Monday, March 11, 2013

Tools and skills: Calming and safe place visualization


Many people that I have talked to throughout the years are on the lookout and in search for solutions, prescriptions, and things to do to improve their current mental health situation. I often share this wonderful tool, which proved very helpful to many of my clients. Now, here is a caveat. In order for this tool to be helpful it has to be learned, practiced, and then used. It seems obvious. However, folks often forget this banal truth and expect the tool to work just because they read about it and maybe did it once.
     Calming or safe place visualization is a tool that is helpful in managing anxiety, dealing with stress, re-establishing sense of safety after painful and traumatic experiences, and improving mood.
     This is how it works:
1.     Identify a place that seems calming to you. It may be a natural scene, like an ocean beach or a meadow. It may be a man-made place, like a house or a room or a cave. It may be real, such as a cabin you visited in the past, or completely imaginary, such as a yurt on a faraway star. There are two very important considerations, when you work on identifying the calming place:
a.     Nothing remotely negative has ever happened there. For example, often people choose their former room in the childhood house. This place maybe associated with a lot of positive memories and experiences. However, for most folks something not that pleasant probably happened in that room as well. Maybe they were punished and isolated there at one point or had a fight with their friend or a sibling there. In those kinds of situations, the place can be easily “contaminated” by not so pleasant and relaxing feelings stemming from the past memories.
b.     The image of the place makes you feel good, such as calm, relaxed, joyful, safe and so forth. If this is not the case, choose a different place or a different image.
2.     Give this place a name, so that you can pull it up in your mind easily. I suggest that the name is simple but specific. For example, “Blue condo on the beach” or “Moon cave” or “Eagle Mountain”. It is again important that this name has only positive or neutral associations in your mind.
3.     After you identified a place and gave it a name, you are ready for visualization. Recording posted in this post will lead you through further developing and strengthening this place in your mind. It is 11-12 minutes long. I suggest that you listen to it during the time when you are not likely to be interrupted.



4.     Once you listened to the recording several times in the course of several days or a week, you are ready to start practicing without the recording. I suggest taking few minutes every day to imagine that you are in that calming place, while breathing deeply and relaxing. The best times to practice are the following: just before you fall asleep in the evening and the first thing after you wake up in the morning. Practicing daily for a week will strengthen the image and its association to relaxation response.
5.     After a week of practicing during generally calm times, you can start using this image to cope with stressful situations. Say you are in a stressful meeting at work and feeling so frustrated that you are ready to pull your hair out. Allow yourself to withdraw from discussion for a few moments. Take a mental pause, recall the name of your calming place, and imagine that you are there. Breathe deeply as your mind is relaxing into the image of that place. When you are ready or need to leave the calming place, remind yourself that you can come back anytime. Leave the place in your imagination and bring focus of your attention back to the meeting.
Relaxing place is a wonderful coping tool if used on the regular basis. Take any opportunity to practice the safe place, such as standing in line at the grocery store, stopping your car at the red light, being put on hold during a phone conversation, during a tense conversation and so forth.
Let me know what experiences you had with this tool and whether you have any questions or concerns about it.

No comments:

Post a Comment