Images versus words

[vaneramos]

We think in different ways, sometimes verbally and sometimes visually. This may cause confusion if you try to address dysfunctional thinking. Cognitive-behavioural therapy widely employs thought records to analyse causes of anxiety and depression, and to alter mistaken beliefs. This misses the mark with visual thinking.

The Anxiety & Phobia Workbook by Edmund J. Bourne, Ph.D., describes thought records and their application. Understanding thought records for social anxiety on About.com also outlines their use, and you can find a PDF file sample online. On several occasions I have encountered group and individual therapists recommending their use. The same short courses and sessions omitted any discussion of visualization.

Bourne does not. His chapter on visualization begins thus: "Imagery is one of the most basic ways in which your mind stores and represents information."

While I have found thought records occasionally useful, sometimes social anxiety defies efforts to verbalize it. This became vividly evident to me yesterday while driving home. I kept worrying about an incident that happened at work. I attempted to apply the thought record process, but it failed because the memory consisted not of words. It involved a series of images in which I kept replaying someone's facial expressions and body language, and my emotional response to them. Sometimes we describe dysfunctional thoughts as broken tape recordings, but this was a video loop.

David Abram prepared me for this insight. His book Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology preaches the importance of meshing our linguistic intelligence with sensual perception. He is fond of pointing out how our society prefers to separate rational analysis from sensory experience.

Meanwhile I have noticed how hard it can be to recall and record dreams because they consist primarily of visual narratives. Such was the case with the waking dream I recorded here a few days ago. I experienced it as written text on the page, however it evoked elaborate imagery. The events of my dreams usually play against an architecture incredibly baroque. It feels essential to the meaning and yet often gets omitted in transcription because I can't describe it. How would you interpret something I attempted to describe as a series of "tiny rooms, or medallions or puddings"?

Stephanie Dowrick, my favourite self-therapy writer, relies largely on guided meditations involving visualization. Perhaps I should revisit her Intimacy and Solitude and delve into Bourne's chapter, so far unread. I suspect this mode of work might prove more effective—and enjoyable—than thought records.