Strategies to Manage Common Characteristics of Youth with Chronic Pain, Pt. 2
Harnessing Your Child’s Creativity with Guided Imagery Exercises
In my last blog, I described techniques to help your sensitive child not get bogged down by the emotions of others. Besides sensitivity, another common characteristic of youth with chronic pain is creativity.
While creativity is typically a wonderful attribute, it can also cause their minds to come up with all sorts of negative scenarios concerning their health struggles. We want to get the most out of their creativity to help them heal. CHYP was founded on the principal that using creativity in the form of the arts, gardening, baking—anything that uses some form of creativity—can be healing.
Creative Visualization
We can also capitalize on their creativity through guided imagery to directly impact physical sensations—there is significant research showing that imagery can affect how our bodies feel. Some of the parents in my support group found it beneficial, especially with their younger kids or willing teens, to use guided imagery to help their child gain control over their healing. Younger children are particularly good at allowing their minds to access creative places without self-censorship and reason hindering them.
Here are three simple guided imagery exercises that you can do with your child. These are in no way a substitute for seeking out hypnotherapy as a treatment modality. True hypnotherapy is complex and should be done with a trained practitioner.
Each of these will work best if they are preceded by your child closing their eyes and taking a few deep breaths, softening their body, or doing whatever will relax and focus them on the visualization.
Technique No. 1: Visualize the Brain as an Airplane Cockpit
Have your child imagine what the cockpit of an airplane looks like. If they don’t know, show them some images online. Have them describe all the buttons, switches, levers, and gears. Tell them to imagine that the inside of their brain looks like this, and each of the switches controls the feeling to a particular part of their brain.
Have your child close their eyes. Have them find the control mechanism, or lever, for the part of their body that hurts. Have them describe what it looks like. What color is it? Does it have grooves? What is the shape? What type of mechanism is it? How does it control the level of feeling?
Once your child finds it and describes it, cue them to play around with the lever until it gives the right amount of feeling to that part of the body. Do not say that changing the intensity of the lever will take the pain away, as that will interfere with the exercise.
Suggest that once the right amount of feeling is there, they might want to put some sort of pin or locking mechanism to keep it there. Suggest, though, that sometimes they might want a different level of feeling, and can go in and change it at any time.
I worked with a 9-year-old boy who, instead, said that there was only one mechanism in his brain with two prongs. One part had a dial that he could turn to the part of the body he wanted to target, and the other part was used to control the intensity. That is an example of how kids use their creativity to find their own system and visualization. He even said one week that he needed to install a new operating system in the mechanism, and then reboot it!
Technique No. 2: Visualize the Opposite of Pain
Another visualization that parents in my group wanted me to share in a blog is to guide your child to soothe pain by imagining the opposite characteristics of the pain entering the body.
Start by asking your child to describe the sensation in the uncomfortable part of their body. What color is it? What shape is it? What temperature is it? What texture is it? Then, have one or both of you come up with a visualization that will provide the opposite of those.
For example, let’s say that your child describes their pain as a red, hot, spikey blob. You can have them imagine little firefighters (if your child is young) coming into the part of the body that is in pain and spraying it with water—blue in color (to counter the red) and cool (to counter the heat). As the water flows, it is strong enough to flatten the spikes and smooth out the blob.
There are no rules. It can be as creative as you or your child wants. One of my clients imagined cooling irons flattening the spikes. An older child might imagine a cool blue mist of thin spray paint that spritzes over the area with each exhale until, eventually, the entire area is covered in blue instead of red.
Technique No. 3: Savor Feeling Nothing
A third technique is to have your child focus on one part of the body that feels okay. If your child says that everything hurts, suggest the tip of the nose or an earlobe. Then have your child notice how that part feels—encourage them to really enjoy the sensation of feeling basically nothing. Tell the child to savor it and have gratitude for it.
Then, guide them towards that sensation spreading to a part of their body that is next to that part. They can use their creativity to imagine how the feeling spreads—is it in a fluid, a specific color of light, a breeze? Then, guide them towards expanding that feeling until it reaches the part of the body that hurts, and have that sensation of feeling nothing spread over that part.
It can be fun and collaborative to harness your child’s creativity (and yours!) to affect sensations in their body. With practice, it can get easier to feel these changes. Even if your child can only feel a change for a few seconds, it will show them that their mind can have some control over their body. This realization reinforces the mind-body connection, which is an important concept in accessing treatments and healing.
Good stuff. curious to try!