Tapping Your Kong

Symbols and metaphors are powerful tools in therapy, and they can play a real role in emotional healing. A growing number of therapists have started working with totems. Traditionally, totems come from spiritual and cultural practice, symbolic objects or animals that stand for particular traits or emotions. In therapy, clients can use them to make sense of difficult emotional states, often through a process called compartmentalization. This post looks at how totems can support that work and help clients organize and move through complicated feelings.

What is Compartmentalization?

Compartmentalization is the mind's way of separating conflicting emotions, memories, or experiences into different "compartments." Someone might keep work stress out of their home life, for instance, so they can deal with each on its own. In the short term this can help, giving a person room to cope with stress or trauma. Overused, though, it tends to backfire, leading to emotional disconnection, avoidance, and feelings that get buried instead of felt.

That's where totems come in. By assigning a totem to each of those emotional "compartments," a person can explore them more safely and deliberately, rather than shutting them away.

Symbolic Anchors in Therapy

Totems have carried deep meaning in many Indigenous cultures, often representing traits, strengths, or a connection to nature. In modern therapy, that same idea can be adapted into a tool for emotional regulation. By tying a specific emotion or experience to a physical or visual anchor, a client can hold different parts of themselves in mind without being overwhelmed by all of it at once. Someone balancing family, work, and their own healing might assign a totem to each, a bear for the strength they bring to family, an owl for the steadiness they want at work.

The totem becomes a touchstone. It gives the client a way to connect with one emotional compartment at a time, instead of facing the whole of their experience in a single moment.

How do Totems Help?

One common method is visualization. A therapist might ask a client to choose a totem for a particular part of their emotional life, anger or fear, say, and then picture that totem during a session. Holding the image gives the emotion a defined shape, so the client can work through it in a structured, manageable way rather than confronting everything at once.

A client who feels anger toward someone they love might choose a lion, an animal that captures both the force of the emotion and the need to hold it in check. Picturing the lion in a moment of anger helps keep the feeling contained enough to look at clearly.

Totems also work as a stand-in for what's happening inside. Putting an emotion "out there" as a symbol creates a little distance, and that distance makes honest reflection easier. Some therapists take it further, inviting clients to draw or journal about the totem they've chosen, which can open up insight and help integrate the feeling.

How do I Use Totems in Thearpy?

There are a few ways therapists bring totems into a session. One is guided imagery: the client closes their eyes and pictures the totem that best fits what they're feeling, whether that's hurt, fear, sadness, anger, or whatever they're wrestling with. From there, the therapist can explore the totem's traits and what they mean for the client's emotional world.

Art therapy is another option. Drawing or sculpting a totem makes an abstract feeling tangible and easier to work with. Journaling does something similar, letting the client think through what the totem represents across different parts of their life.

What matters most is that the client chooses totems that mean something to them. These can come from anywhere, nature, a moment in their own history, even an invented creature. The point is personal resonance, because that's what gives the symbol its weight in the work. Used this way, totems help a person organize and understand their inner world, turning confusing feelings into something they can name and sort.

Conclusion

Pairing totems with compartmentalization gives therapy a creative way to engage with hard emotions. Anchoring a feeling to an outside symbol makes it easier to explore at depth, so the totem acts as both a buffer and a bridge toward steadier emotional ground. Whether you're dealing with depression or anxiety, working a totem into your routine can help you manage intense emotions and stay more present in your own life. If you'd like to explore how this might work for you, send us a message or request a consultation, and one of our therapists will be glad to help.