Tapping Your Kong

Symbols and metaphors are evocative media employed in therapeutic practices that actively contribute to good mental health and the healing process. To date, a number of therapists have shown a growing interest in making use of totems. Conventionally, totems are part of spirituality and culture; they are symbolic objects or animals that represent specific traits or emotions. The totems can be used in therapy by clients in reprocessing and making sense of emotional states, particularly through the psychological process of compartmentalization. This blog will explore how totems can enhance therapy, helping clients organize and navigate complicated emotional issues.

What is Compartmentalization?

Compartmentalization is a process where an individual mentally separates conflicting emotions, memories, or experiences into different "compartments" of the mind. For instance, someone might keep work-related stress from affecting their personal life to focus on each separately. In some situations, compartmentalization is helpful, allowing someone to cope with stress or trauma temporarily. However, overusing it can lead to emotional disconnection, avoidance, and the suppression of significant feelings.

While compartmentalization can have its purposes, when people disconnect themselves from their feelings too much, this leads to very unhealthy avoidance of emotions. And this is where the totems can help. In the various "compartments" within their emotional experiences, assigning totems to represent them allows individuals to make exploration of these areas safer and more mindful.

Symbolic Anchors in Therapy

Totems have been used in many indigenous cultures as symbols that carry deep meaning, often representing traits, strengths, or connections to nature. In modern therapy, totems can be adapted as tools for emotional regulation and mental organization. By associating specific emotions or experiences with a physical or visual anchor, clients can use totems to mentally "anchor" different parts of themselves. For example, a client balancing family demands, work, and personal healing might assign different totems to represent these areas. The bear could symbolize strength and perseverance for family, while the owl might represent wisdom and balance at work.

The totems in therapy are touchstones to remind the client as they process their complicated emotions. The totem serves as a symbolic way to connect to different emotional "compartments" without being overwhelmed by the entirety of their experiences.

How do Totems Help?

Another effective way to manage compartmentalization involves visualization exercises. A therapist may ask a client to choose a totem that represents a specific compartment of their emotional life, such as anger or fear. Clients can then visualize the totem during therapy sessions, allowing them to confront those emotions in a structured and manageable manner. A totem provides a sense of safety, enabling clients to symbolically work through difficult experiences without having to confront everything at once.

For example, a client who feels anger toward a loved one might select a lion as a totem-angry animal representative of the power of the emotion and the necessity for restraint. A person might contemplate the lion during instances of anger; the lion assists him in keeping the emotion in its "box" for clearer processing and interpretation."

Another way the totems help is by serving as a kind of external proxy for internal states. Externalizing emotions in this way creates distance and thus better introspection. Other therapists encourage one in creativity with the totem, drawing and/or journaling on the totem that has chosen them, thereby allowing insight and integration of affective experience.

How do I Use Totems in Thearpy?

Basically, there are several ways that therapists can bring totems into the sessions. For one, this could be guided imagery: have the clients shut their eyes and estimate or imagine what totem best represents what is going on, an irresponsible, hurt-scared, sad, angry, or happy emotional state, or whatever challenge may be distressing them. Then, the therapist can take them on a journey with this totem discussing its traits and meanings in relationship to their emotional world.

Another helpful tool is given by art therapy. This may be further utilized in deriving the fact that the client can draw or sculpt their totems, through which these abstract concepts of emotion will be even more tangible and much easier to process. Another helpful way is journaling about the totem's traits, along with consideration of what this totem means in different aspects of life.

Ultimately, clients should select totems that speak closely with their inner self. These, for instance, come from anything: nature, a personal event in their history, or even a fantasy animal that they have created themselves. The bottom line is that such symbols ought to mean something to the client, since they will play an essential purpose in the therapeutic process. The totems are used as symbols representing the different facets of a client's emotional life, such that there is an enhanced capacity for organization, clarification, and understanding of an individual's personal world. These totems then serve as tools that assist in regulating one's emotions by providing the practitioner with tangible objects to classify confusing feelings or experiences.

Conclusion

The compartmentalization with the use of totems during therapy offers a unique and creative avenue to participate with a client through their emotional states. Anchoring different emotions or experiences symbolically in external representations enables exploration of these feelings on a deeper level. In this way, totems represent both a buffer and a bridge, fostering deeper emotional healing and balance. Whether it’s depression, or anxiety, working totems into your daily routine can be helpful in managing extreme emotional states, or to help us compartmentalize our life to be more present in our personal lives. To explore how totem symobolism can help you send us a message or make a consultation request and one of our therapists will be there to help you.