I work a great deal with metaphors and several of my clients are gay adult men and lesbians. The strategy I use in counselling and psychotherapy is based on the principal that we interpret and make that means of lifetime as a result of the stories we explain to ourselves and other folks. These tales about the situations and the ordeals of our lives make use of metaphors.
The journey metaphor (lifestyle as a journey) is really popular in counselling operate as are pedagogic metaphors (life as learning). But instead than arrive up with the metaphors myself, I am intrigued in the metaphors folks provide to the counselling session. As a therapist I do not set about creating interpretations but help individuals to make their individual interpretations.
For example, say I am meeting with a shopper who talks about not being able to come across any pleasure in daily life. He has been seeking for fulfillment for a extended time. He knows it exists simply because he is aware of some other homosexual adult males who appear to be to have identified it, but he was generally informed when he was growing up that pleasure came from owning a loved ones and discovering a loving spouse. He hasn’t been equipped to locate fulfillment and has frequently assumed about offering up (the giving up took the sort of suicidal ideas), but a thing sales opportunities him to keep pursuing it. https://direct-therapy.org.uk/anger-management-therapy/
This story could be seen as a variety of a quest metaphor: the quest for pleasure. In telling me the story of this research he utilizes words like ‘finding’, ‘searching’, ‘existence’, ‘giving up’ and ‘pursuing’. So I can choose up this metaphor and start off employing it with him, making use of his very own language and interpretation of the occasions and activities of his existence to obtain new clues, signposts etcetera to explore the origins of this quest with him. Quest metaphors are not uncommon of system and we see them routinely in films this sort of as The Wizard of Oz, and Lord of the Rings and many others.
An individual else may come to me with a dilemma of ‘not recognizing how to make friends’. So there is a metaphor below in the ‘making’. This individual has ‘almost offered up’ simply because it calls for ‘too substantially effort’ and he has ‘nothing to see for it’. When I talk to about what he has heard about making good friends he tells me that he understands it normally takes ‘Time, Rely on and Effort’. And from his encounter previously he has made a decision that it is rather ‘hard to build on one night stands’ or ‘random hook ups’ simply because the whole point is liable to ‘come crumbling down’ as well very easily.
This seems to me like a development metaphor. I can adhere to this up with him by asking about designs and dreams of what sorts of friendships he needs to make. Are they great edifices or cosy hideaways? If random hook ups do not look to operate, what sort of foundations could possibly operate? What is the cement of friendship? What are the making blocks? Does he know of any ‘finished products’ or ‘works in progress’ he can get suggestions from?
I discover metaphors definitely stimulating. For starters, I you should not arrive up with them, other individuals do, but I can assistance produce the favored story and plotlines. Metaphors also communicate to the hopes, beliefs, commitments and values folks have. And hearing about these is just as crucial as listening to the difficulty story.