Visualization Techniques to Reduce Stress. What Works for You?

[ILADVOCATE]

Has anyone tried this technique? Has this been of help? What are some specific examples that worked for you?
For example I am now just about to leave to have 4 wisdom teeth extracted under general anesthesia (I am following up with my doctors and dentists so don't need any specific advice thanks). As this is my first surgical procedure with general anesthesia and picturing it causes stress instead when I think of what will occur I picture a car being repaired or getting a tune up? Does anyone have anything that has helped them in this manner?

[persephonedemeter]

I meant thinking about really soothing conversations pr time spent with people who are soothing to me. I also liked tontalk to the tech wheeling me in or the anaesthesiologist and surgeon when they come to chat with you right before surgery. I'll tell the anaesthesiologist I'm nervous. I had cheery doctors and surgical nurses. We traded jokes when they were prepping  me up in the O.R.

[persephonedemeter]

I!ve had my wisdom teeth extracted under general anaesthesia, and a few other surgeries. Last minute or day of surgery anxiety happens all the time with me. What you are going through is very common. I can't see why visualization wouldn't help, but for me it was deep breathing and concentrating on words I repeated in my head over and over again that I like to hear or people I love who are soothing to me. The anti-anxiety medication they give you is great too. They spend a lot of time prepping you for the surgery and procedure and making sure you have someone to take you home afterwards.

They have a lot of really good and better  monitoring devices on you nowadays. There is an extra pair of eyes just watching to make sure you are okay. I don't remember a thing except counting like they tell you to do, and then being woken up from a deep sleep and being asked if I want something to drink, I've had more than 6 surgeries, and all under aneasthesia.

[weaver71]

My most recent visualization method is more of a meditation than attempting to see a specific event. Lets use a candle as an example. I will focus all my attention and being into the cable flame and become the flame, all my being is in that one place. Then, I expand my mind outward in my peripheral vision as far as I can, beyond the stars and galaxy. I breath out, and funnel myself into being the flame, I breath in, and expand into the cosmos, over and over. This technique helps me maintain perspective of the Big Picture. If I can manage to hold onto the Big Picture, my whole life and all things in the Universe, I seem to be able to see any situation in relative terms and not obsess nor be consumed by it.

Another one I did, when I was having mixed states and couldn't stop, was funneling all my thoughts and speculations into a smaller and smaller point. I can see my thoughts in my head, like a spread sheet with lines connecting different ideas. It becomes overwhelming. I would breath in all my thoughts and let my mind fill up with them, then exhale, visualizing my thoughts going into a molecule, an atom, subatomic particle, then infinitely small, beyond our ability to even perceive it. Then I inhale all the thoughts again, and breath them out, over and over. I think that also helps me to see my thoughts in relation to the rest of the cosmos, not an all consuming thing that I can't get away from. It helps my thoughts and feelings appear as a part of my reality, not my entire existence.

great topic, thanks for this.

[CRSeaside]

Hi. Not for a specific reason. But when I feel anxious at times I'll visualize a happy memory. I use color,remembered scenery like the Colorado River with it's jagged mountain peaks. How the water felt on my skin. The heat of the sun,the cold water. The moment I got up on my water ski. The wind. The people in the boat. I remember every possible detail. The sounds of the people cheering or laughing.
  My brain gets so full of the previous good time. My breathing is more relaxed. My anxiety is put to rest.