The Experiences We Want More Of: Using Positive Memories and Imagination in Therapy

Feb 18

Trauma therapy understandably spends a lot of time talking about difficult experiences: what happened, what still hurts, what triggers you now, and what you would like to stop feeling.

But therapy doesn't always have to begin with what's wrong.

Sometimes it's equally useful to ask: When have you felt most like yourself?

Maybe there was a moment when you felt completely safe. Free. Capable. Peaceful. Connected. Strong. Playful. At home in your own body. Maybe it lasted an afternoon, or five minutes. Maybe it was a genuinely extraordinary experience. Or maybe nothing particularly important was happening—you were lying in the sun with your dog, swimming in the ocean, laughing with someone you trusted, making something, standing somewhere beautiful, or driving alone with the windows down.

Psychologists have sometimes called particularly powerful versions of these moments peak experiences: experiences that stand apart because of their intensity, meaning, or sense of awe and fulfillment.

But they don't have to be spectacular to matter.

A memory is more than the story of what happened

Think of a good memory and notice what happens if you slow it down.

Where are you? What can you see? Is anyone with you? What sounds are there? What's the temperature? What can you smell? What does your body feel like? And perhaps most importantly, what do you feel about yourself in that moment?

The more completely you bring a memory to mind, the more you may notice some of the experience returning with it. Maybe your shoulders relax. You smile. Your breathing changes. You notice warmth, energy, calm, or a sense of spaciousness.

This isn't the same as literally being back there, of course. But memories can evoke emotional and physical responses in the present, and that makes positive memories potentially useful in therapy.

Rather than remembering only what happened, we can pay attention to the experience associated with the memory: This is what safety feels like. This is what freedom feels like. This is what it feels like to trust myself.

Positive experiences can become resources

In EMDR therapy, positive memories and imagined experiences can be developed as resources. My training in Attachment-Focused EMDR particularly influences how I use this kind of work.

A resource might be a memory of feeling protected, competent, nurtured, peaceful, or connected. It might involve a real person, an animal, a place, or something else that evokes the quality we want to strengthen.

And sometimes imagination gives us something reality didn't.

That's particularly important when someone's history doesn't contain enough experiences of safety, protection, or reliable care to simply retrieve a good memory on demand.

Sometimes we can imagine what should have happened

One of the things I value about trauma work is that we're not limited to asking what actually happened.

In some forms of EMDR work, including approaches influenced by Laurel Parnell, imagery can be used to bring protection, support, or rescue into experiences where it was missing.

The historical event doesn't change. We're not pretending it didn't happen.

But imagine looking back at a younger version of yourself in a frightening or painful situation. Instead of leaving that child there alone, what if the adult you—or another protective figure—could enter the scene?

What would you want to do?

Get them out? Stand between them and someone frightening? Tell them they didn't cause what happened? Take them somewhere safe? Give them the comfort, protection, information, or choice they should have had at the time?

For some people, this kind of imagined repair can be remarkably powerful.

Imagination isn't necessarily an escape from reality

People sometimes dismiss imagination because the thing being imagined “isn't real.”

Of course it isn't real in the same sense as something that actually happened. Therapy shouldn't require pretending otherwise.

But our minds respond emotionally to imagined experiences all the time. We can become anxious imagining a conversation that hasn't happened, feel grief thinking about a future loss, or become angry rehearsing an argument entirely in our heads.

If imagination can activate distress, it makes sense to be curious about its capacity to evoke other experiences too.

Some of the approaches I use intentionally work with that capacity.

The Dreamworld protocol, for example, uses imagination therapeutically rather than treating it as irrelevant because the scenario isn't literally occurring. We can explore an internal world in which something different becomes possible and pay attention to what that experience evokes.

The purpose isn't to replace real life with fantasy. It's to give the mind another experience to work with.

Havening can help us build toward what we want, too

Havening Techniques® isn't limited to reducing distress around painful experiences. I also use approaches within Havening that focus more explicitly on developing desired emotional states and possibilities.

The Creating Possibilities Protocol is a good example.

Instead of beginning only with What do I want to stop feeling?, we can ask:

What would I like to feel instead?

Maybe it's confidence. Ease. Belonging. Safety. Motivation. Hope. Freedom. The ability to speak up. The ability to tolerate uncertainty without immediately assuming something terrible will happen.

We can use imagery, language, sensory experience, and Havening touch while developing that desired state.

For someone who has spent years organizing their life around avoiding danger, failure, rejection, or pain, imagining what they actually want can itself be unfamiliar territory.

You don't need a perfect memory

This is one place where I would change the exercise from my original version of this article.

I used to ask people to think of moments of perfect happiness, relaxation, safety, or excitement. I don't think perfection is necessary—or particularly helpful.

Maybe you've never felt completely safe. Maybe your happiest memories are complicated. Maybe the person you felt safest with is no longer alive. Maybe a beautiful period of your life also contained painful things.

The memory doesn't have to be pure.

We're looking for something useful within it.

Perhaps there were thirty seconds when you felt free. An afternoon when you liked yourself. A person whose presence allowed your body to settle. A place where you could breathe differently. A moment when you did something difficult and thought, I can do this.

Those count.

Try collecting them

You might even begin keeping a mental—or literal—collection of these experiences.

Not because thinking positively makes painful things disappear. It doesn't.

But human beings tend to give a great deal of attention to threat, failure, embarrassment, regret, and what might go wrong. For people with trauma histories, that attention can become particularly powerful and automatic.

Your history also contains information about what feels good, what matters to you, what helps you feel safe, and who you are when fear isn't running the entire show.

Those experiences are worth knowing just as well.

And when the past doesn't contain enough of them, therapy can sometimes help us imagine, practice, and begin building what should come next.

Alisa Vincent