counselors are really on to something. I began to "see" other things as well. For example, my long time partner and confident happens to be very astute, generous, and unfailingly helpful. She could see that I was looking a little anxious and knew that I felt vulnerable as a reclusive artist about to exhibit at a professional convention for the first time.

While I may have looked anxious, I actually felt terrified. I spend most of my

How did an artist accidently learn healing visualizations and improve his life? How can you do the same? Read on.

Last year a family counselor approached me and said, "You’re an artist, why don’t you do up some feeling cards for us?" Looking confused, I asked, "what are feeling cards?"

"When all else fails, she replied, we use them to stimulate therapeutic conversations with clients and their families." She showed me a set of improvised cards with pictures of facial expressions on them and on the bottom of each card was the appropriate emotion word: anger, happy, sad, etc.

"What’s wrong with these?", I asked.

"For one, we don’t have kids in the set, and for two, there aren’t any female faces either."

I thought the idea was intriguing, and designed a set with her criteria in mind. She found my new set quite useful, and based on her positive evaluation, I decided to print up a batch and make them more widely available to service providers in helping professions.

Suddenly, I was in the "therapy" business, something I didn't know anything about, and worse, I didn’t think that I would ever use my own product. The cards seemed too simplistic, and moreover, I just "made the faces up" and knew them all too well. If they didn't have value for me, how was I going to introduce them?

Was I surprised one day, while preparing for a counseling conference, to notice that attention to detail began to look a lot like unhealthy obsession over too many details. It hit me that my obsession had a name when one of the feeling card faces popped into my head.

Worry! The instant I "saw" and named the feeling, I immediately relaxed and found humor in my own reaction.

Wow! I thought, these family counselors are really on to something. I began to "see" other things as well. For example, my long time partner and confident happens to be very astute, generous, and unfailingly helpful. She could see that I was looking a little anxious and knew that I felt vulnerable as a reclusive artist about to exhibit at a professional convention for the first time.

While I may have looked anxious, I actually felt terrified. I spend most of my

wed me a set of improvised cards with pictures of facial expressions on them and on the bottom of each card was the appropriate emotion word: anger, happy, sad, etc.

"What’s wrong with these?", I asked.

"For one, we don’t have kids in the set, and for two, there aren’t any female faces either."

I thought the idea was intriguing, and designed a set with her criteria in mind. She found my new set quite useful, and based on her positive evaluation, I decided to print up a batch and make them more widely available to service providers in helping professions.

Suddenly, I was in the "therapy" business, something I didn't know anything about, and worse, I didn’t think that I would ever use my own product. The cards seemed too simplistic, and moreover, I just "made the faces up" and knew them all too well. If they didn't have value for me, how was I going to introduce them?

Was I surprised one day, while preparing for a counseling conference, to notice that attention to detail began to look a lot like unhealthy obsession over too many details. It hit me that my obsession had a name when one of the feeling card faces popped into my head.

Worry! The instant I "saw" and named the feeling, I immediately relaxed and found humor in my own reaction.

Wow! I thought, these family counselors are really on to something. I began to "see" other things as well. For example, my long time partner and confident happens to be very astute, generous, and unfailingly helpful. She could see that I was looking a little anxious and knew that I felt vulnerable as a reclusive artist about to exhibit at a professional convention for the first time.

While I may have looked anxious, I actually felt terrified. I spend most of my

her positive evaluation, I decided to print up a batch and make them more widely available to service providers in helping professions.

Suddenly, I was in the "therapy" business, something I didn't know anything about, and worse, I didn’t think that I would ever use my own product. The cards seemed too simplistic, and moreover, I just "made the faces up" and knew them all too well. If they didn't have value for me, how was I going to introduce them?

Was I surprised one day, while preparing for a counseling conference, to notice that attention to detail began to look a lot like unhealthy obsession over too many details. It hit me that my obsession had a name when one of the feeling card faces popped into my head.

Worry! The instant I "saw" and named the feeling, I immediately relaxed and found humor in my own reaction.

Wow! I thought, these family counselors are really on to something. I began to "see" other things as well. For example, my long time partner and confident happens to be very astute, generous, and unfailingly helpful. She could see that I was looking a little anxious and knew that I felt vulnerable as a reclusive artist about to exhibit at a professional convention for the first time.

While I may have looked anxious, I actually felt terrified. I spend most of my

o introduce them?

Was I surprised one day, while preparing for a counseling conference, to notice that attention to detail began to look a lot like unhealthy obsession over too many details. It hit me that my obsession had a name when one of the feeling card faces popped into my head.

Worry! The instant I "saw" and named the feeling, I immediately relaxed and found humor in my own reaction.

Wow! I thought, these family counselors are really on to something. I began to "see" other things as well. For example, my long time partner and confident happens to be very astute, generous, and unfailingly helpful. She could see that I was looking a little anxious and knew that I felt vulnerable as a reclusive artist about to exhibit at a professional convention for the first time.

While I may have looked anxious, I actually felt terrified. I spend most of my

counselors are really on to something. I began to "see" other things as well. For example, my long time partner and confident happens to be very astute, generous, and unfailingly helpful. She could see that I was looking a little anxious and knew that I felt vulnerable as a reclusive artist about to exhibit at a professional convention for the first time.

While I may have looked anxious, I actually felt terrified. I spend most of my time in the studio, and as far as I was concerned, this was really "steppin’ out. I irrationally interpreted her suggestions and ideas for improvements as criticism, as being wrong. I thought she was being mean and I reacted in kind. She, in turn, wondered what she was doing with such a jerk and began to get frustrated.

"You know," she said, by this time she was really angry, "there are lots of things you’re good at, but you’re not perfect, and you really need some help." "Stop being a nincompoop!"

"You mean like this?," and I crossed my eyes, pulled at my ears, and stuck out my tongue.

She was right of course. Our combined energies were so much more effective and powerful than anything I could do myself. Yet there I was, unconsciously sliding into fear, and the angry defensiveness that came with it. The more I began picturing anger or fear as a face, the more I began recognizing and naming the emotion as I was feeling it. The benefits were almost immediate.

We still disagree, being strong individuals with differing ideas, but the time spent "defending" diminishes with each glimpse of a bigger, more meaningful, picture. It is a satisfying feeling, and "coincides" with increasing moments of feeling thankful.

I don’t think visualizing emotions is a cure, but it may well be a healing process. Irrational fear wounds, and any moment of emotional recognition, no matter how small, is an opening. In spiritual language, it represents a victory over the cold isolation and restriction of fear and a big move closer to the warm family of emotions centered in love.

Much has been written about love. Recently, my son Alex, a math and physics major at university, began telling me that he loved me. I felt un