Imagine a double edged sword… There we go, I bet you did, whether you wanted to or not. Human minds are suggestible like that. This feat of thinking of a sword was probably done using a combination of imagery of swords that you have already seen before, or using completely new elements. In other words, you used your imagination. Imaginations are great at synthesising new things from existing material or filling in the gaps with something else. Having an imagination is a wonderful tool for survival, and is probably one of the main reasons that the human race has survived and thrived as well as it has for the last few thousand years.
However, like the sword you imagined, our imagination is double edged. One thing that humans are not very good at dealing with are unknowns. They tend to cause that troubling range of reactions known as anxiety. This is because an unknown represents a possible threat to our survival. Try something out. Picture your front door on a dark winter’s night. You open the door slowly and as you go in, you notice that the room/hallway is completely dark. You hear a tiny bang from the far side of the room. What is going on in your mind? I expect you may have thought that someone was in your house. Perhaps you had left something on and it had knocked an object over. The more imaginative amongst you might have pictured a monster lurking in the depths of the shadows. It is unlikely you thought of something nicer, like your pet being there waiting for you, or a relative/partner about to surprise you with a present or cake. That is because, filling in the blanks with something threatening gets our bodies ready in case there is a danger. It speeds up our heart and breathing rates, and tenses our muscles.
In the example I gave above, it is probably useful that you are ready with a survival response, especially if you do not have someone you’ve given a spare key to, or don’t have a pet. Unfortunately, our imaginations can come into play in a whole variety of situations, many of which are not threatening in a rational sense. Someone suffering from extreme anxiety may find it difficult entering any unknown place, for example a shop, simply for the fact that it is unknown. Their imaginations may start to fill it all sorts of dangers or hazards which can either cause harm or distressing emotions. I remember when I taught, at the start of every academic year dreading the first lesson with a new class. I had either learnt from previous experience that things might be difficult, or I had heard a host of messages from my well-meaning colleagues about particular groups or individuals. The key was that it was an unknown and so my imagination went into overdrive, imagining all of the things that might go wrong; with many of the scenarios ending with me running out of the room in tears. Fortunately, that never came to pass. It does highlight that we will always be faced with unknowns, from that dark room to the biggest unknown of them all; the future.
So if one edge of the sword is continually filling in the blanks with possible threats and bogey men to jump out at us, what is the other edge? The answer is creativity. I would argue that many species of animal are able to respond to the environment in a way which causes anxiety to keep them safe. It takes a bit more of a leap to be able to use an imagination to think of a creative solution to the problem. This can be a leap, and may require some effort, as it uses a different, more rational part of the brain to the first anxiety inducing response. This is why it is best done when in a calm and relaxed state. Listing what could go wrong in any given situation is easy, it takes a different type of imagination to consider all the wonderful things that could go right. Even if there is a list of possible problems, how often do we pause or stop and actually question them in a creative way? If our minds can come up with all those terrible things that might be there or might happen, surely it can come up with more positive and helpful things to fill in the gaps. An ex-colleague from work borrowed a phrase from the Simpsons in an email once which seems appropriate; the ‘crisitunity’. Out of a crisis, sometimes unexpected opportunities can arise. I cannot remember what the actual example was, but I do remember a department ordering too much large size paper. Rather than stressing about the inflated order, the paper was offered to other departments as a planning resource for group working, as it could cover a whole desk. It was so successful and popular, that it was adopted as a regular strategy. The point is, that when put to work, the human imagination is capable of forming some pretty remarkable ideas.
How might this realisation of the different effects of imagination be harnessed? I offer a few suggestions below which may be of help:
Relax: In order to utilise the powers of our imagination in this creative sense, I have suggested that the mind needs to be in a clam place. This is where mindfulness or another relaxation technique can come in handy. It can allow you to pause and ground yourself in reality so that you can focus on solutions.
Failure to plan is planning to fail: The other way you can use your calm mind is through rational preparation. If there is something in the future, for which you mind has already come up with a range of catastrophic or disastrous possibilities, use a calm time beforehand to plan for how you will deal with it. You can take each of your possibilities and look at and challenge them in a rational way to decide how likely they are to happen. If they realistically might happen, what does your imagination suggest you could do about it? Don’t hold back, let your imagination run wild. You can look at these solutions rationally later (many of the problems were probably highly irrational); but one or two will probably work. I should note that planning rationally is not worrying. Worry is fixating on the more negative and irrational imagies filling the gaps.
Double vision: The last thing you can do is actually use your imagination to visualise success. If the event you are worried about were a coin, you are probably used to fixating and imagining on one side of it all the time; the anxiety causing one. So why not flip it over and imagine the opposite, more fulfilling and aspirational side. Being as the event is in the future, and so completely unknown, surely both sides should be given equal time in your mind.
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