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Of course this is not scientifically rigorous: each person has a different, personal understanding of what stress is, and what they want instead of stress: for example
My stress symptom is / is like… |
What I want…. |
A phone ringing and ringing |
To be surrounded by quietness |
I am shut in a box |
To be out in the open, with the box put away behind me |
A twisted neck |
My head to be poised, easy breathing |
Agitation (said with flapping hands) |
To be able to breathe |
Pulling a very heavy weight with no end point |
Seeing the end point and the weight becoming less heavy so it can be pulled more quickly (this person spoke very slowly as she explored the heavy weight and pulling it) |
Black clouds coming down, enclosing me |
Warm, clear light in my heart and the sun to be shining |
Violent explosions of garish colours |
Pastels, slowly moving like a lava lamp |
A headless chicken in my mind |
To see the big picture |
Tunnel vision, and things in vision either changing too fast or too slowly |
See for miles, with wide fields to either side |
I cannot sleep |
Peace |
“The essence of metaphor is understanding and experiencing one kind of thing in terms of another.”
So when we say ‘I am buckling under the pressure’, ‘I ran around like a headless chicken’ or ‘I’m under a cloud’ we are using metaphors.
According to Lakoff and Johnson, we have no choice but to think and speak metaphorically. Just as there are some things in the world we can only experience by seeing them, and others by touching or hearing, there are some things we can only experience through metaphor. “Because we reason in terms of metaphor, the metaphors we use determine a great deal about how we live our lives.”
So metaphors are not just random collections of words used to describe our experience; there is a fundamental mind-body connection involved. Our metaphors come from how we experience the world physically, and they affect how we behave in the physical world.
Hejmadi and Lyall state that they have used their process called Autogenic (self-generated) Metaphor Resolution successfully with “many stress-related illnesses including cases of allergies, colitis, endometriosis, migraine, and Raynaud’s disease and even helped to stabilize cases of rheumatoid arthritis and multiple scherosis.’ They point out that “It is estimated that 50 to 80 per cent of all physical illnesses requiring medical attention are stress-related or functional in nature."
If clients benefit from exploring their own self-generated metaphors, then facilitators’ metaphors have no place in those explorations. But people – including facilitators – use metaphor unconsciously, so how can they keep those metaphors ‘out’ of the interaction and let clients focus fully on their self-generated metaphors? The approach known as ‘Symbolic Modelling’, developed by Penny Tompkins and James Lawley, provides a perfect solution to this dilemma. It makes use of ‘Clean Language’ questions* which are as free of obvious metaphor as possible to enable the client to generate and learn from their own metaphors. The facilitator uses a limited number of questions, customising them by slotting in words and phrases (or gestures, sounds etc.) that the client has used. The questions direct the client to different aspects of their experience, and from the learning that happens, conditions are set up that are conducive to change / transformation.
This approach can be used as a stand-alone process or can be integrated with other counselling and therapy approaches.
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Notes
* Clean Language was developed by David Grove, a Psychotherapist.
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