How Harnessing Your Imagination Can Improve Your Mood
Imagination can impact our perception, cognition and emotion and there is growing evidence to suggest it enhances real world performance and induces neural plasticity.
Having trained in Cognitive Behavioural Hypnotherapy, I often use mental imagery and hypnotherapy to harness the power of my clients imaginations. Amazingly, there is little difference to the brain between experiencing an event directly, in real life, and experiencing an imagined version. In this blog post I look at what imagination is, how you may be using your imagination more than you think and how it can be used to improve your mood.
Imagination or Visualisation
You probably use your imagination in daily life without even thinking about it; for example, reading a book and visualising the characters or imagining how delicious that take-away dinner you’re having tonight will be. Children have particularly amazing imagination’s, but we can still tap into this ability as an adult.
Nonetheless, some people feel that they aren’t very good at visualising. It is actually quite common not to be able to conjure a super clear, photographic image when visualising and that’s totally ok. Being unable to visualise any mental images at all is less common and is called Aphantasia.
I prefer to use the term imagination in my work as imagination involves the full sensory experience. Where visualising involves creating a mental picture, imagination also includes the other senses; sound, smell, touch and taste. We can draw on these senses to create a more vivid mental experience.
The Imagination and Worry
One example of the power of your imagination that you may be familiar with is worry. Worry is future-oriented and often involves ‘what if’ questions about hypothetical scenarios. As well as experiencing thoughts, you may also experience catastrophic imagery or intrusive images. As you imagine the scenario, it can emotionally and physically feel like it is happening right now. Hormones are released by the brain when it feels under threat regardless of whether the threat is real or imagined.
For example, you may have a work presentation coming up. You are worried about messing it up and your mind going blank. As you think about this and picture the scenario in your mind’s eye you start feeling panicky and anxious.
If we couldn’t use our imagination we wouldn’t be able to do this. This can be really useful as it helps keeps us safe. However, when worry and anxiety becomes chronic, our imagination can be less helpful and even becomes more heightened. We may easily spiral into visualising a myriad of potential hypothetical threatening scenarios.
Acceptance and understanding of how our brain works can be a useful way of creating some distance from these thoughts and images. And remember - if we can use the imagination to evoke scary or unpleasant feelings we can also learn to use it to do the opposite and evoke positive, calm feelings.
How your imagination can help you
The power of the imagination has been known in sports psychology for a long time and many athletes use visualisation to improve their performance. For example, both Tom Daley and Michael Phelps believe that visualisation was a key factor in their success.
If you’re still not convinced about the power of the imagination, studies have even found it can create physical changes in body strength. One particular study asked participants to spend 15 minutes a day, 5 times a week, for 6 weeks imagining they were lifting something heavy using their forearms. Some of the participants imagined feeling themselves lifting the weights as if they were doing it in real life (internal imagery) and others imagined watching themselves practising from outside their body, kind of like watching a movie (external imagery). There was also a control group who performed no practice. Those who used internal imagery showed an 11% increase in strength versus the control group who performed no practice and actually seemed slightly weaker. I think this highlights the very real effects the imagination can have in the body.
You might be wondering how this is relevant if you’re not a professional sports player. But using your imagination can be helpful in several ways and this isn’t just limited to the sports world.
Some of the benefits of using mental imagery include:
Emotional and behavioural responses can be rehearsed in our imagination. This can help us practice coping skills and prepare for situations before going into them in real life. It can also change the pattern the brain has of treating new events, people, places or scenarios as potentially threatening. By imagining the scenario, you essentially trick the brain into feeling familiar with it already, increasing feelings of confidence.
You can imagine overcoming potential obstacles and achieving your goal. Research has shown that mental rehearsal of a desired goal may invoke the same brain networks as the actual experience.
As I mentioned earlier, we can evoke feelings of relaxation and calm. One tool that can be particularly effective for this is safe place imagery.
It can be motivational. For example, you can imagine your ideal future-self who has overcome a particular struggle and this can motivate you to work towards your goal.
It can be used in mindfulness, acceptance and self-compassion work.
It can be used during exposure therapy. When people are fearful of something they often, understandably, avoid it. Although this may temporarily reduce fear, it does not help in the long-term. Exposure therapy can be used to help break the pattern of avoidance and fear. This is done in a graduated way and in a safe environment. Research has found that deliberate imagined simulations of a stimuli associated with anxiety (such as an aeroplane if you are afraid of flying) can extinguish threat responses. Imaginal exposure can be a useful stepping-stone towards real-life exposure and can be used between real-life exposure practices. It may also be helpful where regular real-life exposure is not practical. For example, if you fear flying but it is not practical to regularly practice going to the airport. .
Another reason using the imagination may be helpful is by increasing internal locus of control. If you have an internal locus of control, you perceive that you have personal control and responsibility over your life, compared to believing that things are due to external, uncontrollable forces, such as luck. Those with a high internal locus of control tend to take responsibility for future behaviours, believing they can determine their future. Using the imagination to increase internal locus of control may be beneficial by altering the way future threats are approached.
It can induce neuroplasticity. This is the brain’s ability to change, strengthen and rewire connections in response to experiences. The more frequently we perform a particular behaviour or thought pattern, the stronger and more efficient the associated connections between neurons become.
Mental imagery is something I integrate into my work with clients in a number of ways. It can be really beneficial, motivational and enjoyable.
If you are interested in working together, please do get in touch and we can arrange a free, informal 15-minute chat. You can also find me on Instagram @therapywithamy_
References
Reddan, M. C., Wager, T. D., Schiller, D. (2018) Attenuating neural threat expression with imagination. Neuron. 100(4), p.993-1005.
Reiser, M., Busch, D., and Munzert, J. (2011) Strength gains by motor imagery with different ratios of physical to mental practice. Frontiers in Psychology. 2(194), p.1-8.
Yao, W. X., Ranganathan, V., K., Allexandre D., Siemionow, V., Yue, G. H. (2013) Kinesthetic imagery training of forceful muscle contractions increases brain signal and muscle strength. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. 7(561), 1-6.