Diagnosing Your Metaphor

The use of metaphor - in the form of creative and imaginative but simple analogies, anecdotes, parables, myths or stories - can be a very powerful therapeutic tool.

Recently I’ve been wondering how to reconcile the different philosophical leanings of my friends; some of whom are pretty straight with a belief in science and psychology but feel that chakras, angels, and new-age stuff is just fluffy nonsense, and others who truly believe we are spiritual beings having a human experience.

You might think that I should just fall on one side or the other – become connected with my divine self, and communicate with my higher self and soul and wear crystals to protect myself from astral entities and pray to the Arch Angels; or only believe in the supremacy of science and nothing exists outside it.

The problem arises when science, and medical science in particular, fails to provide a remedy to a chronic condition; yet a non-scientific method based on dowsing comes up with a weird scenario of what the condition is at its core – and the prescription of visualisation and messing around with the chakras WORKS!

Of course, the psychologist will be quick to explain away the phenomenon by saying that the person must have wanted a remedy so bad that their HOPE made them suggestible and therefore their BELIEF made their subconscious mind do the back-flip it needed to cause a cure.

The problem with this kind of explanation – often said with a non-malicious but quite evident sneer – is that it totally undermines the person’s experience. The scientifically unproven tool of dowsing (in whatever form) is immediately brandished as pseudoscience and unreliable so the person is also brandished a fool (by association) by the science believing friend. After such a demolishing of the basis of the person’s cure, it is a wonder the remedy (remember it was only based on a HOPE in the first place according to the psychologists explanation) doesn’t wither and die so they end up in the same state they were previous to the remedy (possibly for many years without any help from science).

This isn’t supposed to be a blog bashing science. What I want to explore is the possibility that Metaphor is more powerful than we might imagine.

You see, one way of looking at the concepts of the soul, chakras, angels, entities and other things that are unseen but some people believe in strongly, is to say: maybe they are metaphors.

In Hypnotherapy, we use metaphors a lot. The subconscious mind somehow gets the message and does the necessary work. One such metaphor is to imagine that a vacuum cleaner made of light is driving through our blood vessels and sucking up any viral infection or unwanted (diseased or cancerous) cells. Of course, there is not REALLY a tiny vacuum cleaner, so we say the subconscious mind activates our white blood cells or other mechanisms that science can agree to, and thus our blood is cleansed.

So we use a metaphor the subconscious mind can utilise as a catalyst for change and every psychologist will agree that this is how it works.

Back to the person with the dowsing, or other diagnostic method, that comes up with some weird and wonderful explanation for our malady. Maybe what they are diagnosing is the best metaphor for our circumstances? Maybe the mind uses metaphor to a much greater extent than we previously thought?

Some of my friends are going to be upset with me for ‘explaining away’ their hard-held beliefs as metaphors, but I think this is actually a really exciting possibility. If Angels, for instance, are not real in the scientific sense, but metaphorical, then we do not have to PROVE their existence. However, being USEFUL metaphors, they play an important role in being a catalyst for change.

The mind is exceptionally powerful, and it can not only cure us of chronic disease (having been given a metaphor to work with) but it can also change our personality – making us more confident, assertive, dynamic, positive, and even charismatic – when it takes the message from a metaphor.

I have been experimenting with diagnostic techniques lately (although more sophisticated than dowsing) and finding it extremely useful to explore weird and wonderful metaphors so as to find one that really works for individual clients. At the end of the day, I could fall on the side of my science based friends and say I’m too much of a professional coach and therapist to use such metaphors – and limit the healing of clients – but my compassion is too strong to do this. It looks like I’ll just have to stay on that metaphorical fence.

Be well

Colin :-)