2 Minutes to Modify Intrusive Visual Images

Take Time to Revise What Your Mind Shows You

By Jennifer Rose | August 17, 2014

I have a friend who suffers from recurrent, unwanted visual imagery, and she asked me to write a blog post about how to work with it. 

I learned a technique from Dr. Achala Singhal, a Cardiologist (poetically and actually she is a doctor of the heart) at the Himalayan Institute of Medical Sciences. I met her in New York at the Harnessing Your Power workshop we offered in 2006.

Here in all its simplicity is the technique.

1. Choose an intrusive mental image to work with. Be ready to call it to mind, but don't do that yet.

2. Bring to mind a visual image that gives you a special pleasure. Really get it clear.

3. Now bring to mind that intruding thought. Consciously and carefully surround and imbue it with the image that gives you pleasure. Take your time doing this. 

My resistance to this exercise was high. 

--It won't work.

--It will ruin the thing that gives me pleasure. 

--The negative image will overwhelm the positive one. 

In 2006, I surrounded an intrusive mental image with violets. The image still comes to mind occasionally even in 2014, but it always comes with violets. It never bothers me. I always focus on the violets. They make me feel happy, just as before. The violets won. 

It is worth a try. I would love to hear about your experience if you try this. 

Okay. That was a quicky. It felt like the right time.