 How does that sound as a way of working? Bloody amazing, Bob. That's a way of working. All that from between a rock and hard place. I thought it was such a good metaphor, whatever metaphor they bring in. Yeah. You know, because they're symbolically talking about the internal world. And also, you can use that and help them validate that and express the meaning. And look at how, you know, what that means in terms of how it was and where they want to go in the future. Yeah. And where they are in the present so they can get to their future contract. I love the way it's connected into the, you know, the therapeutic, you know, aspects of the treatment goals and all those sorts of things. I love that. Yeah. One of the metaphors I used to use an awful lot when I was doing my psychotherapy training was that my heads are shed. Your heads are shed. Yeah. Full of rubbish, literally. You know, when you have a shed and you put all the crap in it. Yeah. And then somebody said, so a therapist working with metaphors using this type of model. First of all, they use this, they validate the metaphor. Have a curiosity about where the metaphor came from. And help you reflect and understand how that fits into not only understanding your internal world from the world you came from. But how you can actually move to a different place. Yeah. We demystify what goes on behind the therapy room door. Join us on this voyage of discovery and co-creative conversations. This is The Therapy Show behind closed doors podcast with Bob Cook and Jackie Jones. Welcome back to episode 87 of The Therapy Show behind closed doors with a wonderful Mr. Bob Cook and myself, Jackie Jones. And in this episode, we're going to be talking about working with metaphors in the therapy room. Yeah. Story telling Bob. Is it like Jack and Ory? A bit like that. It's so like freezing outside. I was just thinking about a metaphor I could sort of describe how I symbolically feel at the moment. So yes, let's talk about metaphors. So metaphors are so important in the world of psychotherapy because really they're used to help the client express what's happening internally from a symbolic place. Yeah. So, you know, we could think, I'm sure you and I could think of lots and lots of metaphors. I personally don't think there's many sessions that I don't use metaphors. I was thinking about, well, and our clients use them all the time, for example. So, and they use it really to express their emotions or their thoughts at a symbolic level. So it's another way of getting to their internal way, internal world in quite a creative way through symbolism. Yeah. I find it helps and it works if you've got a very logical client, you know, to get them to imagine a feeling as a colour or, you know, describe it in words or whatever it is. You can only get some out with a head and more into the feeling rather than being very logical about things. So it reminds me of, well, we're going back to 1988 or something. I just moved to, I just founded the Institute. It was called the Livestream Centre then. The Institute, your institute was called the Livestream Centre. 1988 to 1993. It was called the Livestream Centre. And it got that name because before I became a therapist, I was a teacher in a technical college. And I taught various, I taught politics and different things. But I also taught liberal studies to these 17 and 18 year old students on a Friday afternoon. And on one Friday afternoon, I said to them, look, I'm going to, as you know, I'll be leaving soon because I'm going to start a new career, and I'm going to start a psychopathic centre. What should I call it? And they gave loads of names. And one of the names somebody said was Livestream because it represents the stream of life. Wow. And I liked it so much. I called my new centre Livestream Centre. That was lovely. And it was like that for a long time until 1993. I finished my training and I got my exams to be an international trainer. And I decided to have a more formal name for the institute. And I wanted to call it the Manchester Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy because at that time I met Richard Erskine who was the president of the integrative. Well, he had informed it then, but the integrative organization, which he formed later in 1999, I think. But anyway, he had started writing about integrative psychotherapy. So I was starting to see integration as a major form of cure. So I wanted to call it the Manchester Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy. But my secretary at the time couldn't say the word integrated. She was so northern. She's called Hello, it's a Manchester Institute for Integrative Psychotherapy. Goodness knows what. And after six months, I decided to drop the integrative. To be fair, it is a bit of a mouthful bulb. When you're answering the phone, it is a bit of a long one. They called it the Manchester Institute for Psychotherapy. But it was called the Livestream Centre. And it was sort of a metaphor for the stream of life. So my institute was formed from a metaphor. I love that story. Yeah, so my centre was called the Livestream because it's a metaphor for the stream of life. And also, if you want to put another way, the stream of narratives that goes through our whole consciousness. Yeah. And sometimes I think I wish I never dropped it because I liked it so much. I created a more formal name. But I really did like Livestream Centre. But in those days, going back to what I say about motorbikes, I ran seminars for 20-yard years. But they were six o'clock or 6.30 till 9.30 on a Friday night. And we got some psychodromatists in. And I arrived sort of 20 minutes for the seminar to start. And these two had just arrived. And they said, who was running the actual psychodromatist seminar? And they said, oh, I have to have all the pictures off the walls. And we had a lot of them on this big wall. I said, what for? And she said, oh, well, that's to stop any projections that the audience participants might have onto the pictures. We had a completely blank wall. And you see, I've always sort of remembered this, even though I've done the opposite in my therapy rooms, which is have lots of things for people to project things onto. Because I think we can work with symbolism, what the picture represents, the metaphors, how they see all the scenery of what's in the pictures to get back to the internal world of the client. It's all whisked in the mill to me. So I come from a different place altogether where you started, which is like, I might say to a client, just imagine that you, whatever, you were a fly on the wall looking down at your dysfunctional family. How would you describe that? Or what would your feelings be? Or what do you see is happening? So I think it's really important metaphors. I think it's going better with me with metaphors. If somebody's trying to describe something and they can put it into a metaphor that I can relate to, then it kind of goes in a lot deeper, not only better, but deeper. Yeah. So couples therapy, particularly. Yeah. So, you know, people come for couples therapy and I've done a lot of it in the past. And you'll say, OK, so give me a metaphor of how you see your marriage at the moment. Yeah. And they might say, you know, it's just like a cold freezing tank in the middle of Siberia and no one can get in or out and I'm trapped in it or whatever it is to describe there. And to use that, it's all about symbolism. Yeah. In the English language, we do as you're talking, I'm thinking of that saying between a rock and a hard place. Yes. We use metaphors quite normally in the English language. Yeah. Yeah. And very rarely does a session go past where the client won't use a metaphor. Yeah. And then, you know, and of course, there's metaphor therapy. I thought, oh, I'll just look into Wikipedia just before I start this podcast and look at what they say about metaphors. So I'll just, for a moment, read it out. Yeah. So I put that in and it said metaphor therapy was called in psychotherapy practice. And this is for a way of thinking about how to use metaphors. So metaphor and psychotherapy, due to practice, can be accomplished using a six stage model to work with patient generated metaphors. Number one, hearing and suspending, making sense of the metaphor. In other words, somebody says, like, between a rock and a hard place. Oh, that's interesting. What does that really mean to you then? Yeah. Yeah. So you get the therapist is exploring the meanings of that metaphor from an internal frame of reference. Number two, validating and expressing interest in that metaphor. In other words, oh, the therapist is really curious. Wow. That's a really interesting way you've described how you felt when you were 17 or 18. You felt the between a rock and a hard place. Gosh, tell me a little bit more about how that felt. So that's accounting and validating and being curious about how they symbolically see their world at the age of 16 and 17. Yeah. Number three, expanding the metaphor by encouraging descriptions of associations, emotions and imagery. I mean, the therapist might share their own associations there. So that would be, oh, you know, as you talked to me about how you felt in that house. And those dilemmas that were happening when you're 16 and 17 and how you symbolically felt between a, you know, hard rock or place or however you described it, you know, I'm just thinking about how you talked about your life in earlier sessions where you talked about feeling as a bystander and caught up in a real whirlwind of emotions and you must have felt pretty in a turmoil. So you go on or you might, or you might say to the person, wow, so that's really in between a rock and a hard place. So if you were to imagine that even more and expand those internal ways of you thinking about yourself, how about just, and you expand the metaphor. Yeah. So you can ask the person to even reflect more on their internal world. So they might say, well, actually, you know, when I think about it, I was so dissociated, so fragmented. I felt so far removed. And they would start then talking perhaps about their fragmented world. Yeah. Number four, playing with the possibilities by exploring what the metaphor might mean. So you might then go on to explain that that's an interesting between a rock and a hard place. So tell me again what that meant for you. Oh, that meant you felt divided and fragmented. And so what ever metaphor might you have. And I was thinking of Edward Scissorhands, for example, when you're talking about being fragmented. You know, that's Scissorhands was a film in the 1970s. Yeah. Next number five, marking and selecting the aspects that support the current treatment goals. So for example, oh, how do you tell me about feeling so fragmented and spit off and between a rock and a hard place. I was just thinking about where we're heading in therapy today, which is to be more integrated and more present and more in the here and now. And there seems such a gap between that symbolism of your younger self and today. What do you think needs to happen in therapy so we can move to a different place. You're talking through all these steps, Bob. It sounds really powerful. Yeah, I think it's great. Number six, connecting with the future by outlining tasks that lie ahead based on sharing understandings derived from the metaphor. So I'll go on again. So, you know, that's, you know, as you talk about how you felt in a rock and a hard place and fragmented part of yourself. And we know when you came into therapy, you just wanted to have more of a sense of how you felt. And that's, you know, as you talk about how you felt in a rock and a hard place and fragmented part of yourself. We know when you came into therapy, you just wanted to have more of a connection with the world and more of a connection with relationships and you struggle in maintaining relationships. So we look at what needs to be done from that 17 year old boy that felt that way and this 26 year old person, this new world and the steps we outline. Let's just go through what those steps are again so we can heal that younger self to get to where we are today. And the future. How does that sound as a way of working? Bloody amazing, Bob. That's a way of working. All that from between a rock and hard place. I thought it was such a good metaphor, whatever motive metaphor they bring in. Yeah. You know, because they're symbolically talking about the internal world. And also, you can use that and how to validate that and express the meaning and look at how, you know, what that means in terms of how it was and where they want to go in the future. Yeah. And where they are in the present so they can get to their future contract. I love the way it's connected into the, you know, the therapeutic, you know, aspects of the treatment goals and all those sorts of things. I love that. Yeah. One of the metaphors I used to use an awful lot when I was doing my psychotherapy training was that my heads are shed. Your heads are shed. Full of rubbish, literally. You know where you have a shed and you put all the crap in it. Yeah. But see, that means something to, so a therapist working with metaphors using this type of model. First of all, they use, they validate the metaphor. Have a curiosity about where the metaphor came from. And help you reflect and understand how that fits into not only understanding your internal world from the world you came from, but how you can actually move to a different place. Yeah. And visualization and things like that. One, I think when we visualize something, we connect more emotionally with it rather than just using words and language and, you know, things like that. Yeah. It's a lot more powerful. Yeah. Yeah. You absolutely had to hit on a really good thing. And that is what you hit on earlier on was the therapist, sorry, the client that comes in who's highly cognitive, uses intellectualization as a defense process. Yeah. Those types of people, symbolism, they often find very hard, by the way. Yeah. The metaphor also quite challenging. However, in my experience, they have a desire to be able to talk about their life symbolically. The issue is given them permission to just try the process out. So, for example, you could say somebody, oh, you know, I've been thinking, and I often feel, you know, in a therapy, get caught up in a cognitive process. And I just like to try something for a moment. You know, when you're talking about how it was for your boarding school, let's just try use talking symbolically how it was for you. Or use any metaphor you like. And I'll explain a metaphor, you know, and what a metaphor means, but just for a moment, let's move away from cognition to having a go talking about how it was for you symbolically. Yeah. That is a wonderful way to help person from a very, how can I explain this, so they don't feel shamed in any way. Yeah. A cognition is, I don't know, somehow a shameful process or whatever. They can attempt to use symbolism or metaphor as a way of describing their internal world and a bridge to emotion. Yeah. I love that. Is it something to do with it kind of depersonalizes it when you're talking about a metaphor, it's kind of like it's not about me, it's about, you know, the rock and the hard place or the shed or whatever it is. Yeah. So it's kind of detached from it in a way. Yeah. It can often be used as a way of what you just say, maybe depersonalizing, moving away from shame. Yeah. I think of metaphors to symbolism. Somebody asked to me, what would I have done if I hadn't been a psychopathist for 37, 38 years? And I answered, I'd looked for being an anthropologist. Wow. Or even a social anthropologist. And I love traveling. Yeah, we know about Bob, you have a lot of holidays. He said, if I wasn't a social anthropologist, I'd like to be a historian because I think it's stories. Yeah. We know that if you go back and back and back and back in time, cavemen used to draw in metaphors on their, you know, their cave. Yeah. You know that if you open up the Bible, it's nearly all, you know, the Bible is full of fables, parallels, symbolisms and metaphors. Yeah. Yeah. The Bible is a way of teaching. You know, most, I haven't read the Bible for a while, but if you go to the Gospels, it's full of metaphors. Yeah. Because that's the way that Jesus taught. Yeah. And it is powerful if you're using metaphors. People emotionally connect with it. You can visualise it. It's kind of like, brings in your senses rather than just hearing the words. Right. Because the work, mind you, I suppose metaphors are open to our own adaption of it or whatever. But, you know. And allergies or... That's it. If somebody says a load of words, we read into that what we want. Whereas, you know, if you can visualise it and there's a story around it, you can kind of follow it a lot better. Yeah. You go to major religions. Buddhism. Yeah. All of analogies and metaphors, all the time. If you look at what the great gurus said, they don't speak transactionally, logically. Yeah. They talk to symbolism, metaphors, why? Because it goes to a different creative part of our neurological system. Yeah. I love that. It bypasses all the baggage sometimes. Yeah. It's a wonderful way to do therapy. Yeah. The podcast by saying, is it linked to narrative therapy? The answer is yes. Yeah. I tell you why. Because narrative therapy is at its essence storytelling. And storytelling goes back thousands and thousands and thousands of years. And it's the basis of early healing. Yeah. And if you go to the basis of narrative and storytelling and nearly always is the use of metaphor analogies in the stories. I think it would be a wonderful session to get out of the logic side of things and just have a discussion about metaphors and putting our thoughts and feelings into a story or a visualisation or something. Quite free, really. I'd really recommend anybody listen to this. And I suspect that everybody listen to this if the therapist have used metaphors. I bet anybody listen to this have been clients have used metaphors. And I bet you anybody who hasn't been therapist or clients listen to podcast have used metaphors in their life anyway. I agree, Bob. But as you were saying that, I completely agree with it. But I don't think I've utilised it enough in the therapy room. Oh, yes. We might use the words, but I don't think I've used it. You know, therapeutically in the therapy room. Probably around. And I was just thinking myself in the training of therapist. We haven't got a weekend on how to use metaphors and analogies in accessing the younger self. And I think we should have because it's such a wonderful, wonderful way of helping people look at their not only their younger self, but their internal world through past, present and future. Yeah. Yeah. I think you should put that on the agenda for the Institute as well. I think I'll come and sit in on that one, Bob. Yeah, no doubt. And again, if you put in any of therapist clients, one of his interests in this to just put metaphors and therapy into Google and you or Amazon, you come up with lots of books. Yeah. Talks a lot about how to use metaphors, how to use analogies and how to use symbolism in psychotherapy. And they're fantastic. Another point I want to say, because we did the podcast last time on how to, how to get to the, how to get to the younger self, I think in psychotherapy. Think about this in terms of developmental tasks and learning to talk. Yeah. And very, the younger we go, the more we, you know, actually start thinking, I think in symbolism and metaphors before actually construction of language. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. So it's a huge way of getting to the younger part of the self. Yeah. And, you know, as you were speaking, then I was thinking about, you know, the younger self and story time and, you know, what that's like sitting with a young child, reading through a story and, you know, the imagination that they use and the connection and everything else around storytelling. It's like you say, our ancestors, that's how they, they didn't write things down. It was all, you know, word of mouth and passed down through storytelling. Yeah. I say, look at any religion. Christian religion, which is a dominant religion in the world, I think some might argue, but I was hearing, you know, recently that, you know, you know, we've gone down in the United Kingdom to about 46% of people's Christian, major Christian religion. But any, any, any religion, they all use, they all use metaphors. Yeah. All use symbols, all use stories that have been passed down. I'm going to look or I'm going to Google the most used metaphors and see what they are. I think you're the one you used about rockin' a hard place. I bet that's pretty top. Yeah. Yeah. And there will be an interesting list that and see what I visualise and what comes up for me with each one of them. Oh, that'd be a fantastic little task. Yeah. I do think that if Therbys can utilise symbolism, metaphors as a way to not only look at, you know, the term all of the past or how people internally feel now, but how they may want to get to the future. I mean, TA, there's a huge emphasis on contractual theory. Now, I think you could utilise contractual theory through the use of metaphors and symbolism in terms of how you're not only feeling today, but where you want to go in the future. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I would imagine that clients, you know, the certain clients would find it very easy to do that, to have a visual representation of where they want to be or how they want to feel or whatever. Yeah. And then draw it. Yeah. So in my therapy intensives, I start off and I still do some of them, by the way, I use it two, three a year. I don't contract the normal way. The way I do contracting is that they draw. And I could do it, I could do it through metaphor. Now I'm thinking about it. So they draw with their left hand, usually the non-dominant hand, what they want from the third process. They then draw or write down if they want to stop themselves getting what they want and then how they can utilise the change in the future. But you can do it, though, I do it all that way, but you could do it easily by metaphor. Yeah. I would imagine that task that you set them is quite challenging for adults in a room to use the non-dominant hand and to draw pictures. It's quite an ask that, Bob. But tell you what, it takes them back to their younger self. I was going to say, yeah. It's quicker than just cognitively sitting down and having constructed writing. Yeah, definitely. All the feelings would come up about being, you know. Writing for the first time. That's it, yeah. I'm not confident at this. I don't know how to do it. All the doubts and everything. Yeah. You can see I've been a therapist a long time working with the younger self, haven't you? Yeah. I do like metaphors. Me too. I think I'm going to utilise that a lot more in the room. Yeah. And I, you know, I think that if you can link it with what people want in the future as well. Yeah. I think there's a lot to be said about that. Yeah. I know I say this at the end of every podcast, Bob, but I really enjoyed this one. No, I enjoyed this one. I tell you why I've enjoyed it because I have a great passion for narrative therapy. I have a great passion for metaphors. I have a great passion for working with the younger self. I have a great passion in helping people understand themselves. And one of the biggest tools to help people understand themselves isn't through cognition. No. It's through a different part of their neurological system, which has its basis used in creativity and symbolism. Yeah. Definitely. Because it kind of gets underneath the conscious level of thinking when we're doing that sort of stuff. Things sneaking that we probably wouldn't think about, but they come out. To me, it's good therapy when it's not hard work, when it just flows. I love the way it sneaks in. It does. The good stuff always just sneaks in, Bob. It creeps in under the carpet or something. It's under the radar. It just happens. Yeah. Yeah. That's real transformation when it sneaks in. Yeah. Yeah. Now, often people say to me, it's therapy can be like magic. Now, symbolism, magic, metaphors, they're all the same ballpark. Yeah. Transformation. Yeah. All the same ballpark. It's all voodoo stuff, Bob. That's what it is. Well, you see, I think therapy is so much in the land of the unconscious. And if we can have tools like metaphors, symbolism, that type of process that I'm just talking about, which can get to those levels that we repress in the service of living and coping, then we're on to a winner. Yeah. I'm so pleased that I met you in my life, Bob, and that I trained at the Institute and that we do this now. Likewise, we've been doing it for... Oh, God. I don't even know what number voodoo this is, but we've been doing it for a long time. 87 weeks we've been doing this, but there's never a podcast that we do that I don't take away some gems. Whenever I meet with you or speak with you, there's something that I always take away from it. So I want to thank you for that, Bob. You're welcome. And I also say the same back to you. You've given me the chance to talk about what I found most pleasurable in my career. Yeah. And what a long career it's been. And still is. And still is. You've not hung up your court yet. There's another metaphor. What did you say? I said, you've not hung up your court yet. So there's another metaphor. No, I'm not that long in the tooth. That's another metaphor. Exactly. I've decided, actually, that I'm going to go on a bit more than the other day. I was thinking of a time, but actually I'm going to carry on a little bit more. And, you know, I just think long in the tooth, there's another metaphor for you. But I do love this, the chance of these podcasts to talk about, you know, the wonder of psychotherapy. Yeah. And it is. It's a joy to be a part of. So thank you for that. And what's the next one? The next one, because we're speeding towards Valentine's Day. Next week, I thought we could do something about relationship breakdowns. Yeah. I mean, Valentine's Day was never a happy day for me. Did you not get any cards, Bob? I'll send you one. Well, it wasn't just about that. It was about rejection and about despair and about envy and about jealousy, feeling inadequate. So, you know, and certainly relationship breakdowns. But of course, I won't go into my woe and my history. A lot of my clients, February the 4th, you know, Valentine's Day was not a particularly good day. So I think we'll do something around relationships in one form or another. Yeah, I think that, yeah. Okie dokie. Okie dokie. Until next time, Bob. Thank you so much. Take care. Bye-bye. Have a good week. Bye. Bye. .