Mining Your Metaphors

Change the metaphor, change the self.

Left Brain/Right Brain and Mining Your Metaphors

You may have seen her on YouTube, but Jill Bolte Taylor’s book, My Stroke of Insight, is still worth a read, especially if you’re curious about the workings of the brain. Taylor, a neuro-anatomist (or brain scientist, as she translates it for the layman), experienced a stroke that flooded the left hemisphere of her brain, leaving her to experience the world largely from her right hemisphere’s perspective. Over the next eight years, Taylor carefully observed her recovery with a scientist’s curiosity and attention to detail. As Taylor worked diligently to relearn to navigate in the world and to recover her former self,  she found one the most life-changing realizations for her was that she had the capacity to make choices she’d never realized were choices.

In the past, when some event triggered a reaction like feeling angry, jealous, or highly critical, she would react reflexively and run the well-established neural pathways. These old pathways, with their myriad interconnections with all sorts of past history and associations, resulted in plenty of unpleasant feelings, memories and subsequent behaviors. After the stroke, Taylor was blissfully unaware of any of these. As her functions returned, she discovered her memory had not been destroyed, but she would have to work hard to re-access and reactivate those pathways…or she could choose not to.

She learned that when an emotion is triggered in your body, its initial physiological effects—hormone release, etc.– last only 90 seconds. After that, if you are still connected to that emotional response, it is because an extensive and complex array of neural pathways has been activated. It may happen so rapidly that it feels like a natural, inevitable reaction. But in that moment at the end of the 90 seconds between the emotion and stepping on the pathway,  one has a choice. Taylor says she realized she could choose to engage her left brain connections with past memories, with fears about the future, with its tendency to fill in gaps of information with assumptions–the “storyteller’s potential for stirring up drama and trauma.”  Or she could “step to the right” and embrace her right hemisphere’s personality and value system, which emphasize staying in the moment and meeting it with compassion. Taylor makes clear this isn’t easy; she says it’s a choice you may make many times every day. But it’s a realization that changed the way she meets the world.

Taylor’s book also offers what I consider supportive evidence for the impact Clean Language has for a client. To cite but one example,  Taylor says, “I believe the real power in experiential recreation is located in our ability to remember what the underlying physiology feels like.” (p. 176) In a Clean Language session, you may re-imagine the past, re-image it. Inferring from Taylor’s book, I suggest that by doing so you are building new neural pathways– ones that serve you better than the old ones.  By using your own metaphors and getting to know not only where they are, but how they feel (Taylor’s ‘underlying physiology’) and by revisiting them often, you can strengthen them and increase the likelihood of ‘going there’ when an unwanted memory or emotion is triggered.

Given that this is the start of the year, it’s a good time to re-image what you’d like to have happen…or like to have had happen in the past. When you notice uncomfortable memories surface or their accompanying old feelings (such as anxiety, sadness, or jealousy) or physical reactions (perhaps shallow breathing, queasiness, or headache), they’re a signal to you that those old, familiar neural pathways are being engaged. Replace them with your new image and its accompanying feelings—emotional and physical. Or… step to the right. And if you read Dr. Taylor’s book,  we’d be curious to hear how you think her experiences explain Clean Language’s effectiveness.

The Edge Effect in Metaphor Landscapes

In the counseling/coaching technique I work with, Clean Language, we use the term ‘metaphor landscape’ to describe the inner world of a client that is populated by personal metaphors  or symbols laid out in specific locations, like a map. While each client’s landscape is unique in its details and their interactions, I find some symbols are used frequently: rivers, lakes, and mountains; flowers, birds and fountains; trees, fields, and roads.

Perhaps it is because these “personal ecosystems” appear repeatedly with my clients that two words caught my attention as I was thumbing through a permaculture gardening book recently. The terms ecotone and edge effect are new to me.  An ecotone* is a transition area—a place between two plant communities, for example, the area between a meadow and a forest. Ecotones may be distinct lines, such as one created by a farmer on a mower, or they may be broader areas, such as many mountain slopes or wetlands.

Often these transitional areas have species of flora and fauna common to the ecosystems of either side, as well as additional ones that thrive in neither of the other two. It is this characteristic that is described as the edge effect*: the tendency of such an area to have a greater diversity of species than exist in either of its bordering communities.

Clients’ metaphor landscapes demonstrate an edge effect, too.  It is in those moments on a metaphoric bank, just before a client wades into a river, or goes through a gate or leaps onto a boat, when the client faces some significant, even transformative, change. Here on the threshold, the client may know things not only about the two worlds, the one behind and the one ahead, but also about things which are found in neither worlds, but which are crucial for staying a new course.

Symbolically, the space between worlds may be a single step, like through a doorway, or it may involve numerous steps, like across a bridge or down a hallway. Sometimes the distance is measured in time as well, as in a journey on a boat between two ports. However wide or narrower the space, however long or short the time spent there, it is a space that holds information unique to this overlapping of world views.

To think of these terms ecotone and the edge effect as metaphors is a wonderful way to describe the significance and potential this “in-between” time or space holds.  They are good reminders for therapists and coaches not to rush clients heedlessly through such spaces, but to explore them for their potential riches.

These spaces in a metaphor landscape are not always comfortable places to be. How appropriate then, that the word ecotone comes from eco– and the Greek word tonos, meaning tension. To move from one way of being to another may require significant preparations for readiness and a rallying of resources.  The steps before the shift can seem hair-splittingly small. It’s easy to gloss over a client’s statement as a common turn of phrase when s/he says  “I want to be able to start to change,” but notice: there is a want, an ability to start, a starting, all before s/he gets to the changing!  Each step may involve consequences to explore, a decision to act, and courage to be mustered to step away from the known and into the unknown.  All the more reason to pause at such choice points to learn more about resources and resolve, about the process needed for change.

Often clients come for help when they are living in a broad “ecotone”, in a space between two worlds or ways of being.  As we explore both where they may be stuck and where they want to go, these new metaphors will remind me to consider “the edge effect.”

 

 

 

*Definitions taken from wikipedia.org entries for ecotone and edge effect

Metaphors for Tough $$ Times

A lot of my clients are anxious about their financial security. Can metaphors help?  C. C., Denver, CO

In today’s difficult economic times, many people are stressed out about their circumstances. If you are a helping professional working with struggling or anxious clients, you’ll be glad to learn that metaphors can help. Wondering how that could be, when jobs are in jeopardy and bills need to be paid now?

While metaphors aren’t likely to cause employers to start hiring again (actually, they could…but that’s a subject for another blog), you can help clients develop vivid metaphors  for an inner state or way of feeling to feel more resourceful and more hopeful now.   If  your client can summon more optimism, feel more in control, or find strength to face a storm, s/he will reduce the flow of stress hormones in his/her body, a benefit in multiple ways, and have more energy to devote to problem-solving… and joyful living.

 

You can take these four simple steps to discover and strengthen a supporting inner resource:

  1. Ask your client to recall another time when s/he felted stressed about a challenge. What personal quality or characteristic(s)  did s/he use to cope? It might, for example, have been courage, an ability to stay calm, or stubbornness.
  2. Get a metaphor for that quality with a simple question. If the client says, “Well, I guess I was brave,”  you ask, “If you were to draw a picture of that brave, what would it look like?” Invite your client to actually draw it or just describe it aloud.  Perhaps s/he would draw a surfer riding a huge wave or a lion tamer with a whip and chair, controlling a roaring lion.
  3. Help your client get a vividly detailed picture of this resource by asking these simple questions about what s/he describes.  Use only the exact words/short phrases s/he uses!  The point is to get your client more familiar with and to strengthen his/her own resource, not to make suggestions about what you think would be helpful–and that includes adding or changing even small details!
  • Is there anything else about that [client’s word]?
  • What kind of [client’s word or phrase] is that?
  • Where is that [resource word]? O the inside? On the outside?

Examples: Is there anything else about that “surfer”? What kind of “riding” is that “riding”? Where inside is that “brave”? On the inside? On the outside?

Keep on asking  “what kind of…” , “anything else about…” ? and “where is… ?” questions until your client has a well-developed metaphor, full of sensory details.

4.  Encourage your client to return to this image whenever s/he want to feel that resourceful way again.

And if you try this exercise with a client, comment here on how it goes!

Compliments: The Other Side of the Judgment Coin

If you participate in a personal growth group or run one yourself, you probably have no problem with a common rule that no one criticizes participants as they share their experiences or feelings. Consider adding the rule that no compliments be paid either, for they are merely the other side of the same coin. Compliments and criticisms are both forms of judgment, and they can put pressure on the recipient to please others, whether it is to earn praise or avoid criticism.

It’s a remarkable experience to be in a group that suspends both criticisms and compliments. When listeners just witness, speakers begin to follow suit; they ease off judging themselves. Without external or internal judgment, they become more open to whatever lies within.

Compliments can backfire in another way. They can trigger a receiver to argue the case as to why the compliment is not true, aloud or internally. “It’s true I did that [good deed], but he doesn’t know I resented it.” “But I spoke nastily about her behind her back.” “Actually, I could have tried harder.” “She doesn’t know about this other thing I did.” And so on. The possibilities are endless. Instead of feeding self-esteem, compliments can reinforce self-condemnation.

Even “I” statements (meaning speakers refer only to themselves rather than to the one who has finished speaking), imply a judgment.  A person unsure of him/herself can easily interpret the comment as suggesting, “You should have handled it/responded my way.” “I” statements at their worst cast doubt and self-rebuke; at best, they pull the attention to “I” and distract the original speaker from processing his /her own experience.

Now, I’m not trying to suggest there is no place for compliments in this world! Only that, in a personal growth group setting where expectations and rules are clearly stated, it can be both freeing and healing to suspend judgment of any kind, to listen, and, if you’re going to make a comment, make it a clean one. Using Clean Language is one way to assure that you are not using judgmental language. Asking simple questions and repeating the sharer’s exact words, you add no content that s/he has not already acknowledged. You offer no interpretations, no comparisons. You keep the sharer’s focus on what s/he has just presented, allowing him/her the time and space to process what has emerged.

If you facilitate or participate in a counseling or growth group, try doing without criticisms and compliments. Both are un-clean. Both are forms of judgment. Positive or negative, they still encourage the sharer to take someone else’s opinion into account, consciously or subconsciously.

I suggest an appropriate response to someone who has spoken about himself or herself is to ask a question that invites further self-exploration such as, “And is there anything else you know about that?” or “And what difference does knowing that make?”

Or simply say, “Thank you for sharing.”

Ask Gina: Can Metaphors Change Cognitions or Behaviors?

With Clean Language, are you attempting to change client’s cognitions through metaphor rather than focusing on accepting cognitions and changing behaviors. I got the feeling that the change in metaphors was about playing around with behavior, not cognition, but if that’s not the case, I am a little skeptical.   -T. M., psychologist, Baltimore, MD

Let me start by clarifying that it would be inaccurate to say I, as a facilitator, have the intention to change anything.  My role is to help the client gain access to his inner world through metaphor, and offer questions that heighten his awareness of the images/symbols there and identify what he wants to have–or not have–happen. To discover his own blocks, own patterns, own system. I ‘hold’ what emerges for the client, direct attention and invite responses.

As we are all systems, I don’t believe you can effect change in a behavior without effecting cognitions and feelings, and visa versa. Who’s to say which comes first? The beauty of the Clean Language approach is you, as the facilitator, don’t have to decide for your client which is the most effective way to help an individual change; you can honor your client’s system’s own knowing–believing the mind/body knows, on some subconscious level, perhaps– what is the best way to heal, in what order, at what pace. It is a process that is client-centered, deeply respectful, and very empowering.

I invite you to approach Clean Language with a curious, open mind, and see what you discover. There is nothing that says you can’t combine this with other ways of working. You will learn to listen precisely, use a client’s exact words, notice things about a client’s words that may well have passed unnoticed, and work with the problem/remedy/outcome model…for starters.  I have yet to train a helping/healing professional who was not eager to apply these new skills and ways of thinking.

Gina Campbell, offering Clean Language trainings since 2005

gina_campbell

A Certified Clean Practitioner with a Masters degree in a developmental counseling field and decades of teaching experience. Read more

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