Altering the pictures

Negative images

Disturbing images can be very invasive and disrupt our emotional stability. They may be memories, or workings of our ever active imaginations. Either way, it doesn’t matter where they’ve come from, what matters is the effect they are having on us and on our well being. It may feel like they are uncontrollable, vividly flashing into our mind and causing us distress. Practise these simple techniques daily and their frequency and intensity will diminish.

Bring up the image, make it clear and look at it. Move it away from you so you are looking at it from a distance. Now drain the colour out of it and make it smaller. Dullen the contrast so that it is blurry and dark and out of focus. Make it even smaller. Turn off any movement and any sound and then get rid of it. You can flick it away, blow it up, set fire to it, anything you like really. I had a client who used to shoot a lot and had him shoot all of his images.

Positive images

Basically you can do the opposite with positive images to enhance your experiences and make them more of a focus in your memories.

Bring up a happy memory or a good experience. Make the image bright and big. Step into that image and see it as if you are part of the scene, look around. Notice the colours and the noises and the good feelings. Enhance them, make the colours brighter, the noise louder (unless you’re enjoying peace and quiet obviously) and focus on the good feelings you are generating. Enjoy this and feel the good feelings in your body, moving them up down and around your body.

Changing them over

For this you will need two images or experiences, one positive and one negative. If you haven’t done the first and second parts of this exercise, take a moment to read them through and find two suitable memories.

Take the positive memory, make it big and bright and bold and get right into the picture and the feelings associated with that picture. Then shrink it down and leave it in the bottom corner of your mind’s eye as a small, dark postage stamp.

Now bring up the negative image. Let it fill the picture and drain the colour out of it, so that it is black and white.

In a moment, I want you to very quickly swap these images over. In a matter of less than a second, you are two shrink the negative image down to the size of a small dark postage stamp, and in it’s place, put the big, bright happy memory as your main image. Do this very quickly five times.

Then shut your eyes, open your eyes and repeat another set of five image swaps.