-IBIS-1.5.0-
rx
imagery
birth: exploring phobias
psychospiritual approaches
definition
Exploratory Visualization for Phobias
Physically presenting symptoms, including those linked to phobias, can provide opportunities for exploratory visualization, a technique for ascertaining the psycho-emotional aspect of physiological functioning.
Having discussed in detail the general construction of a birth visualization, we can further an understanding of the nature and use of exploratory visualization through the following case example in descriptive form.
Marianna complained of a phobia of having her blood drawn. Whenever she was to have her blood drawn for testing, she became extremely anxious, cold and clammy, and would then faint. She felt trapped and frightened, as she was pregnant and expected to have her blood drawn for testing several times during her pregnancy (related to anemia). She came for help when she was four months pregnant, having fainted one month prior and fearfully anticipating the next time blood would be drawn.
The following visualization is presented in shortened form (instead of transcribed form) and without identification of technique, to give the reader an experiential (right hemisphere) feeling of the flow of a multi-modality visualization experience and its impact upon outcome. The exploratory component is emphasized.
After a complete relaxation induction, I began to describe Marianna's vein on the inside of the arm at the elbow joint (antecubital vein). I asked her to imagine being just that one tiny part of her, her vein, which is, in fact, a part of her, so that she really does have the right to "imagine now being just that one small vein part."
As she imagined herself being just her vein, I encouraged her to speak in the first person, as she, as the vein anticipating the needle coming toward her. Marianna described herself as frightened as she saw a man coming toward her with a needle. She "knew" the man was coming toward her to get information from her and she feared that he would find out "something".
I asked her what it was that he might find out and exactly who wanted this information. Marianna saw the doctor and "knew" it was her father. She had not seen he father since she was two years old and her parents were divorced. Thereafter, she was cared for by her grandmother while her mother worked.
In the years of growing to adulthood she recalled her family discussing her father's "baldness." Though Marianna had not seen her father in 21 years, she had received regular birthday gifts from him during her childhood. She remembered the feelings of anxiety receiving his gifts, and the quiet family discussions inevitably ensuing, painting him as a negative and worthless human being.
As Marianna remembered her anxiety about her family's opinion of her father's worth, she described the face of the doctor becoming that of her father (as she remembered him from a picture seen during childhood). She continued to speak as the vein, stating her fear that the doctor/father would test her blood and find something wrong with it. She associated to the idea that something was wrong with her blood, as if being of her father's blood and being genetically the daughter of both her father and mother had created a fear of not belonging with her family. They might discover the secret of the "baldness" of her family blood. Her baldness reflected the feelings that she was made biologically from her father who had been condemned by her mother and grandmother. The creation of an irrational fear - that she did not belong - related to the phobia.
Marianna began to recognize her need to accept the part of her that she received biologically from her father and to resolve her distrust of her own basic "wholeness" and "goodness".
I proceeded to explain to her the similarities of veins in her body to the nurturing vessels and roots of a tree traveling from the tips of the branch arms of the tree deeper down to its trunk, and even deeper down to its root system from which the tree springs. I went onto extrapolate in fine detail how the roots originating in the tree come from a variety of sources in the ground (streams, minerals, etc.) involving differing points of origination contributing to the tree's wholeness. The point that differing points of origin (metaphorical referral to her father and mother) create the wholeness and goodness of the tree's solid existence in form was continually developed through various truisms involving various nutrients needed by the tree which were coming from different and unknown (father) reservoirs in the ground. Then I proceeded to turn the direction of attention to the entry of the needle for drawing blood.
I first described how the sap (blood) in a maple tree flowed easily into a bucket when a person tapped (drew blood) its bark for excess maple syrup. I talked about how proud the tree was of its fine use for all the nutrients entering the rootlets in making a most delicious, life-giving syrup. I further described how easily the tree would spill forth syrup when tapped correctly by an experienced syrup gatherer, and how quickly and efficiently the sap would coagulate to stop the flow at exactly the right moment... and how good it (the tree) could feel by knowing naturally exactly when to seal over, without any inner disturbance to the tree itself.
As the visualization was brought to a close, I gave Marianna the suggestion that she could, at her next blood drawing, call upon the strength of a tree, and, as she felt the needle, she could remember the image of a maple tree (she had grown up in Vermont).
Marianna had her blood drawn the next week without difficulty, and continued to report no problems with blood-drawing.
Therapy continued for further resolution of identity changes during pregnancy. Eight months later, during the last phase of our work together, Marianna wrote a poem about her personal symbol of the tree. She showed no awareness of the relation of the symbol chosen to our session eight months prior, yet, her poetic description gave reference to roots and the sense of belonging to a family.
Marianna's visualization experience was a valid reality with its unique and inviolate memory storage and living symbols. Marianna used the secondary visual, auditory, and somesthetic brain cortices to create a real and valid reality - that of being the vein and confronting symbolically her inner fears of personal inadequacy and incompetence. By turning her attention almost exclusively to the secondary cortices of the brain involved in indirect, secondary rather that primary sense data, Marianna was able to give concrete form to vague and anxiety producing feelings. Secondary sense data is that which is seen, heard, or felt in the mind, as opposed opposed to what is actually before the sense organs of the eyes, ears or fingers. Sitting in a cafe, remembering last night's dream or imagining the plan of afternoon events, involves secondary sensory experience. Primary sensory experience involves the visual lay-out of the cafe, sounds of the waiters and diners, and feelings of the hardness of the chair.
The working ground for resolution of her phobia was the territory of symbolic experience, involving the secondary cortices of the brain. The reason for the effectiveness of suggestion, indirect or direct, was the concrete nature of experience in the secondary cortices, involving the creation of memory identical to memory created from primary experience (usually defined as "actual" experience).
If you were to remember an event from childhood, you would become aware of the use of secondary information brought to primary awareness through encoded memory in the secondary cortices of the brain. If we were to tell you of Gayle's Polish grandmother or Lewis' Cherokee-hillbilly grandmother, you would think of your own grandmother, as well as conjuring images of these colorful characters from the author's lives. Secondarily, associational brain areas would be at work.
You can remember the sound of a person's voice, even though the person is not actually present. By "hearing" it in the secondary cortex, you may re-experience that person's presence. You may remember the sight of a face again by stimulation of the secondary visual cortex, since the person's face is not actually before you but must be recreated from memory. The pain of a slap on the face may also be re-lived through the secondary somesthetic cortex, and you may even put out your hand to your face or flinch at the memory-experience of that slap. In short, secondary data can be brought to the level of primary focus, and is experienced as if it were occurring in the present. Even childhood events can be so vividly re-experienced. Equally, symbolic experiences can carry the power of actual experience as in Marianna's example. Marianna's visualization as she experienced it is actually the creation of memory. Once the symbolic experience occurs, it can be remembered as easily as any past experience. This memory of symbolic experience is not neurophysiologically different from memory of verifiable consensual events. Both are accessed identically and neither have a "real" (in the mundane sense of that word)existence in the present.
Symbolic experience is identical to "actual" experience by the times it reaches the stage of memory. Neither memory could be seen as presently occurring. Both are brain events. Recall of the intensity of a symbolic experience (a dream, for instance) can be as high as a prior, consensual event. Both memories can claim equal validity to influence the client. Only the whims of yet another brain area (usually considered the " reality tester" of the prefrontal cortex) differentiates symbol from consensual reality. Indirect hypnosis aims to relax the usual critical observation of this reality tester long enough for the symbolic experience of labor, or of personal goodness in Marianna's case, to be accepted into long-term memory storage as reality and not imagination.
Through symbolic experience, including multi-modality visualization, memory is created. As such, symbolic inner journeys provide experience from which the client can change beliefs about the world.
(Peterson and Mehl, p. 243-247)
see also:
imagery: Taueret journey
hypnotherapy: techniques of trance
imagery: birth: introductory visualization
imagery: birth: exploratory visualization
imagery: birth: birth visualization
imagery: birth: complication - breech
imagery: birth: complication - past complications
imagery: birth: complication - fibroids
footnotes