the use of imagination in counselling & psychotherapy
Imagination is a person’s ability to form mental images and to conceive of something beyond their established thoughts and dominant narratives. In psychology, imagination refers to mental sensations that are not physically present. Whether in everyday life or in psychotherapy and counselling we have all used our imagination at different stages in our lives.
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein
No matter what your circumstances are, if you can imagine something better for yourself, you can create it. Imagination allows you to travel the Universe and to extend yourself out into the Universe with your consciousness to receive whatever you see, whatever you encounter, whatever you experience, and to then translate this back into your physical form.
“Some [people] see things as they are and ask why; I dream of things that never were and ask why not.” George Bernard Shaw
The idea is to try and leave your “head” aside, quieten the thoughts and “take off”. Some tools such as guided imagery are very useful to get you to an expanded state of consciousness. One is shifting energy at a subatomic level; frequency of the brain waves change to alpha and theta.
“Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve”. Napoleon Hill (American self-help Author).
Whatever we imagine, the beauty is that the brain does not differentiate between imagination and reality. “The world is your oyster”. Imagination is a process of systematically engaging the resources of the unconscious and progressively integrating these contents into our conscious being.
An example of the use of imagination to reduce anxiety was a study carried out by Nguyen & Brymer (2018). This study highlighted the role of nature-based guided imagery in decreasing the stress response. Participants took part in nature-based guided imagery sessions while others focused on non-nature based sessions. Anxiety levels were measured after each session. Results indicated that participants’ exposure to nature scenes promoted higher rates of stress-reduction and relaxation. This reduction in anxiety levels was greater than urban-based scenes.
The next time you are feeling too anxious try closing your eyes, take some deep breaths, and imagine yourself in a beautiful natural setting like the beach, mountains, lake or your favourite holiday spot. Explore what this place is like using all of your senses and feel the anxiety lifting. The great thing about this is that it doesn’t cost a cent.
“Images…tend to produce the physical conditions and the external acts that correspond to them” Roberto Assagioli (Italian Psychiatrist).
