. It is an excellent, primal method that calls on the person’s own self-reinforcing resources, but needs to be applied with care, dosed and in achievable, I-strong steps. Imagery has many different techniques for it.
Imagery can be an inner process, but also a process with creative expression, drawing, painting, collages, voicing, movement, drama or role-playing and in all kinds of combinations, depending on what is useful in the process and feasible for the person. The more the person actively works with the images and manages to express and apply them in daily life, the more integration of the psychic energy involved will take place.

Transcendental aspects of imagery

The way and attitude with which we make contact with an image is of paramount importance. Each image, be it a knife, a grain of sand, a swamp, an abyss, a wound, a monsterous creature or a nightingale, once truly contacted, fully with all one’s inner senses, without any bias, it will tend to reveal its true transcendental nature.
Although we use the same language as we experience the outer world, inner seeing, touching, smelling, sensing, feeling is of a complete different dimension. It seems comparable to how we experience the outer world, in fact it is quite something else. Contacting an image, or feeling, or any other internal perception, brings us in a deeper state of mind and the more we are able to use our inner capacity to truly sense, without any prejudice, and truly possess what we experience, the deeper the ‘image’ will reveal its innate inner transcendental dimension, the light that’s within us, now and forever.
But if there is fear, fear of what one is encountering in the imagery, one needs to fortify oneselves first, to become strong and capable to face what is showing and contact it heartfully. Relaxation, physical grounding and breathing are key elements in fortifying the ‘I-strength’.

Sylvia, in her forties, felt so mistreated by her lover, who betrayed and left her. She feels miserable, lost, forgotten and denied. It brings back all her memories of what her mother told her one day, something that has hung over her like a dark shadow all her life: her mother tried to abort her, but the attempts failed.
When the therapist suggests she connect with that horrible, miserable feeling, going inside, she sees a dead embryo lying in a dark corner, like a forgotten dirty mop. She is shocked and at first completely wiped out. When, after some time, she has found her strength again, she dares to approach the embryo, a process that took several weeks. Then, to her great surprise, she slowly begins to feel that the embryo is not dead but alive. It just needs her sincere, heartfelt care.
It is her genuine, attentive, warm-hearted approach, essentially realizing that she herself is lying there in a dark corner, that made the embryo alive, since its true nature is life and light.

Jan Taal, November 2023

Read more about imagery processes in the article Imagery in Therapy, Counselling and Coaching

This blog also appears as an article in the Psychosynthesis Quartely of the Association for the Advancement of Psychosynthesis, december 2023.

Photo courtesy: Paul Ponten

 

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