Metaphor Therapy

Metaphor therapy is not a new idea. Probably thousands of years ago people noticed that when things about the world or oneself were understood through different metaphors, a person's feelings about these things changed. Certainly seeing life as a "purgatory" to be suffered through will make for a different sort of experience than if you're always thinking of life as an "excellent adventure."

Though the idea existed before, in recent times some psychologists have been using the term "metaphor therapy," and they actually help patients choose better metaphors. For example, I was just reading about a dentist in therapy who felt timid, and was unable to express himself in a group. This interior quality was likened to soft clay.

With the therapists guidance, he questioned this metaphorical view, and replaced it by seeing the clay harden into something else. Steel was the new metaphor he decided on; battleship steel, to be specific, and he even imagined the rivets in it. Within days he was at a convention with hundreds of other dentists, and when an issue came up that was important to him, he spoke up. He never did this before, even in a small group.

Why Metaphor Therapy Works

Metaphors are sometimes our best or only way to understand. Atoms, after all, look nothing like the "planetary orbit" models commonly used, but scientists have to be able to think about them in some way. Metaphorical modeling of reality is similarly necessary to think about many aspects of human life and consciousness, or at least it's often the most practical way.

There is usually more than one good metaphor to describe a thing or process, and this becomes very important in metaphor therapy. This is because metaphors carry a lot of "extra meaning." The timid dentist in the story above, for example, could see his interior determination becoming hardened into "steel," but "battleship steel" carries the extra connotation of going to battle, which may help him be more assertive.

Let's look at a more complex example. Suppose a man is troubled by anxious and worrisome thoughts. A cognitive psychologist might point out that he has identified with these thoughts, and he doesn't have to. We don't consider every random image or word in our minds to be our "self," after all, so why choose to think of this fearful stream of thinking to be one's self?

Now, this idea may be new to the man, and insightful, but it is also rather "dry" and difficult to use. With metaphor therapy, then, we would help the man create a more usable understanding. In this case, let's say that the man's mind or consciousness is his home, and that these punishing thoughts he has are merely visitors.

Exploring this metaphorical understanding, we come to a lot of "extra meaning." For example, visitors can be invited or not. This clearly relates to how the man experiences his anxious thoughts - they're uninvited visitors. More than that, we can imagine that they might leave if he tells them to.

The man is taught to address unwanted negative thoughts as uninvited guests, and to tell them, "You are not welcome here." He get's some relief in this way, primarily because this helps him to see the thoughts as apart from his "self." In other words, he is no longer identifying with them.

But they don't all leave. What now? Fortunately, this metaphor is a powerful one, because it suggests so many options. For example, real visitors would likely leave at some point if we didn't feed them. Visiting thoughts are "fed" by way of our attention, so the man is taught to withdraw his attention. When a punishing memory or image enters, he tells it that it is not welcome, then turns away, and gives his attention to an invited "guest," which might be a constructive thought or inspiring idea.

With this new understanding that he is the master of his home, and that these visiting thoughts are not "his," the man's feelings of fear and anxiety diminishes. He has stopped feeding them. He has started running his household (mind) properly. There are other things that can be drawn into this metaphorical perspective, but you can see the process in this short example.

Does metaphor therapy work? This is something you can verify for yourself. In fact, if you observe yourself carefully, you'll find that you are already using metaphors to understand things, and getting the results which that understanding produces. Are you in the "rat race," or "going through" tough times, or do you know someone who is a "pain in the neck?" Those are metaphorical perspectives. Why not consciously test better ones?