Many
years ago, my husband and I worked on a small movie project that involved
reshooting and editing some of the scenes. Inspired by that experience, I view
life as a movie with the opportunity to reshoot and edit some of the upsetting
or disappointing scenes. The editing tool is our imagination. Life experiences
can consist of traumatic or tragic scenes, but we don't have to live in the
shadow of our tragedies. As Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing
stated, "Trauma is a fact of life, but it doesn't have to be a life
sentence."
With
the help of our imagination, we can come up with an alternative to any unsettling
life experience. Since these events impact the nervous system, the most
important part of this work is noticing how the body responds to the new take
along with the bodily sensations that can arise. Noticing how our body responds
to a positive replica of an event can help embody a new relationship to the
original experience. Many of us have heard how changing our thinking about a
situation can impact the intensity of it. This is a similar concept except we
work with the imagination along with the inner sensations and any unresolved
excess energy within the nervous system. Stephen Porges’, Bessel van der
Kolk’s, and Peter Levine’s research and writings have significantly reworked my
understanding of how the nervous system responds to threat and trauma. As a
result of studying their work, I have gained more respect for the body
especially the autonomic nervous system (ANS).
Since
our life tragedies live in the body, they can be experienced as unpleasant
sensations. For example, it is not uncommon for people with unhealed trauma to
experience sensations such as tightness, freezing, heaviness, tension, shaking
or others in their body. Some people that I have worked with have reported the bodily
experience of “spacious” in the chest area or a sense of vitality after
modifying the original unpleasant event in their imagination. Through my
training in Somatic Experiencing, I have been learning about the importance of
tracking bodily sensations that often come up during one’s healing journey. In
general, this tracking involves paying attention to sensations within the
nervous system and distinguishing between pleasant and unpleasant ones. In my
experience, the more we bring pleasant sensations to our focus, the more
regulated our nervous system can become. Using the imagination to take bad
memories and form something new along with embracing pleasant sensations is the
royal road to regulating our nervous system.
It
is important to note that using our imagination for healing purposes needs to
be done with the help of a professional who has training in healing trauma. We
need to make sure that there is a trained person available in case we become
overwhelmed by the imagination and can't cut it off. Different approaches work
for different people, and there is no one size fits all when it comes to
therapy. It is empowering when we offer people choices regarding interventions
and healing modalities.
When
we use our imagination to edit some of the painful scenes in our history, we
can experience more mastery over situations that we felt powerless at the time.
Imagination as the Sufi mystic Inayat Khan explained “is the stream that feeds
the fountain of your mind." Many
people do not tap into the current of this stream and nourish their mind and
body with its healing energy. By using our imagination to rewrite some of our
life events, we can become an active player and connect with abilities and
potencies that we may not have experienced previously. Our imagination can also
be utilized in any current situation where we experience powerlessness. We can
use it to create a solution or coping strategy for any life challenges we
encounter. As Bessel van der Kolk stated, “Imagination gives us the opportunity
to envision new possibilities—it is an essential launchpad for making our hopes
come true.”
One
way of editing our life story is by choosing an unhappy scene from our
experience, and just like a movie director, use our imagination and reshoot the
scene. Most of our life events have a beginning, middle, and end. We can choose
a segment and change the scene to how we wished it had happened. For some,
changing the beginning of an event makes more sense and for others modifying
the middle or the end feels better. How and what to modify with the intention
of creating an alternative scene is a very personal decision.
I
once worked with an actor who felt devastated after learning his part in a
popular television series was suddenly cut. The producer ended his role by
having him killed in one of the episodes. He felt incredibly sad for not being
in that show anymore. Sharing and receiving empathy along with grieving for the
loss of his role was helpful but not enough. He still had difficulty feeling
confident to pursue his acting career. At some point in our work, I invited him
to imagine a different take from what had happened. A scene that was completely
opposite to the original painful experience. Before starting the re-imagining,
I encouraged him to find a comfortable position and notice how his back was
touching the couch. Bringing his awareness to sensations that were comfortable
in his body helped him be in the present moment in a relaxed way. It is
important to be grounded in the present moment when doing this work. While he
was imagining a more pleasant alternative to his original devastating
experience, he noticed his body became infused with a pleasant warm sensation
along with a change in his breathing and a delightful smile appeared on his
face. As he was sharing how the exercise was helping him not to feel stuck, he
was making a movement with his hands that seemed meaningful. By inviting him to
notice the movement, he realized talking about letting go of defeat led to
opening of his clinched fist. As he was noticing the movement and slowing it
down, he started to sense some tingling in his hands. Something began to change
for him in that moment that words could not describe. As Carl Jung stated,
"Often the hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect has
wrestled in vain." In our follow up meeting, he reported feeling less
bothered by the loss of his acting job and more relaxed in his body. He also
felt more confident showing up for auditions.
Offering this approach to people has been very
interesting. There is a level of unpredictability that makes the process
adventurous. I never know how the person is going to re-imagine a scene or what
the imagination is going to offer. For some people who are spiritually grounded,
I have noticed they tend to receive an offering from their imagination in forms
of helpful figures, guides or healing images. For example, one of the refugees
from the Middle East who came to deal with his war trauma noticed the appearance
of his beloved Sufi teacher who offered him a protective shield made of glowing
light. Receiving the shield from his spiritual teacher gave him an “incredible
sense of safety” that he had never experienced before. His body was mirroring
his imaginal experience with a sense of calmness and relaxation. Having
experienced war and other trauma, he often felt nervous in his body. His
imagination became an important healing resource by offering him an experience
that was in contradiction to the tension he often carried in his body. Every
time he imagined the protective shield, he immediately felt safe.
Many
people who talk about distressing life experiences in therapy are never given
the opportunity to work with the experience in the arena of their imagination. The
sky is the limit when it comes to using our imagination to work with any life
scenarios. I recently met a gay man who felt traumatized growing up gay in a
religious small town. All his past therapy consisted of sharing about his
trauma and making the feelings associated with it more conscious. It was
important and useful for him to address those feelings and have regard for
them. He told me he was done addressing them. He wanted something different
than talking about his trauma. Since he was very much into comic books growing up,
he imagined one of his favorite comic book heroes rescuing him from this
oppressive homophobic environment. The experience felt so real in his body. He
had never experienced so much aliveness in a therapy session that involved
dealing with his traumas of growing up gay in a homophobic and heterosexist
world. For the first time in his life, he experienced the freedom to use his
imagination for the purpose of changing what he could not change as a child. He
was not in denial about the horror he experienced. For once in his life, he
began to feel the opposite of the trauma. A safe therapeutic space can help
people to imagine their painful history in a completely different way. Scenes
can be added, deleted, modified with a different ending.
Our
life traumas or tragedies are not just mental concepts. They are part of our
bodily memories that can impact our nervous system. As Peter Levine stated, “Trauma is not in the
event, but in the nervous system.” There are many paths toward healing those
upsetting life experiences that has kept our nervous system dysregulated. By
working with a licensed professional who has training in “body-inclusive therapy”,
we can work on healing our nervous system from unresolved traumas. Our
imagination can be a very powerful resource and an ally in this process. Trauma
does not have to have the last word.
© Dr. Payam Ghassemlou MFT, Ph.D. is a
Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (Psychotherapist), and a SE student in
private practice in West Hollywood, California.
www.DrPayam.com
