Why You Should Use ‘Imagery Rescripting’ with Your Clients

The past doesn't have to keep writing the present.

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

– L.P. Hartley

I saw something fascinating the other day.

A study found that a simple visualization exercise can greatly lessen fear of failure and reduce guilt and shame as well as sadness in people with adverse memories of parental criticism in childhood.¹

It’s pretty well established that a hard start in life, including abuse, neglect, and relentless childhood criticism, can cause deep emotional scars, at least for some.

But distressing early memories that continue to influence adult life can be reshaped using imagery-based techniques. And yes, I know that we know this already! But it’s great to see research proving it.

By creating new, safer endings to painful memories, unhelpful emotional patterns can be replaced with healthier ones, often reducing feelings of sadness and guilt.

This approach, known as ‘Imagery Rescripting’, involves revisiting a troubling event and then imagining it unfolding in a more comforting and supportive way.

Changing the feelings from the memory

The study (which so fascinated me!) included 180 young adults with a fear of failure linked to childhood criticism. The researchers explored how early harsh treatment had shaped their self-worth, leading them to feel that mistakes made them less valuable. In this way, the thought of failure had become more threatening.

Over four therapy sessions, participants recalled a painful childhood memory involving criticism from a caregiver.

One group used an Imagery Rescripting technique immediately after recalling the memory, while a second group used the same rescripting method but after a 10-minute delay (hypothesized to enhance its effect by providing intervention in what they called the “reconsolidation disruption window”). A third group simply recalled the anxiety-provoking memory.

Those groups using Imagery Rescripting were guided to re-experience the memory but imagine a supportive figure, such as a therapist or current friend, defending them.

All groups reported reductions in sadness, guilt, and fear of failure, with improvements lasting up to six months. But stress reduction when recalling the adverse childhood memories was much greater in those using Imagery Rescripting.

So how exactly does Imagery Rescripting work, and what makes it so effective?

Changing the past to change the future

We know that emotional conditioning from the past can produce faulty pattern matching in the present; that is, a situation or ‘trigger’ may produce a maladaptive emotional (and physical) response – until that is corrected through effective psychotherapy.

The study demonstrates how memories of childhood criticism can be altered. They do not have to be recalled in the same painful way that produces fear of failure or other negative emotions.

When we relate better to our past – in other words, overcome damaging emotional conditioning – we change the way we emotionally respond to our present and future lives too.

The effectiveness of Imagery Rescripting may lie in the unexpected ‘happy ending’ created during rescripting.

Co-author of the study Mr Stanisław Karkosz explained, “We have shown that a crucial part of imagery-based therapy is creating a discrepancy between what the patient expects and what actually happens in the new memory.”

So, overall, the findings show that painful childhood memories can be reshaped, reducing their emotional impact and the fear of failure they produce.

But there’s a strange element to all this.

The client still knows exactly what happened

“Can you use hypnosis to make me completely forget a memory?”

As therapists who use clinical hypnosis, we get some pretty weird requests sometimes. And when we do, we don’t always (for good reason!) say what we think:

“Can you totally delete that memory I have of being rejected by my ex-girlfriend?”

“Yes, of course! Would you like me to hit you on the head with a shovel or a mallet?”

No, no, no. We can’t say such things!

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Though funnily enough, the idea of psychological repression was apparently originally derived from a misunderstanding of how closed brain injury worked: psychological injury was presumed to be of physical origin.² And of course, the idea of memory deletion is not without precedent. Psychiatry has tried some disastrous ways of trying to ‘delete’ memories in patients.

But this particular request – and I’ve heard many and varied iterations of it over the decades – reflects a general ignorance as to how the mind works. It incorrectly assumes that memory is always accurate and that repression occurs, and should occur, because of trauma.

It fails to recognize that we as human beings have evolved to survive, and the permanent deletion of memories – which may otherwise serve as warnings of future mistakes – does not support that. We can’t learn from mistakes if we don’t recall them.

This is fair enough, of course! Why should the average person be well informed about psychology? What I know about the inner workings of my car could be summarized on the back of a piece of paper the size of the average cell phone SIM card. But sometimes a little psychoeducation goes a long way.

So Imagery Rescripting isn’t about making someone believe that a bad thing didn’t happen and it all turned out great. It’s about changing the experience of accessing the memory so that it no longer causes emotional problems in the present and future.

It’s the same concept as when we use Rewind to help lift post-traumatic stress disorder. The client still knows they were raped or in a train wreck – but the memory no longer haunts them or causes faulty pattern matches in the form of flashbacks or nightmares.

Now when it comes to the application of Imagery Rescripting, there are two important elements to recognize:

• It can be applied creatively in lots of different ways.
• Because it depends on imagery, it can be made much more powerful using skilled hypnotic interventions.

Here are just three ways it might be applied.

One: Use the Helping Hand technique

The Helping Hand technique is a hypnotic reparenting technique, as partially demonstrated and also described here. I’ve used it to help lift self-esteem as well as overcome emotional blocks of other kinds.

In essence, we use it in the following way:

1. Identify the origin of the emotional response, perhaps using the ‘Affect Bridge’, a way of linking current distress to a past conditioning incident.
2. Acknowledge present-day resources.
3. Revisit the memory from an adult perspective.
4. Intervene and reprocess the experience.
5. Resolve and integrate.
6. Rehearse future confidence.

Two: Dealing with the bad memory as someone else

The great thing about hypnosis (well, one of many) is that the limits of time and space can be transcended. I’m not talking woo-woo here (although we can keep an open mind), simply saying that, at least for the client being helped by hypnosis inwardly, the normal rules of physics need not apply.

I’ve described here how I used ‘hero therapy’ to help a little boy overcome fear of (his sister specifically, but also more generally) anyone vomiting, known as emetophobia. And this can be a helpful technique for any difficult memories.

In essence, the approach is as follows:

1. Identify the troublesome memory. Again, perhaps by using an Affect Bridge.
2. Identify the hero. Ask who your client admires or who they think could best handle their situation. This might be someone they know, a public figure, or even a fictional character. Who would deal with this best?
3. Identify the hero’s qualities: Ask what traits this ‘hero’ has that would change the nature of that past situation had the hero been dealing with it – for example, bravery, focus, or resilience.
4. Have the client close their eyes and hypnotically observe the hero performing: handling the situation using those qualities.
5. Now have them take on the hero’s qualities. Ask them to picture themselves as that hero, entering that situation, fully embodying those traits. Explore in detail what it feels like to be dealing with that past situation as this admired figure.
6. Help them to internalize the attributes of the hero, to recognize these qualities as part of themselves. I might even have them visualize those qualities as colours, integrating with who they are. While we can ‘borrow’ traits from others, true heroism lies in ordinary people who find the strength to endure despite great challenges.

This can be a beautifully powerful way of enhancing the kind of Imagery Rescripting the researchers were doing.

Third, we can use a method as old as human history.

Three: Rescripting through story

We can change the way we relate to a memory – in other words, how it affects us – by helping to change its meaning.

I’ve written in more detail about rewriting your client’s story here, and as you’ll see, this can be done through writing out the past (or part of the past) as a narrative, perhaps even externalizing themselves as a character in the story (as distinct from themselves as the author). This seems to help lower difficult feelings around those memories.

We can also help clients turn their histories into narratives that contain hope and self-compassion.

But perhaps the oldest form of psychotherapy is storytelling itself.

Storytelling therapy may be most effective when it matches the pattern of the client’s life in some way and provides a happy ending. Even if a story is not matched consciously by the client to their own predicaments, it can still be effective – perhaps, because the analytical mind doesn’t dissect it, even more effective – in helping the client feel differently about what has gone on in their life.

It’s amazing how much better clients can feel about their own situation after hearing a well-delivered therapy tale that is pertinent to them.

Ultimately, Imagery Rescripting is about changing the emotional relationship our client has to their difficult memories. And when that happens, the meaning connected to those memories also changes.

To improve someone’s future, sometimes we need to help them transform their feelings about the past.

Do you work with clients whose fear of failure or shame is rooted in painful childhood memories?

The Uncommon Hypnotherapy Course teaches you indirect, conversational hypnosis techniques that can make imagery-based interventions like rescripting far more powerful – even with resistant clients. Explore the Uncommon Hypnotherapy Course.

Watch Mark Tyrrell diminish a client's severe anxiety in 1 session

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About Mark Tyrrell

Psychology is my passion. I've been a psychotherapist trainer since 1998, specializing in brief, solution focused approaches. I now teach practitioners all over the world via our online courses.

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