Do You Ever Have Trouble Trying To Use The Techniques Your Therapist Wants To Use?

[just me here]

First off, I have total faith in my therapist. We are using a mix of talk therapy and EMDR, she is very well accredited and experienced and we have made some large advances recently.

My problem is in some of the imagery she wants me to use, things like envisioning the young me getting on a cloud and riding to a safe place where there is everything he needs and anything he wants while he waits for us to call him back when we need to talk to him.

I can get about as far as seeing a seperation between my conscious self, my childhood self, my protector, my monitor, my aself criticism and self rewarding selves. She loses me with all of the puffy cloud stuff, I just can't delve that deep into a fantasy and it kind of jades my willingness to accept even the seperation of all of the different personalities within me.

Suspension of disbeleif is a great thing if you want to ba able to enjoy a good movie or play, but it feels a bit dangerous in therapy. There is a quote- "religon relies on the human ability to accept two opposite truths without going crazy" or something along those lines. I hope my therapy doesn't require thew same ability.

We have talked about it and it was absent from our sessions for a long while but was brought back in today, possibly because she just forgot, maybe because she thought I really needed to put my child self away for a week for my own good, I don't know but will probably ask.

Original question- Do you ever struggle with some of the techniques that your therapist asks you to use, especially mental imagery or division of self into different personas?

 

[just me here]

Sorry for not doing my homework, the quote was by F Scott Fitzgerald and doesn't mention reigon. That addition was made by another person later on and I want to use the quote as intended:

"The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function."

My opposing ideas are 1) I want to follow her directions and get better

And the opposing idea 2) This is crazy. If she has me put my inner child on a unicorn and jump over a rainbow I will stand up and walk out.

Anyone out there with similar thoughts?

 

[Hashi]

I'm a big fan of mental imagery, but I don't think I could do something like putting young me on a cloud because that's a completely unappealing image to me. I don't like childish/childlike things, and a cloud is much too ungrounded and wishy washy. If I wanted to imagine young me being safe I'd be more likely to give her a black belt in karate.

If this is about imagining a safe place, maybe you could talk with your T about finding an image you like better. For a start, does it really have to be young you? Personally, I struggle a lot with anything about the inner child, and I wouldn't use something in an image that I'm not comfortable with. I do visualisations for safety that are for the whole of me, and they keep me safe. I also know someone who uses an image that would appeal to her young self but in it she's an adult - she imagines herself on another planet which no-one can reach, with a cartoon character that makes her laugh. But it might be important for you that it's a child image, I don't know.

When I first started, I found it very hard to do, and it helped me to draw a picture of it as being easier than trying to imagine it in my mind. I still just say it to myself, I can't actually imagine pictures in my head, but drawing it, looking at my drawing of it and saying it works for me.

Maybe imagery just isn't for you at all, but it might be worth considering other ways of approaching it. I don't know if there are any sports people you admire, but if so they probably do mental imagery training - things like imagining putting the ball into the net, lifting a certain weight or reaching the finish line first.
It has been shown to have an effect, and I know it's really powerful for me. Not clouds and rainbows, though - with you on that!

 

[just me here]

This week we took a snapshot of the inner child and I am leaving it untouched on the memory card, where it will be left alone until next week when we will open it on a computer and take a look at it again.

Psycho-photoshop? Hows about a little more contrast and color saturation for ya there......

 

[ms spock]

Yes I do sometimes.

 

[dharmaBum]

Even though I have strong visual imagery skills and enjoy painting and drawing, I have a very hard time with some of the imagery used during my EMDR sessions, especially the "safe place" imagery. I'm pretty vocal about something not working, and usually we will skip that part if possible or switch to a different technique that is more tangible, like a real memory that invokes a physical feeling of safety.

Frequently, my "safe place" attempts would get derailed by unsafe details. I read in an EMDR handbook that this can happen for people with complex early trauma, as there is a lack of historical safety. We've used "safe state" a few times instead of "safe place" and that has worked better for me. There is a protocol out there for it, I was given a few photocopied pages to practice it, so I don't know the source. The goal is to recognize that you are physically safe at the moment (during the session or whenever you want to use it) and to be in touch with the emotions, physical sensations, and mindset that are associated with true safety.

I also have a hard time with the imagery for the container exercise. Although there is an affect management visualization that uses a "drain" to release unwanted emotional experience and I'm pretty satisfied with that one.

As you said, I'm not going to put anyone on a unicorn and send them over a rainbow, but I have developed some of my own imagery that works for me. It sounds like you might be on the way with the computer disk.

 

[kers]

Imagery can be very challenging and what is helpful varies from person to person. The cloud thing is ridiculous to me! But I am sure it works for some people.

I have actually done a lot of imagery work with my therapist. The first few variations we tried fell flat and were not helpful. So we'd try other stuff, and then try a variation on the imagery. Finally we hit on something that really worked for me. So it might be worth talking about what you dislike about what she presents, to see if you can come up with something different that might be more helpful.