Dilê Xwe Vegere: Tedawiya Wêneyên Hêstî

Emotionally-imaginative therapy (EOT), born in Russia, is one of the few modalities recognized in world psychology. It has been developing for about 30 years. In the practice of its creator Nikolai Linde, there are thousands of cases, their analysis formed the basis of the “method of images”, on which psychological assistance is based.

Psîkolojî: Why did you choose images as an instrument of influence?

Nikolai Linde: Emotions affect the state of the body as a whole. Some bodily experiences can be represented in the form of images — visual, sound, olfactory. For example, you can listen to how one or another part of the body sounds — a hand, a head. There is no mysticism — this is a mental representation, the way it seems to you. When I or my clients “listen” themselves, as if they receive energy, they feel good. Those who have some kind of problem in the body experience something negative when “listening” or visualizing.

I have found with every case of practice that the images that a person presents in relation to the body reveal its problematics. And it can not only be analyzed, but also corrected with the help of images. Even such mundane things as, for example, pain.

Our task is to release emotions. Once there was a case: a woman complained of a headache. I ask, what does it sound like? The client imagined: the grinding of rusty iron on rusty iron. “Listen to that sound,” I tell her. She listens, and the sound becomes the screeching of windshield wipers. The pain is slightly reduced. Listens further — and the sound becomes a crunch of snow under boots.

And at that moment the pain disappears. Moreover, she feels freshness in her head, as if a breeze has blown. At the time when I was just starting to practice my technique, it amazed people, as if they had seen a miracle.

Of course, getting rid of an unpleasant symptom in 2-3 minutes is amazing. And for a long time I “had fun” by relieving pain. But gradually expanded the palette. What is the mechanism? A person is invited to imagine on a chair an exciting experience or a subject that evokes emotions.

I ask questions: what does experience look like? How does he behave? What does he say? What do you feel? Where do you feel it in your body?

Sometimes people exclaim: “Some kind of nonsense!” But in EOT, spontaneity is important: that’s what came to mind first, on which we build contact with the image. An animal, a fairy-tale creature, an object, a person… And in the process of contact with the image, the attitude towards it changes and not only the symptom, but also the problem disappears.

Have you tested your method?

Of course, I test all the methods on myself, then on my students, and then I release them into the world. In 1992, I discovered another interesting thing: the imaginary smell has the most powerful effect! I assumed that the sense of smell should have a resource for psychotherapy, and for a long time I wanted to switch to working with smells. The case helped.

My wife and I were in the country, it was time to leave for the city. And then she turns green, grabs her heart. I knew that she was worried about the internal conflict, and where the pain came from. There were no mobile phones then. I understand that we will not be able to find an ambulance quickly. I started acting intuitively. I say: “What does it smell like, imagine?” «It’s a terrible stench, you can’t smell it.» — «Smell!» She began to sniff. At first, the stench intensified, and after a minute it began to decrease. The wife continued to sniff. After 3 minutes, the smell disappeared completely and the aroma of freshness appeared, the face turned pink. The pain is gone.

Smell is a direct access to the chemistry of the body, because emotions and emotional states are also chemistry. Fear is adrenaline, pleasure is dopamine. When we change emotion, we change chemistry.

Do you work not only with pain, but also with emotional states?

I work both with diseases — with allergies, asthma, neurodermatitis, body pains — and with neuroses, phobias, anxiety, emotional dependence. With everything that is considered an obsessive, chronic condition and brings suffering. It’s just that my students and I do it faster than representatives of other areas, sometimes in one session. Sometimes, working through one situation, we open the next one. And in such cases, work becomes long-term, but not for years, as in psychoanalysis, for example. Many images, even those associated with pain, lead us to the root of the problem.

Was at the end of 2013 at a seminar in Kyiv. A question from the audience: “They say you relieve pain?” I suggest that the questioner go to the «hot chair». The woman has a pain in her neck. How exactly does it hurt, I ask: does it hurt, cut, ache, pull? «Like they’re drilling.» She saw behind her the image of a man in a blue coat with a hand drill. Looked closely — it’s her father. “Why is he drilling your neck? Ask him». «Father» says that you have to work, you can not rest. It turns out that the woman decided that she was relaxing at the conference, resting.

In reality, my father never spoke like that, but throughout his life he gave just such a message. He was a musician and even on vacation worked at children’s camps, earning money for the family. I understand that the pain in the neck is her guilt for breaking her father’s covenant. And then I come up with a way to get rid of the “drill” on the go. “Listen, dad worked all his life. Tell him that you allow him to rest, let him do what he wants. The woman sees that «daddy» takes off his robe, puts on a white concert frock coat, takes a violin and leaves to play for his own pleasure. The pain disappears. This is how parental messages respond to us in the body.

And EOT can quickly get rid of unhappy love?

Yes, our know-how is the theory of emotional investment. We have discovered the mechanism of love, including unhappy one. We proceed from the fact that a person in a relationship gives part of the energy, part of himself, warmth, care, support, his heart. And when parting, as a rule, he leaves this part in a partner and experiences pain, because he is “torn” into pieces.

Sometimes people leave themselves entirely in past relationships or in the past in general. We help to withdraw their investments with the help of images, and then the person is freed from the painful experience. Something else remains: pleasant memories, gratitude. One client could not let go of her ex-boyfriend for two years, complaining about the absence of any pleasant emotions. The image of her heart appeared as a bright blue ball. And we took that ball with her, freeing her life for joy.

What do the images mean?

Now there are more than 200 images in our dictionary. But it has yet to be completed. Some symbols resemble those described by Freud. But we also found our images. For example, the often abandoned, unwanted inner child appears as a rat that bites the client. And we «tame» this rat, and the problem — pain or a bad emotional state — goes away. Here we rely on transactional analysis, but Bern does not state that as a result of parental prescriptions and a lack of love, there is a hidden split with one’s inner child. The climax in EOT when working with this part of our “I” is when it enters the body of the client.

Do you need to go into a trance state to imagine an image?

There is no special condition for a client in EOT! I’m tired of fighting back. I do not work with hypnosis, because I am sure that the suggested messages do not change the root cause of the condition. Imagination is a tool available to everyone. A student on a test looks out the window, it looks like a raven is counting. In fact, he is engaged in his inner world, where he imagines how he plays football, or remembers how his mother scolded him. And this is a huge resource for working with images.