Metaphor Stories

All stories are metaphors. Story telling can be used to deliver a metaphor in such a way that the client remembers it vividly and can recall the story later. We never forget the lesson in the fairy stories we heard as children. Stories do not have to be hypnotic or dramatic or even plausible. Stories can be true, and still be a metaphor for something else. Stories can be one paragraph or one page. Metaphors as stories are memorable, non threatening and apply to a wide variety of situations. Clients think about the stories they have been told, and unconsciously find parallels with parts of their lives.

 

 

The Kaleidoscope

When people come to therapy they are sometimes afraid that through the process of change they will lose some essential part of themselves. In fact who you are changes all time as you grow older. People are made up of a collection of many parts, and those parts are continually re-arranging themselves. I wonder if you have ever looked through a kaleidoscope, the child's toy with little bits of coloured glass inside? In the kaleidoscope the same number of parts can be made to create millions of different patterns. The exact detail of the patterns is not under your control, but you can turn the lens as many times as you want to create more and more patterns until you find one that you want to keep. I often think of people who come to therapy as having a pattern that they don't like and not being able to change it by themselves. So really, all therapy does is to reorganise life's kaleidoscope into a more pleasing arrangement.

 

The Power of Belief

Henry Ford became the richest man in the world by creating and running the Ford Motor Works. He started life as a farm mechanic but became a success because he had a clear idea of how the world worked. He said something that I think you might want to ponder. 'In every situation', he said, 'it doesn't matter whether a man believes he can, or believes he can't, he's right'.

 

Out of thin air

In 1640 Jan Baptista van Helmont, a Flemish physician and chemist, carried out an experiment.  He took a pot of soil, and a willow sapling and weighed both. He planted the little tree in the soil and carefully watered it for five years. At the end of the five years he then again weighed the willow tree and the soil. The tree had increased in weight by 164 pounds, but  the soil had decreased in weight by less than two ounces.

Where had the material of the tree come from?  Out of thin air. At the time nobody understood that plants take oxygen and carbon from the air to build their leaves and stems and flowers. Just because we don't understand a process doesn't mean it isn't happening. Every time you look at a tree you might like to remember that it's actually made out of thin air, and maybe also wonder about what invisible processes might be going on in you, right now.

 

Boiling a frog

It is said that if you put a frog into hot water it will immediately react and jump out. However, if you put the frog into cold water, and slowly heat the water, the frog will not notice the gradual change in temperature and will stay in the water until overcome by the heat.

 

Ketchup

Sometimes when people need to change, they get frustrated. People expect that once they decide to change, and really mean it, the change should start immediately, and they should see results immediately. However, a friend of mine says that it is not really like that. The process of change is not orderly and progressive. Change is actually like getting ketchup out of the bottle. You take the ketchup bottle, and you shake and shake and nothing comes out. You put more effort into it, you shake and shake and nothing comes out. Finally you give it one last shake and SPLAT! the ketchup splatters all over the place. Change is like that.

 

Toys

A marketing company were trying to find out what toys kids really liked. So they organised a room, and a caregiver, and put a pile of their new designs into a big box. They then brought in about a dozen kids and told them they could play with any of the toys in the box and they could keep the toy afterwards. The marketing people then left the room so as to not influence the kids in any way. The idea was that they could find out what kids really liked from which toys the kids wanted to keep. So they left the kids to play for half an hour and went back. The toys were scattered around the floor forgotten, and all kids were happily playing in the large cardboard box the toys came in.

 

Birds

Some birds are very territorial, that is, they decide that some part of the garden belongs to them, and nobody else. Of course, gardens are in short supply and the ownership of a vacant part is hotly disputed. Now, birds are fragile creatures, so if they were to physically attack each other both of them would be injured. So what the birds do is to strut around and pretend to ignore the other bird. They both aggressively tear up bits of grass, and furiously scatter them around, all the while keeping an eye on the other bird, hoping that the other bird will be so impressed by this that they give up and find their own garden. This is called displacement activity. It's not just birds who do it.

 

Cats

There was this lady, and one day she got the idea that her cat was trying to communicate with her. For weeks and months she tries to get what the cat is trying to tell her, but hears nothing. And then one day, she just gives up worrying about it, and to her amazement she can hear the cat clearly. 'When did you learn to talk?', she says. The cat replies 'I've always been able to talk. It's just that you weren't listening properly'. The woman says 'But I am always listening!'. The cat politely pointed out that the radio is on, and there is traffic outside, and birds are singing but while she's focused on trying to understand the cat, what can she hear? 'Nothing', she replies. 'Exactly.' said the cat.

 

 

 

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