Martijn van Teffelen

Chapter 5 104 loud noise. Second, participants were guided to generate a hostile image of a burglar. Third, participants were asked to generate and ‘install’ a helpful image. Below is a transcribed example of John (pseudonym), one of the participants in our experiment. A written release was obtained to use transcript material. John is 40-year old, highly educated, married man with two children, who works full-time. THERAPIST: “Please close your eyes. Imagine the following. You are in your bed at night. Feel the bed you are lying on. Feel your head on the pillow. Feel the blanket on top of you. Feel the matrass. Hear the nightly sounds in your room. Suddenly, a loud noise wakes you up in the middle of the night. The thought that flashes through your mind is “it’s a burglar”. Can you see the burglar entering your house? If what you see is a picture, can you describe what you see? JOHN: “Um okay, so I see a man entering my front door. THERAPIST: (posing the questions in a slow pace, in interaction with the participant) “What does the burglar look like…? What does the burglar do…? What facial expression does the burglar have…? What posture does the burglar have…?” JOHN: (in interaction with the questions above) “Well… he is all dressed in black looking shady. He is opening my front door with a lockpick. He looks sneaky with a mean grin on his face. His eyes are dark, I cannot see them. (grimacing) THERAPIST: “That’s great John, you’re doing a good job. What do you feel (in your body)? “ JOHN: Well I feel that I am getting angry. I am getting pumped. My heart is starting to pound and my hands are getting sweaty.” THERAPIST: “And what do you do?” JOHN: “I want to get up and get at him. I have to find something to defend myself or scare him off”. THERAPIST: “Alright John, well done. Now could you imagine that something more harmless generated the sound? Yes? Like what? JOHN: “Uh, well, it could also be my cat crashing into something whilst chasing a fly” THERAPIST: “Very well John, now how does this look like in an image? What does the cat do? How does it look like? What facial expression does the cat have? What posture?”