Cognitive behavioral therapy is consistently used in my personal therapeutic approach. It helps teach clients to challenge their thoughts and beliefs. Put them on trial, see if they hold up, are they rational or irrational? Imagery can be used to extend this intervention, to create new images to accompany these thoughts, images that reflect the rational versus irrational, new adaptive helpful images. Imagery can be used in treatment of many different mental health diagnoses, including, but not limited to, depression, mania, anxiety, trauma, and phobias.

By “images” we don’t literally mean paper images, but pictures, sounds, smells, tastes, feel, or any sensory input that arises in our minds about a particular thought or feeling. Images, just like irrational thoughts, can be distorted perceptions of reality and need to be challenged. Images have power to influence our thoughts and behavior just as thoughts and feelings do. We focus on the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behavior in cognitive behavioral therapy; and imagery is simply an extension of these. Many people create images in their mind that accompany thoughts or feelings. Positive images lead to positive emotions. Negative images lead to negative emotions. Imagining you doing a task in your mind can literally increase the likelihood that you follow through and complete that task. Imagining successful completion of a task can also actually improve performance.

Our mental images of ourselves and the world around us is a powerful thing. For some individuals distressing mental images can contribute negatively to their mental illness symptoms. Because of this, imagery techniques can be utilized to help stop disturbing images or change images in one’s mind to decrease negative emotions and therefore negative mental health outcomes influenced by that imagery. Some more recent research has found that imagery can have an even more powerful impact on emotion than thoughts, or words. Imagery is a vehicle that can be used in counseling to gain a deeper understanding of the client’s problem. A picture is worth a thousand words is of course a cliché, but for good reason. Internalizing cognitive changes can be difficult, sometimes in the therapeutic process, the client and counselor come to an impasse where the client knows the content or knows how they want to feel for themselves or a situation but are unable to integrate this knowledge into cognitive changes. Research has shown that imagery can assist in internalizing these cognitive changes; again, an image is worth a thousand words.

Using imagery in the therapeutic process starts as providing education, essentially reviewing the research outlined above. Next, is to help the client see their own images, discuss, question, paint mental pictures, gather all the sensory input one can muster in the image. Then changing or replacing the distressing or unhelpful images through a similar process of gathering sensory input and painting a mental picture of the scene. Imagery can be understood as if it is a movie, a set, a script, sound effects, music, and every extra detail one can outline to truly get a full picture of what is happening in the mind’s eye. Thinking of imagery in this way helps highlight how rich and immersive this exercise can be.

Imagery can help internalize cognitive changes, decrease uncomfortable emotions, de-catastrophize, increase adaptive behaviors, and also help to respond appropriately to a situation. Imagery can be useful in treating a number of mental health problems. If you easily lean towards imagery in your mind’s eye and want to learn more about these internal images, reach out. If all of this sounds confusing but interesting, contact us. If you know someone who this blog reminds you of, pass it along, and encourage them to reach out. You can schedule an appointment with one of our licensed mental health counselors by contacting Life Enhancement Counseling Services at 407-443-8862.

Resources:

https://www.therapistaid.com/therapy-guide/using-imagery-in-cbt