a note on…the power of your imagination

notes on freedom

A weekly email series containing easily digestible morsels of info on relational trauma and how to find freedom from it.

THIS WEEK IT’S A NOTE ON…the power of your imagination

One of my favourite nervous system facts is that the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) cannot tell the difference between what’s happening in reality and what happening in our imagination.

This fact explains why you may move into panic and shame when you picture ‘the worst’ possible outcome. It explains why our dreams can feel traumatic. They’re not just dreams – our ANS is responding to the images we’re visualising as if they’re happening in real time.

This fact also explains why visualising lifting weights actually builds muscle. No joke – visualise doing a workout in detail and the body responds as if you’re really in a gym.

This glorious fact also holds huge healing potential.

Trauma healing requires an increased, embodied sense of safety. It’s hard to create this sense of safety out in the real world (particularly at the start of trauma healing). The imagination is a powerful, accessible way to achieve this very needed embodied experience of safety.

A beautiful example of this is how trauma practitioners help clients create a safe space within their imagination before they move into deeper work. Clients take their time, creating a space that feels profoundly safe and comfortable for them personally. Some create a room, others are out in nature. We populate this space with things – plants, weather, vistas, blankets – that feel beautiful and abundant.

Some practitioners also encourage clients to create wise loving, protective guides within the space. Some people visualise a loving ancestor or an elder. Others picture their wisest self, a mother figure or a loyal protective animal. This means that woven into the highly personalised safe space is safe connection with another.

Practitioners often encourage clients to spend time in this safe space between sessions because they well understand that the nervous system will believe that the client is, in fact, spending time in a space that feels deeply safe.

Your imagination is powerful tool that directly impacts the nervous system. You can use it to create new embodied experiences that lay down new pathways.

If you want to experience more safety, joy or confidence in your real life, first imagine these things. Picture a scene – give it life in your mind. Feel it and expand it. Don’t just do it once, do it every day, multiple times a day, for months. This is why manifesting works – because we lay down the pathways in the nervous system.

The healing effects on the mind, body and sense of self are very real indeed and pave the way for us to create more of these things in real life too.

With love,

S. x