If you’ve been following the case study of Ruth, my young client with ME, which was included in the Human Givens pain management book by Dr Grahame Browne, you’ll have noticed how I integrate metaphor into my working model.
Metaphors are stories with a purpose and are often used to help accelerate learning. They speak directly to the silent right brain hemisphere which has no language but understands and communicates through images, feelings and emotions. For this reason, I sometimes suggest my clients keep a dream diary.
Myths, legends, songs, poems and fairy tales are all examples of metaphor in action, for example in a fairy tale good generally wins over evil.
Integrating advanced metaphor adds a whole other layer to the professional toolbox of the integrated practitioner; something I refer to as ‘whole brain therapy’ and often excluded by left brained based models such as CBT. A 'whole-brain' way of working means I construct bespoke stories for my clients and weave them into guided visualisation, as I did for Ruth.
When presenting the online Fusion Therapeutic Diploma programme last time, I brought together a book of 20 original therapeutic stories for my students and now use that regularly as part of the training.
Yes, never underestimate the potential for a well placed metaphor or story to shift perception fast.
Einstein certainly didn’t!
A lesson from Einstein
Back when she was eight years old, Jean Houston, co founder of the USA based Foundation for Mind Research, was attending a school in Manhattan where they felt it was a good idea for students to meet some of the great elders of the time.
One of those elders was Albert Einstein, and one day they were trotted across the river to Princeton University to his house there. He had a lot of hair and was very sweet, she recounts:
‘One of my smart-alecky classmates said to him, "Uh, Mr Einstein, how can we become as smart as you?"
He said: "Read fairy tales,” which made no sense to us at all.
So another smart-alecky kid said, "Mr Einstein, how can we become smarter than you?"
He said: "Read more fairy tales!"
We of course didn’t fully understand him at the time, but what he was actually encouraging us to do was to nurture and grow our imaginations.
He understood something that all highly creative and successful people do, that the imaginal realm is where the most potent ideas (the ones that can change your life or change the world) are held.’
Anyway, back to Ruth, who continued to make wonderful progress…
Ruth: part 5
I asked Ruth, if ME had a face what it would look like.
She thought for a while with her eyes closed and said that ME and pain were like two ogres, two giants that threatened and tried to control her. We did a dissociation exercise then a visualisation, where she imagined them shrinking in size until they were small enough to tie up and dump in a ditch!
Ruth was improving all the time. She noticed better sleep, appetite, energy and mood. She really enjoyed the visualisations and so every session, we tried something new; a cloud over her head that she could allow negative feelings to be absorbed away from her or a walk through a rainbow where every colour represented a level of healing.
As her back pain continued to recede, we targeted her continuous headache and one visualisation seemed very helpful.
In relaxation, I suggested that Ruth could look up into a corner of her mind and see the level of pain reflected there. She said it was a level 6.
I said ‘So the number represents the level of pain and the pain is reflected by the number. If you choose to lower the number in the corner of your mind, the pain will lower in accordance with that number. So you can choose to reduce it to a level 5 and then a level 4 until you are more comfortable.’
Negative thinking can become a habitual thinking style, but by constantly challenging it, new neural pathways were forming and new ways of thinking becoming embedded.
I knew Ruth was putting it all into practise when, at her next session she said that in a way ME had been a good thing as it had made her stronger. I was pleased to notice that she was starting to refer to ME in the past tense!
The back pain had gone now and the painful and swollen wrist too. The headache had receded to a level 1 or 2.
Loss and grief
Sadly, during this time, Ruth’s grandmother died and she experienced some of the familiar reactions to that; sadness, anger, guilt. I am also a bereavement counsellor and, while we were working through those feelings, Ruth made an observation which was significant and a clear indicator of how she had developed a deep understanding of the mind/body connection.
She said’ I’ve noticed that, when I feel down I feel worse physically and I get more pain. That upsets my sleep pattern and then I get more tired and more tearful.’
I was beginning to think that Ruth would make an excellent Therapeutic Coach!
By now, I was only seeing Ruth once a month. The pains were largely gone, but re emerged on the run up to her GCSE’s, only to recede again when the exam stress was over.
As our work continued, occasional low energy was her only remaining symptom and, when she returned from a trip to Italy she reported that while she was away, her energy had been near to level ten all the way through!
I asked her why it was so much higher on holiday. Her reply was illuminating.
She said:
‘I wasn’t bored, I wasn’t depressed and I wasn’t lonely. I didn’t have time to think about me.
I didn’t have time to think about ME!’
Ruth’s focus had shifted to a psychologically healthy outward, forward, upward mind-set. She was back doing her A levels, in college full time and making new friends. She was sleeping 8 hours a night and described herself as 'confident and sociable'.
On her final session, she said she had her sights set on being a teacher. I remember my last thoughts were…
She will make a very good one!
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