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.

licensed cleaning services Park Ridge ..

In The News:

Chrome extension spyware disguised as a free VPN service highlights security risks after it captured private browsing data from trusted sites.

New research shows how fatty acids in cooking oil can safely dissolve and recover silver from circuit boards without harmful chemicals or environmental damage.

The Fox News AI newsletter gives you information on the latest AI technology advancements, and about the challenges and opportunities AI presents now and for the future.

Anthropic investigates alarming AI abuse case where hacker automated entire cybercrime campaign using Claude, stealing sensitive data from defense and healthcare firms.

TikTok, Meta and YouTube restrict Charlie Kirk shooting videos with age gates and warnings while X faces criticism for allowing continued circulation.

Cybercriminals use fake troubleshooting websites to trick Mac users into running terminal commands that install Shamos malware through ClickFix tactics.

San Francisco startup Fable launches Showrunner, an AI platform dubbed the 'Netflix of AI' that generates animated episodes from text descriptions with Amazon support.

Apple raised iPhone prices for some models despite receiving tariff relief from President Donald Trump, with the new lineup starting at $799 for the base model.

A two-story 3D concrete printed home in Western Australia demonstrates faster construction methods that could reshape American housing amid rising costs.

Credit scores remain important during retirement for insurance rates and housing applications, while seniors become prime targets for identity theft and financial scams.

Scammers now send unexpected packages with QR codes that redirect victims to fraudulent websites or download malicious software to steal sensitive information.

Meeting AI tools record private conversations alongside work discussions, creating privacy risks that can be managed with proper settings and awareness.

Hotel privacy concerns are valid but rare, with methods to detect hidden tech using smartphone flashlights, mirror tests and scanning apps.

Improve your Wi-Fi speed and reliability with 10 simple router optimization tips that don't require special apps or expensive subscriptions.

A Columbia University breach exposed names, Social Security numbers and academic records of nearly 869,000 people, with notifications beginning in August.

Rental car drivers use AI-powered apps like Proofr to protect themselves from unfair damage fees as major companies deploy automated inspection tools.

Fox News' AI newsletter brings you the latest on technology advancements around artificial intelligence.

OnTrac data breach between April 13-15, 2025, exposed personal information of over 40,000 people including Social Security numbers and medical records.

A woman named Wika announces her engagement to an AI chatbot sparking worldwide debate about virtual relationships and technology.

The notorious people search site National Public Data relaunches despite a previous breach affecting 3 billion individuals, raising fresh privacy concerns.

Revolutionary TRAUMAGEL gel controls life-threatening bleeding from gunshot wounds and traumatic injuries, helping first responders prevent prehospital deaths.

Protect your home network by enabling proper encryption, creating strong passwords, checking connected devices and using VPN and antivirus software.

The Navy's solar-powered Skydweller drone flew nonstop for 73 hours in Mississippi, proving renewable energy can power long-endurance military missions.

Moving and downsizing expose seniors to identity theft and scams as data brokers collect real estate records and personal information to sell to criminals.

ShengShu's Vidar technology revolutionizes humanoid robot training by using AI-generated synthetic video, reducing required training data from hours to just 20 minutes.

Heal Emotional Difficulties With Your Imagination

Spirituality