Home
>
Spirituality
>
Heal Emotional Difficulties With Your Imagination

Heal Emotional Difficulties With Your Imagination

How did an artist accidently learn healing visualizations and improve his life? How can you do the same? Read on.

Last year a family counselor approached me and said, "You're an artist, why don't you do up some feeling cards for us?" Looking confused, I asked, "what are feeling cards?"

"When all else fails, she replied, we use them to stimulate therapeutic conversations with clients and their families." She showed me a set of improvised cards with pictures of facial expressions on them and on the bottom of each card was the appropriate emotion word: anger, happy, sad, etc.

"What's wrong with these?", I asked.

"For one, we don't have kids in the set, and for two, there aren't any female faces either."

I thought the idea was intriguing, and designed a set with her criteria in mind. She found my new set quite useful, and based on her positive evaluation, I decided to print up a batch and make them more widely available to service providers in helping professions.

Suddenly, I was in the "therapy" business, something I didn't know anything about, and worse, I didn't think that I would ever use my own product. The cards seemed too simplistic, and moreover, I just "made the faces up" and knew them all too well. If they didn't have value for me, how was I going to introduce them?

Was I surprised one day, while preparing for a counseling conference, to notice that attention to detail began to look a lot like unhealthy obsession over too many details. It hit me that my obsession had a name when one of the feeling card faces popped into my head.

Worry! The instant I "saw" and named the feeling, I immediately relaxed and found humor in my own reaction.

Wow! I thought, these family counselors are really on to something. I began to "see" other things as well. For example, my long time partner and confident happens to be very astute, generous, and unfailingly helpful. She could see that I was looking a little anxious and knew that I felt vulnerable as a reclusive artist about to exhibit at a professional convention for the first time.

While I may have looked anxious, I actually felt terrified. I spend most of my time in the studio, and as far as I was concerned, this was really "steppin' out. I irrationally interpreted her suggestions and ideas for improvements as criticism, as being wrong. I thought she was being mean and I reacted in kind. She, in turn, wondered what she was doing with such a jerk and began to get frustrated.

"You know," she said, by this time she was really angry, "there are lots of things you're good at, but you're not perfect, and you really need some help." "Stop being a nincompoop!"

"You mean like this?," and I crossed my eyes, pulled at my ears, and stuck out my tongue.

She was right of course. Our combined energies were so much more effective and powerful than anything I could do myself. Yet there I was, unconsciously sliding into fear, and the angry defensiveness that came with it. The more I began picturing anger or fear as a face, the more I began recognizing and naming the emotion as I was feeling it. The benefits were almost immediate.

We still disagree, being strong individuals with differing ideas, but the time spent "defending" diminishes with each glimpse of a bigger, more meaningful, picture. It is a satisfying feeling, and "coincides" with increasing moments of feeling thankful.

I don't think visualizing emotions is a cure, but it may well be a healing process. Irrational fear wounds, and any moment of emotional recognition, no matter how small, is an opening. In spiritual language, it represents a victory over the cold isolation and restriction of fear and a big move closer to the warm family of emotions centered in love.

Much has been written about love. Recently, my son Alex, a math and physics major at university, began telling me that he loved me. I felt uncomfortable to hear it at first. "What are they teaching you in math class?," I wondered out loud.

"Nothing about love, I can tell you that," he said, "and that's the problem. "In mathematics, we learn that the infinite exists, but that it doesn't have any purpose."

"What's that got to do with love?," I queried.

"Being centered in love," he said, "is like living with the infinite, which I think is divine."

"That's an interesting twist on science and math, I said, "you're talking about freedom with purpose."

"That's it, dad!" My son is smarter than his father, but I don't tell him that..I do, however, feel comfortable these days when he says, "I love you dad".

So, with help from Alex, I'm adding my personal observation to the vast literature on love by stating that love emerges when fear is conquered and the freedom of choice begins. How human is that?

Anyone deciding to visualize emotions can draw and paint facial expressions on their own. It doesn't matter what the art looks like, as long as it is personally meaningful. Assemble your separate faces on a poster and put them up on a wall for convenient reference. I highly recommend trying it out and you don't need to be an artist to do this.

Professional feeling faces are available, ranging from simple icons to the more complex and expressive depictions found at this writer's site.

Happy visualizations and may the Face be with you!

John Beder, BFA, AOCA, artist and kids book illustrator lives and walks his dogs on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. He began kids book illustrator last year.

whole house cleaning Deerfield ..

In The News:

Apple's new Sleep Score feature gives you a rating for your nightly rest quality. Learn how to set it up on your Apple Watch and iPhone today.

Essential phone settings to enable before losing your device, including Find My network, location services and security features for iPhone and Android.

The Fox News AI Newsletter gives readers the latest AI technology advancements, covering the challenges and opportunities AI presents.

Cybersecurity research shows weak passwords remain a major threat, with simple patterns and number sequences putting millions of accounts at risk.

New Android malware BankBot YNRK silences phones, steals banking data and drains crypto wallets automatically. Learn how this advanced threat works.

FDA approves first human trial for Paradromics' brain-computer interface that could restore speech for paralyzed patients through neural technology.

New phishing platform QRR targets Microsoft 365 users across 1,000 domains in 90 countries. Learn how to spot fake login pages and protect your accounts.

OpenTable now uses AI to track your dining habits and share insights with restaurants. Learn what data they collect and how to protect your privacy.

Google's discontinued Nest thermostats still secretly upload home data to company servers despite losing smart features, raising serious privacy concerns.

New Android malware NGate steals NFC payment codes in real-time, allowing criminals to withdraw cash from ATMs without your card. Learn protection tips.

DoorDash confirms data breach exposing customer names, emails, addresses after social engineering attack. Learn how to protect yourself from scams.

Concerned about Google's AI scanning your Gmail? Learn how to disable Gemini features that access your emails, Drive files and Chat messages for privacy.

Google warns Android users about dangerous fake VPN apps hiding malware that steals passwords, banking details and personal data from phones and tablets.

Apple's digital passport feature lets iPhone users breeze through TSA checkpoints this holiday season using Digital ID technology at 250+ airports.

A new phishing scam targets family photos with fake "Cloud Storage Full" alerts. Criminals steal credit card information through fake sites. Learn protection tips.

South Korean scientists create ultra-thin fabric muscles that turn clothes into robotic assistants, lifting 33 pounds while weighing under half an ounce.

Archer Aviation has acquired Hawthorne Airport for $126M to launch an LA air taxi network ahead of the 2028 Olympics, featuring AI-powered eVTOL operations and next-gen aviation tech.

Stay up to date on the latest AI technology advancements and learn about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

Fake AI apps disguised as "ChatGPT" and "DALL·E" are flooding app stores with dangerous malware that steals data and monitors users without detection.

Fake buyers demand specific vehicle reports from unknown sites to steal credit card information from car sellers, but warning signs can help identify these scams before paying.

Android users can now manage apps across multiple devices more easily with Google Play Store's updated remote uninstall button in the latest update.

NASA's Perseverance rover discovers shiny metallic rock on Mars that could be a meteorite from an ancient asteroid, containing high levels of iron and nickel.

Holiday scams spike during Black Friday and Cyber Monday as criminals exploit your leaked personal data. Learn how to protect yourself from fake stores and phishing.

Commerce Department proposes TP-Link router ban over Chinese security risks. Learn how this potential prohibition could affect your home network and devices.

Hyundai AutoEver America suffered a data breach affecting 2,000 current and former employees, exposing names, Social Security numbers and driver's license information.

Heal Emotional Difficulties With Your Imagination

Spirituality