Originally published 18 January 2014.
Of the many ways recommended to deal with anxiety, mindful visualization is one of my favorites. Visualization can be very powerful, not only as a technique to control anxiety and depression, but as a general tool for positive thinking.
I’ve been using visualization for a while. I didn’t have much success with it at first, though, because the visualization I chose wasn’t exactly right for me. For visualization to be effective, it has to be personal and realistic to you. If you’re listening to a guided medication mp3 to try to relax and it tells you to visualize being on the beach, but you have a fear of the ocean, that’s not going to work for you. Maybe you need to visualize being in a quiet forest, or at the edge of a cliff at the Grand Canyon. Whatever you choose, it has to be calming and relaxing for you.
When choosing to do the visualization technique, you need to be very specific about why you’re doing the visualization. What you visualize to fight depression will probably be very different from what you visualize to fight anxiety. And both of those will be different from what you visualize when you need a pick-me-up or motivation. I’ll give you some personal example of visualizations I’ve used.
First, the one that didn’t work. This one didn’t work not because its a bad idea. On the contrary, I still think it could work if I tweaked it a bit. I used this one when I was suffering from bad anxiety about my job, my heath, and my financial situation. (Yes, all at once. That wasn’t fun.) We’re going into Christian territory again in this post because it’s what I know, but remember, this can all be adapted based on your needs and you beliefs. In this visualization, I pictured myself carrying three large, heavy boxes. Each one was labeled: health, job, and finances. In front of me was a huge throne, and seated on it was God. He was so big I could only see his feet and the bottom of his legs. He was wearing a white robe and sandals. (Visualizations must be very detailed to work correctly.) He was glowing with a pure white light, radiating peace and love. I walked up to the throne, right up to his feet, and gingerly placed the boxes down. Then I left them there and walked away.
What is the idea behind this? The Bible tells us to give God our burdens, so in this visualization I chose to take that literally. I also take very literally the idea of a “burden.” My anxieties were large and cumbersome, heavy and difficult to carry.
Why didn’t it work? It didn’t work because it was unrealistic. It’s not God that makes it unrealistic. It might be to you, but to me, God is very real. That’s what I mean when I say visualizations have to be personal. What works for me may not work at all for you. What made it unrealistic was the idea of simply getting rid of all three burdens in their entirety and being completely free of them. I didn’t truly believe that God was going to remove those fears from me completely, so the visualization because completely ineffective.
How could I have made it better? I haven’t quite figured that out, yet. Maybe instead of my leaving the boxes at God’s feet, he somehow makes the boxes lighter and smaller. Each time I go to Him, the changes he made the last time are still in effect. So I’d do the visualization over and over again, and each time the boxes would be smaller and lighter. It’s a way to show that with God’s help, I’m slowly reducing the burdens in the hope and prayer that one day they will be gone altogether.
I can’t use this tweaked visualization yet because it’s not detailed enough. But if I ever figure it out, I’ll revisit it.
Next: a visualization I do often and that works well for me. I use this when I’m feeling unsettled and when I simply want to reconnect with God. I start my picturing my own body. Deep inside, at my core, there is a ball of light that represents the Holy Spirit. I begin to breathe slowly and deeply. With each inhale, I imaging more of that light coming into my body through the air I breathe. That light joins the core within me and it grows. I do this for several minutes, watching the light grow, become brighter, and spread through my whole body, out to my extremities. My body glows with this light, and it expands out from me like a halo. This halo is a shield around me, protecting me from all harm.
Why does this work? It works for physical reasons: I’m breathing deeply, allowing my body to fully relax as I do it. It works mentally because it works with my beliefs. I can almost physically feel a warmth within me when I do this visualization. When I’m done, I feel that shield around me and I feel safe from whatever was trying to hurt me, including physical things like germs.
Finally, I have a new visualization that’s a bit different from the others. This one is targeted directly at my anxiety. I use this one to diminish the anxiety. Before I implemented this, my anxiety was like a dark, menacing cloud that hovered around me all the time. I couldn’t do anything to get it away. I needed to capture it into some kind of form that I could then visualize vanquishing. So it became a vulture.
That’s right, my anxiety is now a vulture named Ebeneezer. He’s an ugly thing, skinny and gray, with hunched shoulders, a huge adams’s apple, and hateful, staring eyes. He has a bald spot at the top of his head with a ring of white feathers around it (think about the stereotypical image of friar tuck). He likes to spend his time perched on my right shoulder, his talons digging in as he growls terrors into my ears.
Ebeneezer lives to make me frightened and miserable. But he’s kind of ridiculous looking. When he comes around, I look at him and just giggle. I have trapped my anxiety in that form, and now I can harm it. I can diminish it again and again. When I start to have bad thoughts, I can say, “Ebeneezer, we’re not doing this right now. Get away from me.” I can do my Holy Spirit visualization and picture that shield surrounding me. Ebeneezer can’t even look at the shield, much less get anywhere near it. When he tries, I’ll picture making a bow and arrow out of that heavenly light and shooting him with it. He’ll scream in pain and fly away, singed feathers falling in his wake. I won’t picture blowing him up or destroying him completely. It’s not realistic. But I can hurt him. I can fight him.
All of that said, I haven’t had to fight too hard against Ebeneezer since my therapist and I created him. I’ve been doing very well lately, but I don’t delude myself into thinking I’m cured. There will come a time when this visualization will be put to the test, and I plan to use it. I’ll refine it as needed to figure out what works best.
Have you tried visualization? Think about what you want to accomplish. What do you need to happen when you do the visualization? What is calming for you? What gets you motivated? What can you truly believe in as you picture it?
Take some quiet time and work on this. If you’re not as imaginative as me, this may be hard for you. You might have to work at it, but give it a try anyway. What can it hurt?
