Use of life metaphors in counseling and psychotherapy

Use of life metaphors in counseling and psychotherapy

I work a lot with metaphors and many of my customers are gays and lesbians. The approach that I use in consultation and psychotherapy is based on the principle that we interpret the meaning of life through the stories we tell ourselves and others. These stories about the events and experiences of our lives use metaphors.

The travel emotional (life as a trip) is widespread in the advisory work, as is educational metaphors (life as learning). But instead of getting to the metaphors myself, I am interested in the metaphors who bring people into the consulting session. As a therapist, I do not deal with interpretations, but help people to make their own interpretations.

Suppose I meet with a client who talks about not being able to find satisfaction in life. He has been looking for satisfaction for a long time. He knows they exist because he knows a few other gay men who seem to have found them, but growing up he was always told that having a family and finding a loving partner brings contentment. He couldn't find satisfaction and often thought of giving up (giving up took the form of suicidal thoughts), but something makes him keep pursuing it.

This story could be seen as a kind of search metaphor: the search for satisfaction. By telling me the story of this search, he uses words like "find", "search", "exist", "give up" and "persecute". So I can take up this metaphor and start using it with him by using his own language and interpretation of the events and experiences of his life to find new information, signposts, etc. to research the origins of this search with him. Quest metaphors are of course not uncommon and we see them regularly in films such as the wizard of OZ and Lord of the Rings, etc.

Someone else could come to me with a problem "not to know how to find friends". So there is a metaphor in the "make". This person "almost gave up" because it requires "too much effort" and "he has nothing to see for it". When I ask him what he heard about finding friends, he tells me that he understands that "time, trust and effort" is needed. And from his experience, he has already decided that it is quite "difficult to build on one-night stands" or "random connections" because the whole thing can "collapse" too easily.

That sounds like a construction metaphor to me. I can pursue this with him by asking about plans and dreams about what kind of friendships he wants to build. Are they grand buildings or cozy havens? If random connections don't seem to work, what kind of foundations might work? What is the cement of friendship? What are the building blocks? Do they know of any “finished products” or “work in progress” that they can draw inspiration from?

I find metaphors very stimulating. First, I don't design them like others, but I can help develop the preferred history and action lines. Metaphors also speak the hopes, beliefs, obligations and values ​​that people have. And hearing from it is as important to hear the problem history.

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