Our minds work in Metaphor, it’s a figure of speech in which a word or phrase literally denoting one kind of object or idea is used in place of another to suggest a likeness or analogy between them, which the intellectual brain processes and understands. Metaphors are used to describe things in our day to day lives, we may say “we feel Blue” to describe our feelings or “its cats and dogs out there!” we all understand what that means, we could have just said it’s raining!
They are similar to indirect suggestions, they guide people to think or feel something, without actually telling them, great with clients who respond badly to direct suggestion.
There are Metaphors used in Therapy. A famous example is the Ratey Metaphor used to describe the workings of the mind, in fact our Initial Consultation is a metaphor, the intellectual mind, the primitive mind, polar bears, stress buckets and depressed Cavemen are metaphors. They allow clients to understand easily and their minds are turned on to find meaning to what they are hearing.
