How Metaphors Help Clients in ACT
How effective can metaphors be in developing more flexible attitudes towards our mental health? Q&A with leading ACT practitioner Jill Stoddard.
I like behavioral experiments. “So your mind is telling you X… let’s see what your experience might tell you. Let’s see if these two things match.” So for example, I had a client who got very anxious when her purse was on her front seat because she feared someone would snatch it at a red light (even though her window wasn’t open and her door was locked). So I asked her to drive around a congested area with her purse on her seat and her window down so she could get out of her mind and instead engage in experiential learning.
Metaphors and experiential exercises can also be very creative – you can find these in many books, or design your own. The one you choose (or design) should map on to your client’s struggles functionally and topographically.
In ACT, we believe language is what gets people stuck – getting hooked by rules, judgments, assumptions, reasons, or predictions rather than relying on direct experience. Therapy is, of course, a language-based interaction, so metaphors and experiential exercises provide a way for clients to get in contact with elements of their direct experience even while we are using language to do it. It circumvents the problematic parts of language.
A metaphor is good if it matches the client’s issue both topographically and functionally. So for example, if you want to illustrate that a client is pushing their feelings down, only to have them resurface more strongly, you might use this ball in the pool metaphor (from both Be Mighty and The Big Book of ACT Metaphors):
This is like trying to submerge a floating ball under the surface of the water. It takes a lot of effort and energy to shove the ball under the water, and in no time, it’s crashing back up through the surface. Similarly, we push down the feelings but they ultimately keep popping back up. And the farther down we shove them, the more they explode back through, bringing along added feelings that will have to be shoved down too! Struggling with the ball in this way keeps it close by. The battle is tiring and futile. All our energy, effort, and attention are engaged in this struggle, making it difficult to focus on other important things.
This metaphor is demonstrating that struggling to control internal experiences backfires. There are many metaphors for this, but you would not want to use the hungry tiger. The hungry tiger shows up at your door as a cub whining for food. You want to stop the whining so you feed it and it gets bigger and louder so you feed it some more. Before you know it you have a big vicious tiger at your door. Even though this metaphor also demonstrates the futility of control, it does not appropriately match the client’s experience of stuffing their emotions down the way the ball in the pool metaphor does.
For a more comprehensive discussion of how to create and tailor metaphors, I recommend chapter two in The Big Book of ACT Metaphors.
There are MANY. These can be found in any ACT book, including my book, The Big Book of ACT Metaphors. You can also join the Association for Contextual and Behavioral Sciences (it is a values-based donation to join) where you can access many free resources on their website www.contextualscience.org
The ball in the pool and hungry tiger above are two of my favorites.
I might compare us to a coach and a player – the coach has some experience she can share to help you practice and sharpen your skills. The coach doesn’t know everything and isn’t the one playing the game – the player has to be the one to move her feet and do the work, but we’re in this together.
I created a lighthouse metaphor for my book Be Mighty that I love for illustrating the way values can be used to guide us forward when we get stuck in challenging thoughts and feelings. It goes like this:
Imagine you are a ship sailing along on a journey of a lifetime, tacking in directions you care about, perhaps navigating toward an important destination. Suddenly, you find yourself shrouded in thick fog, no longer able to see where you are headed. Afraid you might collide with another ship or crash onto a jagged jetty, you decide to drop anchor and wait for the fog to clear. You wait and wait, but it appears the fog is here to stay. How long will you stay anchored, lifetime journey interrupted? Luckily, there is a way to sail on, even if the fog never clears. The lighthouse. The lighthouse will bestow the gift of light, a bright beacon, illuminating a sea lane through the fog so that you can weigh anchor and get back underway, no matter how thick the fog.
This is not a metaphor, per se, but I reached out to my colleague Russell Kolts, author of The Compassionate-Mind Guide to Managing Your Anger, and he shared this helpful view:
I have a saying: "Anger is a great signal and a terrible strategy." Excepting when an actual 'fight' response would be helpful (and in the modern world it seldom is), anger does a good job at directing our attention toward something that bothers us/to which we might need to attend, but acting aggressively (the behavior that anger is designed by evolution to motivate) is generally not functional in addressing the situations that commonly trigger our anger in the modern world. So in the language of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, I see anger as very valuable in helping us to discover/clarify our values, but not so helpful in enacting them… hence, "a great signal, but terrible strategy."
Autism is outside my scope, so I asked my expert colleague, Katy Rothfelder, M.A., LPC-associate, and here is what she said:
Yes - metaphors, visual representations and expansive repertoires can be used with neurodiverse populations. Just like with most metaphors used in ACT, choosing one that fits the particular context of the person is important. With autistic individuals, use of visual representations, spacial and physical adaptations for the metaphor, and metaphors aligned with the person's interests can be particularly important. In some instances, being more direct with the metaphor, keeping it simple, or asking closed follow-up questions can be helpful.