Show Your Therapist More Photos
January 02, 2024
The ability of photos to evoke memories and emotions can be helpful to healing in therapy
Have you ever looked at a photo and instantaneously felt a rush of emotions? It’s actually quite common. Photographs are a window into time, capturing a moment of our existence. Whether a picture from childhood, a photo from a recent vacation with friends, or a snapshot from a birthday, wedding, or another major milestone, a photo can bring us back emotionally to a period in our lives, even from decades earlier. These moments also evoke associated memories from the past, including those that may not have been in the front of our minds but inevitably impacted and shaped us into who we are. Looking at pictures can bring up a distant knowing of how we experienced others and even ourselves in a specific part of our lives.
This power of photographs to evoke emotional memories is why I encourage patients to bring more photographs into therapy. Sharing photos with a therapist isn’t about satisfying curiosity or gaining perspective on a patient’s life outside of the therapy office. Talking to a therapist about a particular photograph, as well as everything it evokes, can actually be key to healing.
Sharing photos with a therapist is an intimate exchange that offers a lot of information about who you are
Moments when patients have shown me photographs have felt like intimate exchanges that create a sense of closeness and put an individual’s experience into perspective. Talking about a photograph is similar to sharing a song that pulls on a person’s heart threads or a book that brought them to tears reminding them of a time in their life. There is so much meaning to these keepsakes. Our connections to them tell us a lot about ourselves, what we’ve experienced, and how we feel.
Photos especially hold emotional, personal, and historical ties that can spark curiosity about the captured moment in time, as well as current reactions to it. When looking at photos in therapy, we can ask the questions: What do you see when you look at the picture? How do you feel? What are you reminded of? What story are you telling yourself about this picture? What other memories come to mind? As a therapist, a conversation about a photo can be a source of raw data such as how an individual responds to the photo, what emotions arise, how they choose to talk about it, where their attention goes, the expression they and/or others have in the picture, the “why” behind the choice to show a particular photo, and what stories they tell. All of this can be used to connect to and explore a person’s experiences on a deeper level than perhaps we would be able to otherwise.
Photos can also expose associated memories and emotions that may have been unconscious: Therapy is a place to fully feel those feelings
Photos also have a way of exposing memories and emotions that may be living in the depths of our unconscious. When a patient explores the subject of a photo, where it was taken, and who they were with, they often subsequently start associating—one memory brings up another (and another). These are often related to similar sentiments from that time that would not have been remembered had that photo not preserved the initial memory. For instance, a recently discovered photo from their middle school field trip might remind them of how alone they felt. Bringing this photo up and into the session is like opening the door to the emotions that come along with it. Or a picture from someone’s cross-country bike tour reminds them of their resilience and also the overwhelming anxiety they felt before starting the trip. Or there’s a picture of someone’s father in which he appears sad and distant. In that moment, there’s the recalling of childhood memories.
Rather than struggling to comprehend these unearthed memories alone, therapy can help give words and meaning to the emotional associations that resurface, as well as, ultimately, process them. Sharing these photos in the presence of a therapist, with the trust and safety that entails, is an opportunity to more fully feel what is coming up that is now ready to be dealt with and affirm what may have been unconsciously known. By reflecting more deeply on photographs in therapy, you can get closer to understanding more about yourself, those around you, and the world.
