March 2018

By Ian Goldsmith, Psychologist Counselling and therapy are often viewed as a mysterious process. Indeed I sometimes wonder whether those in our field deliberately try to portray the process as mysterious. Certainly us humans are complicated characters, however it seems to me that one of our tasks as a counsellor/therapist is to help others understand themselves and their actions as simply as possible. Talking about issues and discussing them in particular ways is an important and useful part of the way therapy and counselling proceed. However sometimes, in the search for efficiency or because discussion is not helping, other strategies can be helpful. The only way us humans get information into our system is through our five senses. When we think of something, say, an event from the past, we will typically represent it in our heads in one of these five sense modalities. Hence, if I ask you to think of a fire engine, one of my favourite examples, how do you think of it. Most people will say they “see” a red truck, in their minds eye, as it were. Some may say they “hear” the siren. In the first instance the person made a picture in their head! It is like they have a camera or movie projector in their brain. This can be important information as the person probably makes pictures about lots of things. Now in the course of therapy, a persons pictures may change as they discuss the issue and thus, when they think about the problem or issue again they represent it to themselves differently. However, what if we helped the person to simply experiment with changing the picture without much discussion at all. This can be done and can help significantly. If I ask you to return to the picture of the fire engine for a moment. Can you make this picture bigger, smaller, closer, further away, brighter, now black and white, out of focus, still, moving, moving fast, slow, backwards and so on. Some people have no trouble with this others a bit more so. We can all change the form of the pictures and, incidentally, the sounds, we recall when we think. What is interesting when people do this, particularly with unpleasant events they remember, some changes in a picture of the event will be experienced as more unpleasant and some as less. If, for example, I ask a person to change the picture of an unpleasant recollection, say an argument with someone they are telling me about, and put the picture off in the distance so that it is small and indistinct their face often lightens, their breathing eases and they relax. I might ask them to explore putting the picture ”behind them” to see what this is like, etc. There are many variations of this approach, each one’s effectiveness determined by what the person prefers. A particular advantage is that it is not necessary for me, as therapist, to know exactly what is in the picture. This means that people can be assisted to explore different ‘perspectives’ without having to divulge intimate or personal material if they do not want to. Sexual abuse survivors, for example, can benefit from such an approach. Therapy, then, is not just talk, it is the skilled and respectful use of a persons own processes to help them explore different ways of experiencing themselves and others.